Pre-service teachers’ metacognitive control during the revision of texts in a foreign language

Abstract

The present paper analyses pre-service teachers’ metacognitive actions during the processes of writing and revision of texts in English as a foreign language. Thirty-two students with elementary and intermediate English proficiency levels participated in the study. First, students wrote two texts in English with different cognitive demands (a summary and an essay) about some previously watched films. Metacognitive actions performed on each text were measured and related to the linguistic proficiency level and the task demand. Results showed that most of the control actions taken belonged to the superficial mental representation level. They were mainly aimed at correcting grammatical mistakes. Moreover, participants found more difficulties in the elaboration and revision processes when facing a high cognitive demanding task, such as writing an essay.