Identifying Components of Meta-Awareness about Composition: Toward a Theory and Methodology for Writing Studies

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by jay

Recent research in writing studies highlights meta-awareness as valuable for student learning in first-year writing (FYW), yet it needs clearer theorization and identifiable components. This article uses a case study of six students across two FYW courses, drawing on Gregory Schraw’s metacognition model and Anthony Giddens’s practical and discursive consciousness to outline four observable writing/rhetorical concepts: process, techniques, rhetoric, and intercomparativity.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages16

Reading Time40 min

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Identifying Components of Meta-Awareness about Composition

Writing activity and observational challenges

Current Issue From the Editors Weblog Editorial Board Editorial Policy Submissions Archives Accessibility Search Composition Forum 33, Spring 2016 Identifying Components of Meta-Awareness about Composition: Toward a Theory and Methodology for Writing Studies Crystal VanKooten Abstract: Recent research in writing studies has highlighted meta-awareness as valuable for student learning in courses such as first-year writing (FYW); however, meta-awareness needs to be further theorized and its components identified. In this article, I draw on a case study of six students in two FYW courses that is informed by Gregory Schraw’s model of metacognition and Anthony Giddens’s theory of practical and discursive consciousness to outline four writing/rhetorical concepts within which meta-awareness about composition is observable. These concepts include 1) process, 2) techniques, 3) rhetoric, and 4) intercomparativity, and they provide a preliminary framework for meta-awareness about composition that others might expand upon as we continue to build knowledge of how writers learn. First-year writing (FYW) is often considered to be at the heart of writing studies. Thousands of instructors teach FYW each semester in colleges and universities across the nation, seeking to prepare students for writing they will do across the curriculum. Assessing what skills and habits students actually take and use from FYW, however, is complex. Recently, writing researchers have suggested that developing meta-awareness is one important goal for students in FYW because meta-awareness can be useful beyond the course as students write in a variety of contexts. Elizabeth Wardle, for example, argues that “meta-awareness about writing, language, and rhetorical strategies in FYC [first-year composition] may be the most important ability our courses can cultivate” (82, emphasis in original) . Likewise, Rebecca Nowacek demonstrates that meta-awareness is important for integration, where students recontexualize elements within new writing situations (34) . Anne Beaufort uses the closely related terminology metacognition when discussing the design of first-year writing curricula (College Writing 152; College Writing: Five Years Later); Kathleen Blake Yancey, Liane Robertson, and Kara Taczak integrate attention to metacognition into their Teaching for Transfer FYW curriculum (Writing across Contexts 137); and administrative documents such as the Council of Writing Program Administrators’ Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing include attention to knowledge of thinking strategies (1) . Meta-awareness has thus generated a buzz in relation to FYW curricula: it’s an important aspect of student learning, it’s related to processes for writing that might become generalizable beyond one assignment or one course, and it’s part of the how and the why (to go with the what) of composition. Meta-awareness, however, needs to be further theorized for writing studies. One reason this is so is that the definitions we do have are broad—too “fuzzy,” to use Brianna M. Scott and Matthew Levy’s word—to be as useful as they might be in research or teaching. Often, meta-awareness is discussed as a general ability to reflect on one’s own thinking, and rarely do we indicate specific components that might constitute a more (or less) robust meta-awareness. Rafaella Negretti, for example, defines metacognitive awareness as “learners’ awareness of their thinking/learning strategies”(145), a general definition referring to all cognition and learning. Wardle gets more specific for writers in particular, describing meta-awareness about writing as students’ ability to “analyze assignments, see similarities and differences across assignments, discern what was being required of them, and determine what they needed to do in response”(76-77) . Even so, Wardle’s definition remains within the mind of the writer, where writerly actions such as discerning and determining aren’t easily obs

FAQs

What problem does the article address about meta-awareness in FYW?

The article argues that meta-awareness is widely discussed but remains too broad and “fuzzy,” lacking specific components that can be clearly identified and observed in research or classrooms.

How does the author build the theory of meta-awareness about composition?

The author builds it through qualitative methods, using a case study of six students in two FYW courses informed by Schraw’s metacognition model and Giddens’s theory of practical and discursive consciousness.

What four concepts are proposed as observable components of meta-awareness about composition?

The framework includes four writing/rhetorical concepts: 1) process, 2) techniques, 3) rhetoric, and 4) intercomparativity.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by jay