Introduction

Many scholars are concerned with writing instruction to students learning a second or foreign language. In particular, feedback in writing is a crucial factor in the process of revising a composition (Bitchener, 2008; Rinehart & Chen, 2012). Black and Wiliam (1998), Hattie and Timperley (2007), and Ramsden (2003) maintain that efficient feedback on the students’ writing exemplifies the crucial features of quality teaching. There are three main types of feedback being presented in the literature on the process-oriented teaching of writing, namely peer feedback, teacher-student conferences as feedback, and teachers’ comments on the students’ written texts (Keh, 1990; Tangkiengsirisin, 2006).Among the different ways of feedback provision, the teacher’s written feedback is the one which is viewed, at least by the students, parents, and principals as a necessary element of writing improvement (Lee, 1997; Leki, 1991).

Menárguez Sarabia et al. (2012) have mentioned that although feedback given by the teacher plays a pivotal role in developing the novice writers’ performance, its effectiveness relies highly on its conformity to the learners’ concerns, feedback preferences, and expectations (Lee, 2017; Ruegg, 2020; Shvidko, 2015). Furthermore, the learners’ readiness to absorb and understand the instructor's comments determines the extent to which the instructor’s feedback is effective (Menárguez Sarabia et al., 2012). If the learner is not ready to understand and process the comments, the teacher’s feedback will not be beneficial for improving the learners’ writing performance. Storch and Tapper (1996) also have stated that during the drafting and revising stages, teachers are often perceived as the experts being in charge of finding and correcting the learners’ errors. They believe that such a viewpoint toward the teacher’s role makes the students so dependent on the teacher that they cannot become autonomous learners, accepting responsibility for their own writing.

Other difficulties that teachers usually encounter in providing appropriate feedback, as suggested by Goldstein (2004), is the insufficient information about the learners’ purpose and intention which leads to misinterpretation and provision of improper comments. Charles (1990) also has criticized the real situation in writing classes where teachers provide comments on the students’ final drafts without the chance of having a dialogue over the text. In other words, teachers provide comments based on the ideas and intentions expressed in the students’ drafts; however, the draft may not be indicative of the writers’ real intentions or the process they went through to reach such a product. Similarly, Frankenberg-Garcia (1999) argues that the text which is submitted to the teachers does not indicate the problems the learners encounter while they are writing.

In order to prevent such difficulties and provide effective teacher feedback, Charles (1990) has recommended the use of a self-monitoring technique during writing. Charles defines self-monitoring as a method by which the learners annotate their drafts, write comments, and questions on their writing difficulties prior to submitting the final draft to the instructor. In this technique, the learners are encouraged to self-monitor their own writing performance through annotations, and they are free to ask questions about the form, content, or the organization of their own writings. Annotations require the leading functions of clarifying, thinking, sharing, and remembering (Wolfe, 2002), creating a more collaborative environment for EFL learners and teachers in providing feedback and correcting errors (Yeh & Lo, 2009).

The instructor gives a written response to those notes and provides suitable and direct feedback on the students’ points (Charles, 1990). In this study, self-monitoring refers to those writing skills and strategies (e.g., self-editing and self-evaluation) which enable the students to monitor their own writings beyond the surface level and identify, repair, and correct their inaccuracies not only in terms of language forms, organization, and mechanics, but also content, genre, and text, taking the social context into consideration. To do so, the learners annotate and self-record their writing skills, strengths, and weaknesses and the teacher responds to their problems by providing feedback and calling their attention to those aspects of writing which should be accomplished or reinforced.

Although the use of self-monitoring has a number of advantages (changing the students' role from the passive recipients of the instructor’s comments to active participants who can analytically identify their own needs and concerns and inform the instructor about the problematic areas of their writing), some researchers have discussed its limitations in the second language (L2) classroom. In order to monitor and self-assess, training is required since the learners are not that familiar with the norms of evaluation and how to monitor, annotate, and produce a more realistic evaluation of their writings. Paulus (1999) and Tuzi (2004) have found that L2 writers are more inclined to concentrate on surface errors. Assessment and feedback provided by the students also lack accuracy, and that such inaccuracies are usually unintended or subconscious (Brown et al., 2015). The students’ knowledge, experience, and language proficiency are also other critical elements which can affect the quality of feedback (Rinehart & Chen, 2012; Saito & Fujita, 2004) and the way they monitor and record themselves.

