The Effect of WSBI on the Use of Metasocial and Social Strategies in Iranian EFL Learners’ Essay Writing

This study aims at investigating the effect of writing strategy-based instruction (WSBI) on the use of metasocial and social strategies in Iranian English as a foreign language (EFL) learners’ essay writing. Using Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) diagnostic test, 60 homogeneous subjects were selected in two groups of 30 each. Prior to treatment, all subjects wrote an essay writing task for a bar chart description as a pre-test and filled out a writing strategies questionnaire, too. During an academic term-long intervention the groups were taught to apply metasocial and social writing strategies adapted from Oxford’s (2011) strategic self-regulation (S2R) model in their essays through writing strategies-based instruction (WSBI) for experimental group and process writing instruction (PWI) for control group. Following the treatment, the participants of both groups wrote a second essay on another bar chart description as a posttest followed by the administration of the same questionnaire. The essays were evaluated by two raters using the IELTS writing marking scheme. The results of independent samples t-test revealed a significant difference in experimental learners’ writing performance favoring more metasocial strategies than social strategies. The findings also stressed the usefulness of WSBI for EFL learners’ writing, requiring that teachers, material developers, and syllabus writers consider the prominent potentials of metasocial and also social strategies for the development of EFL learners' essay writing.