The Contribution of Meta-Cognitive Elements on Essay Writing Performance

Review of literature and report of past studies supported the role of metacognitivein students learning. This study aimed to identify the contribution of meta-cognitiveelements on students writing performance. A quasi-experimental non-equivalent controlgroup design was used in this study. Sample consisted of 136 form four students from threeschools in Malaysian education system (one experimental group and one control group fromeach school). Total number of student in the experimental group and control group is 65 and71 respectively. Students in the experimental groups were exposed to meta-cognitivestrategy named 4META strategy for 12 weeks. Meanwhile, the control group, were taughtusing a conventional methods. The teachers who taught the experimental groups weretrained by the researchers to use 4META strategy prior to the intervention. Before theinterventions were carried out, both groups were given a pre-test to measure their initialperformance in writing using a writing achievement test. A set of questionnaire were alsoused to measure students’ meta-cognitive awareness, meta-attention, meta-comprehensionand meta-cognitive reflection. After the intervention, post-test were administered to measure students writing performance and also meta-cognitive elements using the same questionnaire. Data were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics based on the objectives of the study. Analysis from Stepwise multiple regressions revealed that two independent variables were significantly contributed to the variance in the writing scores. The independent variables were meta-cognitive awareness and meta-cognitive reflection. Finding of the study provide evidence on the importance of meta-cognitive awareness and meta-cognitive reflection to help students improve their performance in writing.