The Effect of Blended Metacognitive Writing Strategy Instruction on the Writing Performance and Metacognitive Awareness of Iranian Advanced EFL Learners: Stated Attitude versus Actual Practice

The present study examined the effect of blended metacognitive writing strategy instruction on academic writing performance and metacognitive awareness of Iranian advanced students within the three categories of complexity, accuracy, and fluency. In doing so, their stated attitude was compared with their actual practice. For this purpose, 60 advanced EFL students were assigned to two groups: experimental (n = 30) and control (n = 30). The experimental group received the blended metacognitive writing strategy instruction while the control group followed the conventional writing instruction. Results revealed that the experimental group outperformed the control group in terms of the academic writing performance and total metacognitive awareness scores. Besides, their stated attitude toward fluency and accuracy matched their actual performance in terms of writing fluency and accuracy. However, there was a mismatch between their stated positive attitude toward complexity and their actual writing complexity. Findings bear pedagogical implications for curriculum designers and material developers, which were reported at the end together with future lines of research in this regard.