Students' Metacognitive Knowledge about How to Write Informational Texts

Abstract

This study examined LD students' metacognitive knowledge about expository writing and the relationship between this knowledge and writing performance. Thirty students, equally divided among three ability groups (learning disabled, low-achieving, and high-achieving), were interviewed about their metacognitive knowledge about the expository writing process and the role of text organization; subjects also composed two types of expository text (compare / contrast and explanation). When performance levels among the three ability groups were compared, the results suggested that learning disabled students were less aware than high-achieving students of modeled writing strategies, steps in the writing process, strategies for presenting expository ideas, and procedures for selecting and integrating information from multiple sources. Discrepancies between learning disabled and low-achieving writers also emerged in the metacognitive interview in terms of ability to (a) control and regulate the writing process, (b) use organizational strategies or text structures to generate or group ideas, and (c) monitor the quality of texts. When performance on the composition and metacognitive measures was related, the results revealed that the strongest relationship existed between writing performance and the following metacognitive variables: students' awareness of modeled writing strategies, students' knowledge of processes related to monitoring the completeness of text, and students' categorizing abilities. These findings suggest that writing instruction should focus on both the development of students' metacognitive knowledge of the expository writing process and the organizational strategies for generating, organizing, and monitoring expository prose.