Exploring the Effectiveness of Self-Regulation Strategy-Based Revision Instruction in EFL Writing

This chapter reports findings on effects of the self-regulation strategy-based revision instruction, adapted from the Self-Regulation Strategy-Development (SRSD) model with instruction in writing evaluation criteria as a subcomponent, on students’ metacognitive knowledge about text revision and self-efficacy for text revision in an EFL writing classroom. Also, the instructional effects of genre-specific evaluation criteria and general evaluation criteria on participants’ revisions made on their texts and written text quality were compared. Hence, this study involved a quasi-experimental design with three conditions: SRSD with genre-specific criteria instruction (GSCI), self-regulation strategy-based instruction with general criteria instruction (GCI), and a comparison condition where regular writing instruction was taught without self-regulation strategy-based instruction. Three intact classes of undergraduate students from a university in China participated in the interventional study (N = 102) and they were randomly assigned into one of the three conditions. Students in the two treatment groups received the eight-week, SRSD revision instruction, with 90 min per week. Instructional effects on participants’ written text quality and text revisions were measured via pre- and post-writing and revising tests and the written texts and physical changes identified on them were analysed. Questionnaire surveys with follow-up interviews were employed to explore participants’ metacognitive knowledge about text revision as well as their self-efficacy for text revision. Quantitative and qualitative results together revealed positive effects of the SRSD revision instruction on students’ metacognitive knowledge and influencing their self-efficacy for text revision in an EFL writing context. Moreover, both SRSD-treated groups made more text-improving, meaning-changing revisions and a larger number of revisions involving larger segments of texts than the comparison group. Both treatment groups produced more reader-oriented writing and made greater gains in the scores for content than the comparison group.