Turkish-speaking students' writing performance in German as a foreign language (GFL) and their metacognitive awareness - Full Length Research Paper - online collaborative writing instruction combined with metacognitive guidance

Oct 15, 2026

The study examines how online collaborative writing instruction combined with metacognitive guidance affects students’ writing performance in German as a foreign language and their metacognitive awareness. Ninety Turkish-speaking learners are assigned to on-CWI+MG, f2f-CWI+MG, and in-class individual writing without metacognitive guidance. The online collaborative condition achieves the highest writing performance, with a notable interaction in metacognitive awareness versus the face-to-face group. Knowledge about cognition and regulation of cognition both predict writing results, with cognition knowledge having the stronger impact.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages20

Reading Time50 min

AccessFree to download

Abstract

Introduction

Study design and groups

Results and implications

African EducaƟonal Research Journal Vol. 11(3), pp. 421-440, September 2023 DOI: 10. 30918/AERJ.113.23.071 ISSN: 2354-2160 Full Length Research Paper Turkish-speaking students' writing performance in German as a foreign language (GFL) and their metacognitive awareness: An online collaborative writing instruction combined with metacognitive guidance Ahmet Tanır School of Foreign Languages, Iskenderun Technical University, 31200, İskenderun-Hatay, Türkiye. Accepted 29 August, 2023 | ABSTRACT
The present study investigates the effects of online collaborative writing instruction combined with metacognitive guidance on students' writing performance in German as a foreign language and their metacognitive awareness. For this purpose, a total of 90 students are randomly and equally divided into three groups: group with online collaborative writing instruction combined with metacognitive guidance (onCWI+MG), group with face-to-face collaborative writing instruction combined with metacognitive guidance (f2f-CWI+MG) and group with in-class individual writing activities without metacognitive guidance (i-WRITE) . Results revealed that the on-CWI+MG group showed the best writing performance and there was a complex interaction with the f2f-CWI+MG group in terms of metacognitive awareness. Moreover, the two basic levels of metacognitive awareness, knowledge about cognition and regulation of cognition, had a predictive effect on writing performance, with knowledge about cognition having a larger effect. Relevant implications for better understanding online collaborative writing instruction combined with metacognitive guidance are discussed.
Keywords: Metacognitive guidance, collaborative writing, online, face-to-face, German as a foreign language. | | --- | | E-mail: [ahmet.tanir@iste.edu.tr](ahmet.tanir@iste.edu.tr) | INTRODUCTION Writing is a complex process that requires the coordination of cognitive and fine motor skills (Steinlen, 2018), in which learners use appropriate linguistic tools to express their thoughts (Rösler, 2012) and to achieve perfection in writing tasks (Kuyyogsuy , 2019) . Writing has a psychological significance for learning (Nováková , 2020; Müller, 1997) and apparently helps learners not only to produce well-written texts but also to use their ability to better control their learning process and overcome difficulties (Tseng et al. , 2006) . In doing so, learners need to effectively use writing skills and strategies such as “the ability to rapidly access lexical items, a positive attitude towards writing, knowledge of text features, cognitive skills, visual-spatial performance”(Myhill and Fisher, 2010; cited in Steinlen, 2018, p. 43) . The acquisition of such advanced thinking skills enables students to adapt effectively to the modern world (Akcaoglu et al. , 2023), and to become active learners and successful writers. However, the importance of German writing competence has long been emphasized and does not seem to enable learners to become more effective writers, especially in L1 (native or first language) and L2 (second or foreign Afr Educ Res J 422 language) contexts. Moreover, there is a view among learners that writing is frustrating and difficult, especially in German as a foreign language (hereafter GFL) (Ortner, 2016) . Some studies (Jaworska, 2011) adopting a corpusbased learning approach have reported that GFL learners are not yet able to fully produce academic texts in German and avoid complex structures, writing only simple texts on topics of their own interest. One reason that explains this finding could be the lack of students' knowledge and use of writing strategies (Ruan, 2014) . More specifically, traditional writing instruction does not seem to prepare learners to overcome these challenges and develop critical thinking skills in writing (Torrance and Jeffery, 1999) . To overcome such challenges, GFL learners may need guidance on metacognitive strategies to activate and

FAQs

How were students grouped in the study?

Ninety students were randomly and equally divided into three groups: on-CWI+MG, f2f-CWI+MG, and i-WRITE (individual writing without metacognitive guidance).

Which instructional condition produced the best writing performance?

The on-CWI+MG group showed the best writing performance, outperforming the other two conditions in the reported results.

What role does metacognitive awareness play in writing performance?

Both knowledge about cognition and regulation of cognition predicted writing performance, and knowledge about cognition had a larger effect than regulation of cognition.

Oct 15, 2026

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