To obtain a comprehensive view regarding the use of self-monitoring, this study examined the learners’ annotations as a self-monitoring technique in the writing instruction following Charles’ (1990) remark, as the most frequently used model in this domain with practical features in the writing process and feedback since existing studies (Parrott & Cherry, 2014; Saunders, 2020; Steen-Utheim & Wittek, 2017; Zigmond, 2012) have heavily relied on and lent credence to Charles’s (1990) model, remarks, and arguments that, through self-monitoring, the students express their ongoing concerns and uncertainties to their teacher. In particular, the following research questions were raised in this study.

1. Is there any statistically significant difference between the effects of the self-monitoring technique, compared to the conventional writing technique on Iranian intermediate EFL learners’ writing performance?
2. Is there any statistically significant difference between the perception of the students using the self-monitoring technique and those taking advantage of conventional writing classes in terms of the self-monitoring technique?
3. How do EFL students perceive the advantages and disadvantages of using the self-monitoring technique to promote their writing performance?

The findings of the study can be a good source of interest for second language and foreign language writing teachers and researchers to get a better understanding of how to provide more effective feedback. Equally important, the results of the study also provide a new insight into the process of revision for teachers as they give them invaluable information on how to implement this technique in the writing classes so as to motivate the learners to take an active role in revising their own written work. Likewise, the research results are highly beneficial for students to engage in an interactive task which helps them become better writers.

Literature Review

In the 1970s and 1980s, the process approach to teaching writing was introduced as a response to the product-oriented writing (Miller, as cited in Mubarak, 2013). In this approach, educators shifted their attention from teaching grammar and correction at the surface level to the cognitive process of writing (Matsuda, 2003). Consequently, as the process approach to teach writing gained popularity, revision and subsequently feedback were considered as having a crucial role in the multiple-draft process which “pushes the writer through the various drafts and onto the eventual end-product” (Keh, 1990, p. 294).

It was apparent that in the process-oriented approach of teaching writing, traditional corrective feedback by which the teachers provide comments on the learners’ final work was considered to be inefficient, mostly uninformative, and ambiguous (e.g., Hyland, 2000; Muncie, 2000). In an attempt to find effective alternatives for traditional feedback, scholars offered self-evaluation (Brown & Harris, 2013) and teacher-students conferencing (Hyland & Hyland, 2006). Learners play a crucial role in the process of feedback provision and reception (Lee, 2014), and research studies on learners are highly influenced by concepts in sociocultural theory such as formative assessment (Black & Wiliam, 1998; Sadler, 2010) and the zone of proximal development (Liu & Hansen, 2002; Vygotsky, 1978; Zhu & Mitchell, 2012). In order to broaden the literature on feedback in writing, research that examines the learners’ role in self-monitoring of their own learning is required (Lee, 2014).

The self-monitoring technique was an alternative proposed by Charles (1990). Charles stated that through self-monitoring, the learners pass their comments and questions on their writings and report their problematic areas in writing to the instructor before sending their final drafts. This means that the students annotate their comments, questions, and concerns in the margin of their composition and the teacher provides written answers to the students’ notes (Cresswell, 2000). The main purpose of this technique, as Charles maintains, is to “make the reviewing in the composition interactive” (p. 202). It has been stated that “monitoring can be used in the planning, editing, and correcting stages of writing” (Tsai & Lin, 2012, p. 206). Hence, monitoring enables the learners to reflect on the diverse aspects of their writing, like its form and correctness. For example, when students monitor different types of sentences in their writing, they will be aware of the structures they construct. Self-monitoring also assists the learners in developing different aspects of their writing. Accurate monitoring, in particular, is significant as it affects the learners’ decisions as for how to self-regulate their learning, such as identifying and removing their errors and erroneous responses (Steiner et al., 2020).

