Abstract
In today’s information-driven knowledge economies, learners face a heightened need to effectively synthesize information from diverse sources. The capacity to attain communicative competence in writing plays a crucial role in language development and academic achievement across all educational levels. However, previous studies and examination papers showed that secondary students are lack of text-based writing practice and they generally produced a composite of disconnected parts. Transitioning to tertiary education, these students may face pressing issues as almost all academic writing requires them to synthesize information across multiple texts to construct a good argument. Therefore, the current study investigates the transition of students’ cognitive and metacognitive processing skills and task perception in academic writing from high school to college and attempts to answer three research questions: (1) What is the nature of the novice writers’ perceptions of academic writing task, and how do these perceptions transit from high school to college? (2) What is the nature of the novice writers’ cognitive and metacognitive processing skills while writing, how do these skills develop from high school to college? (3) What caused the changes of task perception and processing skills? By analyzing 22 students’ essays, questionnaire responses, and semi-structured interviews at three distinct time intervals, we observed favorable transformations in novice writers’ cognitive, behavioral, and emotional aptitudes related to academic writing. Additionally, we noted a progressive enhancement in students’ utilization of cognitive and metacognitive processing skills. The implications for pedagogical support in fostering academic writing skills among novice writers are discussed.
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
ACADEMIC WRITING, COGNITIVE AND METACOGNITIVE PROCESSING SKILLS, TASK PERCEPTION
