Abstract:
This study investigated the quality of metacognition at its inter-individual level, i.e., socially-shared metacognition, across two collaborative writing tasks of different difficulty levels among a cohort of Iranian EFL learners. Moreover, it examined the correlation between the individual and the social modes of metacognition in writing. The analysis of think-aloud protocols of a number of pre-intermediate and advanced EFL learners revealed instances of episodes in which peers used metacognitive activities at pair level. Besides, comparing think-aloud protocols of tasks indicated more frequent and longer use of socially-shared metacognitive episodes in more difficult writing tasks. The study also found high correlation between the social mode of metacognition in L2 writing and learners’ individual metacognition. The pedagogical implications include the provision of learning opportunities in which learners are challenged to exploit metacognitive strategies, such as planning, monitoring, and self-evaluating.
Machine summary:
e. , socially-shared metacognition, across two collaborative writing tasks of different difficulty levels among a cohort of Iranian EFL learners.
The analysis of think-aloud protocols of a number of pre- intermediate and advanced EFL learners revealed instances of episodes in which peers used metacognitive activities at pair level.
Besides, comparing think-aloud protocols of tasks indicated more frequent and longer use of socially-shared metacognitive episodes in more difficult writing tasks.
Traditionally, metacognitive studies have mainly aimed at delineating how individuals employ metacognitive strategies, such as planning, monitoring, and evaluating individual tasks, or how individuals’ metacognitive knowledge could be a function of instructional techniques (Iiskala, Vauras, Lehtinen, & Salonen, 2011).
Having analyzed verbal commutations of pairs to find episodes in which both learners attempted to regulate and monitor each other’s cognitive working process, they reported the existence of such inter-personal metacognitive processes especially in more challenging tasks.
Moreover, Iiskala (2004) contended that in socially-shared metacognitive episodes, group members a) consider each other while planning, monitoring, or evaluating, and b) do not merely talk aloud while planning, monitoring, or evaluating their own behavior and instead make attempts to regulate and monitor each other’s cognitive working process.
Despite recent interest in implementing collaborative writing tasks and the advantages they offer (Mancho´n, 2011; Yarrow & Topping, 2001), metacognition at group and pair level in EFL writing task has not been adequately investigated so far.
Instruments The researchers transcribed the participants’ think-aloud protocols generated during the collaborative writing tasks in order to measure their socially-shared metacognition.
(2004, 2011, & 2015) who reported that learners in the more difficult mathematical problem solving tasks used more social metacognitive processes per episode.