Exploring the effect of metacognitive strategies on writing performance

Among all the learning strategies, metacognitive strategy is a higher-order executive skill. Once learners have a good command of a metacognitive strategy, they will become more independent and autonomous and will be more capable of planning, monitoring and evaluating their learning process and thus become efficient learners. This research aims to investigate whether secondary students at the Almazar Schools use metacognitive learning strategies (MLS) in their writing performance and they are aware of them; also, to find out whether their teachers provide the development of MLSs in the classroom. In a class of 22 students, just 10 volunteered to respond the interview questions. The findings showed that only less than half of the participants used were aware of MLS. This paper, therefore, intends to introduce metacognitive instruction in order to raise English as a Foreign language writing instructors’ awareness in teaching and in order to train students to become self-regulated learners. Keywords: Metacognitive strategies, writing performance, planning writing, monitoring writing, evaluating writing.