Self-Regulated Writing of English Learners: Intervention Development

Abstract

The goal of this study was to develop and test an intervention in order to improve academic writing and SRL skills of English learners (ELs). ELs are well-represented across university and college campuses in the United States. While most of them thrive academically and receive their undergraduate and graduate degrees, a majority of ELs experience difficulties with academic writing such as limited English proficiency levels and opportunities to practice academic writing. Therefore, there is a need to develop and examine evidence-based interventions to promote the development of academic writing skills of ELs. One promising line of research involves adding instruction in self-regulated learning (SRL) to writing courses. In this study, the SRL writing intervention was delivered as a one-credit semester-long course taught at a medium research university. A mixed-methods research design, combining single case quasi-experimental design to collect quantitative data and focus group interviews to collect qualitative data, was used with undergraduate ELs (n = 8) from Southeast Asia. The results of this study revealed that the SRL writing intervention had a small positive effect on the quality of students’ persuasive writing skills, but no effect on students’ SRL skills. Focus group interviews suggested that students appreciated learning about SRL skills, but found the SRL journal confusing and frequent. These findings suggest that both writing and SRL skills are teachable, but may require more time and adjustments to the teaching and learning methods employed in the study. Recommendations for the development of the improved intervention are also provided.

On a path to becoming more self-regulated: Reflective journals’ impact on Chinese English as a foreign language students’ self-regulated writing strategy use

“…Differences in the use of self-regulated writing strategies between the high-and low-proficiency groups Some previous studies on the use of reflective writing have tended to hypothesize a potential influence of individual proficiency levels on observable SRL-related behaviors (Farahian et al, 2021), while others argued that such a link exists while treating SRL strategy use as a holistic construct (Yabukoshi, 2020;Akhmedjanova and Moeyaert, 2022). Our study has not only revealed the influence of individual-proficiency variation on the use of self-regulated writing strategies when writing reflective journals, but also paints a clear picture of where such variation lies.…”

“…Regarding change over time in self-regulated writing strategies, SRL theory itself emphasizes the central role of time and ordered SRL sequencing during the writing process (Zimmerman, 2008;Zimmerman and Schunk, 2011), and that students' journey to adopting such strategies may be quite lengthy (Akhmedjanova and Moeyaert, 2022). Therefore, it is important to trace developmental patterns in students' use of them.…”

“…On the other hand, the sporadic negative comments we received on reflective writing echoed Akhmedjanova and Moeyaert's (2022) findings of students failing to recognize the value of writing SRL journal, despite the relatively lower burden of our reflective-writing assignments. A possible explanation could be that the students who complained were relatively lacking in declarative knowledge about SRL strategies (Mallahi, 2020;Sun and Wang, 2020;Akhmedjanova and Moeyaert, 2022), and perhaps especially about the power of reflection in writing (e.g., Hussein, 2018;Baek, 2019;Farahian et al, 2021;Sudirman et al, 2021). If so, they would have been less likely to access these mental resources while composing both reflective writing and writing assignments.…”

“…This also holds true of its subcomponents including cognitive strategies ( Sethuraman and Radhakrishnan, 2020 ), planning ( Bai and Guo, 2018 , 2021 ; Bai et al, 2020 ), self-monitoring ( Guo et al, 2021 ), help-seeking, and motivational regulation ( Mbato and Cendra, 2019 ). On the other hand, some studies have reported that students did not fully adopt self-regulated writing strategies (e.g., Mallahi, 2020 ; Akhmedjanova and Moeyaert, 2022 ), with three strategies being especially poorly represented. They were goal-setting ( Abadikhah et al, 2018 ; Sun and Wang, 2020 ), reviewing of records ( Sun and Wang, 2020 ), and self-consequence ( Abadikhah et al, 2018 ).…”

“…Some studies have reported that the use of reflective writing can promote students’ SRL in a general way ( Jafarigohar and Mortazavi, 2013 ; Chang et al, 2015 ), and others, in specific ways: notably, by boosting organizational skills ( Chang and Lin, 2014 ), critical reflection ( Sudirman et al, 2021 ), and critical thinking ( Ahmed, 2020 ). Alongside these broadly positive findings about reflective-journal writing, however, a recent study by Akhmedjanova and Moeyaert (2022) reported that a sample of eight Southeast Asian students did not value the use of SRL journals in the process of learning and writing English, and that at least five of them considered the SRL journal assignments to be annoying and boring. This further highlights the importance of taking account of contextual variation when examining learners’ self-regulated writing strategy uptake ( Inan-Karagul and Seker, 2021 ).…”