Effects of Error Feedback with Metacognitive Reflection on International Students’ Academic Writing

Abstract

Abstract-This paper investigates effects of the metacognitive reflection as a feedback dialogue on international students' academic writing. The metacognitive reflection, a process that goes beyond the cognitive process, involves the students to oversee their writing development through the learning process with their instructor. Data from a case study of a group of international students over a period of 16 weeks are used to detect the effects of this method on international students' academic writing. The result of this study is expected to assist second/foreign language (L2) educators to employ effective and efficient pedagogy to help international students improve their L2 writing in the academic setting.Index Terms-Error feedback, L2 writing, metacognitive reflection. I. INTRODUCTIONWriting is a complex process. It is even more complex to write in a second or foreign language (L2). As such, many studies (e.g., [1]- [5]) have pointed out understanding L2 students' special writing difficulties and causes of those difficulties in the process of their writing helps instructors know how to adapt their teaching to assist L2 writers with different linguistic and writing backgrounds. However, how to use a systematic method to effectively and efficiently analyze L2 students' error sources and provide feedback that can actively engage students to improve their writing weaknesses is quite a task. Different variables, e.g., learners' writing experience, L2 proficiency, first language interference, etc., may occur to influence L2 students' writing fluency and accuracy. Even though different analysis methods have been introduced with a hope to identify the areas of difficulty L2 learners encounter in the target language, most common methods, e.g., Contrastive Analysis, Interlanguage Analysis, and Error Analysis, are not easy to put into practice in the U.S. context where students are often from different linguistic background and most instructors do not know all their students' native language (L1). In addition, the methods are rather time-consuming if students are asked to write assigned tasks in two languages, which is impossible in the U.S. college composition classrooms [6].Therefore, the researchers developed a metacognitive reflection assignment with an aim to tap different L2 students' mastery of their L1 by letting them reflect the influence of their L2 writing to analyze causes of their errors. Manuscript received March 20, 2017; revised September 5, 2017 Intervened instruction is provided based on each individual student's need. This paper investigates effects of the metacognitive reflection as a feedback dialogue on international students' academic writing. The metacognitive reflection, a process that goes beyond the cognitive process, involves the students to oversee their writing development through the learning process. It starts by having students examine their writing errors as identified by their instructor and analyze their error sources. Based on their analysis, students employ necessary strategies to ...