Essay Writing Strategies Through Metacognitive Oriented Learning The Case of Second Year English Students at Ahmed Zabana University of Relizane

Abstract

Conducting a research in cognitive psychology is understanding the internal mental processes of the mind. This work's vital target is to raise both students' and teachers' awareness about metacognition and its role in enhancing students' productive skills. This study tends to find appropriate solutions to promote writing strategies. Students output is still insufficient and poor though productive skills play a determinant role in learning, the result in those two skills is still unsatisfactory and disappointing. A tentaive answer to the research question that concerns reasons behind the poor production of students is their lack of using metacognitive strategies ; and unability to learn how to learn. This develops their reflective and critical thinking in learning and foster their productive proficiencies. This work aims at testing the use of metacognitive strategies in learning for the sake of developing the quality of students' written product. Three data collection tools are used, the interview for teachers of written expression and the questionnaire for second year English students at Relizane University, the last data collection tool is the diary of twenty students that are selected from the whole population. This work concluded that students' poor production is due to different factors, lack of practice, lack of organisation, lack of strategies from students' part, and a complete unawareness about the role of thinking from both students' and teachers' parts. Through the effective use of metacognition in teaching-learning productive skills, students will be able to learn better, in more creative expression. It is important for students to think effectively, learn about their weaknesses and to know when exactly to adjust. Writing should cooperate a number of metacognitive strategies involving planning, organising, evaluating, recalling, reflecting and constructing a solid knowledge along with intensifying their practice which has a prominent role in any learning task. Students who lack a set of effective strategies become discouraged and disengaged in learning, and tend to have lower academic outcome yet through the effective use of metacognitive startegies, the wheel of learner's output will be certainly greased.