چکیده:
This study investigated the impact of using the technique of self-monitoring on non-academic EFL learners’ composition writing. Fifty female students studying English at Navid English Institute in Shiraz, Iran were chosen based on the results of a proficiency test. They were all 16-20 years old and were intermediate learners of English who were divided into two control and experimental groups and took a writing pre-test. The experimental group (EG) received a training program on the effective use of the technique of self-monitoring proposed by Charles (1990). That is, they learned to add annotations expressing doubts and queries on various parts of their five composition drafts. The students in CG wrote their drafts without annotations. At the end of the twenty-second session course, both groups took a writing posttest. The results indicated that the learners in EG performed significantly better and the global features of organization and content in their writing were enhanced. Surveying the students’ views on self-monitoring, through a questionnaire, revealed their interest in taking charge of their writing task. Findings point to the efficacy of the self-monitoring technique in promoting learners’ writing proficiency and autonomy in handling writing tasks.
خلاصه ماشینی:
"The results showed that students can be trained to use self-monitoring in their writing successfully and it helps them improve the organization of their compositions, and the technique is especially helpful to high achievers.
In fact, the learners are instructed to annotate their compositions with their doubts and queries to see specifically if the self-monitoring helps intermediate EFL learners improve their composition and pay attention to both local and global aspects of writing.
2. Nineteen percent of comments revealed that self-monitoring helped students with improving the grammar, utilizing appropriate vocabulary items, promoting the content of their writing, locating their mistakes, and removing the mechanical problems of their writing.
Writing questions on language form, receiving relevant response, and finally making correction is similar to receiving teacher feedback on the aspect of form that is believed to be useless according to some researchers; for instance, Truscott (1996) analyzed other researchers’ studies such as Kepner (1991), Semke (1984), and Sheppard (1992) and concluded that grammar correction should be abandoned because it is theoretically and practically ineffective and it can be harmful because it wastes the time and energy that should be spent on improving other aspects of writing.
Cresswell (2000) prognosticates possible problems of applying the technique of self-monitoring and writing annotations as learners’ disability to completely express their worries and concerns or focus on content and organization rather than language form.
Questionnaire Responding to the items of the questionnaire, the participants contended that using this technique helped them learn correct rules of composition writing, find new and more appropriate vocabulary items, pay attention to local aspects such as punctuation, verb tense, capitalization, spelling and word order and learn to think in English while developing their composition."