Resumen de The effectiveness of a proposed program to develop meta-learning awareness and its effect on the writing achievement of saudi efl students at Taif University
Mohammad Al Zahrani, Nasrah Mahmoud Ismaiel
Writing a composition is perhaps the most difficult part of the writing process for EFL students. Writing is an intricate and complex task and the most difficult of all the language skills to acquire. This study aims to investigate the effectiveness of a proposed program to develop the EFL learners` meta-learning awareness in order to help them improve their writing skill. Moreover, this study aims to find the differences between the experimental group and the control group before and after the treatment. The participants were university students who were selected from a large sample and divided into an experimental group and a control group based on a writing production pre-test and the meta-learning questionnaire. The study follows a quasi-experimental method and its sample consists of 127 female students who are divided into two groups; the experimental group consists of 64 students and the control group consists of 63 students. The research proceeded for the duration of three months, including the proposed program. Students` meta-learning awareness was measured using a questionnaire, while their writing achievement was measured by a writing test, both prepared by the researchers. Translation-back-translation and total item correlations methods were used to evaluate the psychometric properties of the ‘meta-learning awareness questionnaire of writing’ (MAQW). Its findings show statistically significant differences between the experimental group and the control group on the post-test writing test as well as the meta-learning awareness questionnaire, indicating a significant improvement in the writing skill of the experimental group. It goes on to show that there are statistically significant differences between the pre-test and post-test results of the experimental group on the writing test and the meta-learning awareness. This confirms that the writing skills of the experimental group improved after participating in the program, as seen in the post-test. In light of these results, the study offers a number of suggestions that may contribute to raising awareness regarding the importance of teaching meta-learning awareness strategies to students who have difficulty in writing.
