Metacognitive Awareness as the Predictor of Positive Self-Critical Rumination, Personal Best Goals (PBs), and Language Achievement

The present research scrutinized the nexus between English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners’ metacognitive awareness (MCA), personal best goals (PBs), the positive dimension of self-critical rumination (PSCR) and language achievement (LA) via a quantitative approach. To accomplish this aim, 526 EFL students studying at different private English institutes and a university were asked to take part in a questionnaire survey and fill in three questionnaires. The first questionnaire was L2 Self-Critical Rumination Questionnaire (Ghanizadeh & Jahedizadeh, forthc.). It included 11 items and evaluated positive and negative metacognitions. In this study, positive metacognition was employed. To measure the metacognitive awareness in this study, the scale developed by Schraw and Dennison (1994) was used. It comprised 52 statements measuring two broad classifications of knowledge of cognition (two subcomponents), and regulation of cognition (five subcomponents). To measure student PB goals, the Persian version of ‘Personal Best Goals Scale’ developed by Martin (2006) and translated to Persian and validated by Najafzadeh et al. (2019) was considered. The 16 statements that made up the personal best scale assessed challenging goals, specific goals, competitively self-referenced goals, and self-improvement goals. The results computed via Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) demonstrated that MCA positively predicted PSCR (β = 0.45, t = 6.05), PB (β = 0.51, t = 6.48), and LA (β = 0.61, t = 7.87). A further finding was that both PB (β = 0.63, t = 8.08) and PSCR (β = 0.31, t = 3.18) positively predicted LA. Taken together, the highest impact on LA was exerted by PB, followed by MCA. The association between the subscales of MCA and PB demonstrated that the highest correlation is between MCA and information management strategies (r = 0.71, p < 0.05) followed by monitoring (r = 0.70, p < 0.05), planning (r = 0.69, p < 0.05), and evaluation (r = 0.67, p < 0.05). The outcomes of this study can be significant for teachers, education policymakers, and material developers. They should understand that enhancing metacognitive awareness helps students be more mindful in their learning and set more ideal goals, resulting in greater academic achievement.