Theoretically, the self-monitoring technique or metacognitive monitoring (Zimmerman, 2008) is a cognitive-behavioral process (Ganz & Sigafoos, 2005) supported by two second language acquisition (SLA) hypotheses, namely the output and noticing hypothesis. The main theoretical premise behind the self-monitoring technique is the output hypothesis proposed by Swain (1995). On the other hand, the noticing hypothesis which was proposed by Schmidt (1990) gives special importance to the learners’ attention to some aspects of the language input.

The studies, found in the literature, have investigated the self-monitoring technique from various viewpoints. A number of studies have highlighted the effectiveness of the method, whereas some others have examined the learners’ annotations or their attitudes toward the self-monitoring technique. In a study conducted by Cresswell (2000), the participants were asked to write four compositions using the self-monitoring technique for four weeks. In contrast to the first two compositions, which were used for training purposes, the annotations pertaining to the last two uncovered the degree to which students paid attention to the organization as well as global content. Furthermore, to explore the students’ attitudes toward the use of the self-monitoring techniques, semi-structured interviews and post-task questionnaires were administered.

Based on the results, Cresswell (2000) has reported that the majority of the students’ annotations were related to language. In particular, 51% of the learners had language-based annotations arising from positive teacher feedback, organization, and global content, and translation had lower order concerns. In addition, self-monitoring created a more appropriate condition for supporting the development of productive language resources used by the students. Moreover, this technique helped the students to move forward in their writing without the worry of block (Cresswell, 2000). Arndt (1987) has argued that “the composition process of recursive idea-generation becomes blocked when second language learners’ lack of linguistic resources leads them to abandon or simplify pre-verbal ideas (p. 264).

In another interventionist study, Xiang (2004) employed a pre-post-task design, gleaning the data through an interview, a questionnaire, and four writing tasks. In contrast to the control group members who received no treatment, those in the experimental group were asked to annotate on their drafts. The results of the study uncovered that the students succeeded in using the self-monitoring technique effectively; thereby, the instructor was informed of the difficulties they faced while writing. In addition, this technique was particularly fruitful for high-achievers and monitoring the organization of writing.

Storch and Tapper (1996) addressed the issue of self-monitoring from a descriptive perspective. The participants of the study were a group of ESL undergraduates from an Australian university participating in an Advanced English course. They asked the students to annotate any issues that they considered worthy of noting while writing their journal over a two-semester period. An open-ended questionnaire and an interview were also used with the participants to elicit their views about the journal annotation scheme. Overall, Storch and Tapper (1996) found that despite the high individual variations that existed in the learners’ annotations, syntax and lexis were the most frequently used annotations. Furthermore, it was revealed that there was a possible link between the learners’ proficiency level and their use of annotation in a sense that the more proficient learners made the best use of the annotation scheme so as to express their concerns to the teacher. On the other hand, less proficient learners used blanket requests more frequently than other types, for their restricted language ability did not allow them to convey their intentions and concerns properly.

In 1997, Storch and Tapper conducted some research at the same university; however, in their study, the participants involved the Non-Native (NNS) and Native Speakers (NS) of English studying at various faculties. The students were supposed to write an argumentative research paper comprising 1500-2000 words and annotate their comments either on the essay drafts or an annotation sheet. Additionally, writing conferences were held between the students and teachers to give feedback to the students. As the provision of annotations was completely voluntary, the 10 NSs gave 75 annotations while the 15 NNSs gave 121 annotations. On the whole, most of the positive comments given by the NSs focused mainly on the content, while the majority of NSSs’ comments were concerned with the structure and subsequently content. Furthermore, it was uncovered that significant differences existed in the students’ concerns which raised interesting points regarding the association of self-assessment in writing and language proficiency.

Alternatively, the Spanish researchers Menárguez Sarabia et al. (2012) did a research study in which the annotations done by the two groups of EFL secondary school students with dissimilar proficiency levels were analyzed and compared. The participants were taught to annotate any doubts or problems they had before, during, or after writing the texts. All instances of annotations were examined in the written drafts; subsequently, they were counted for each student. The results of the study revealed that requests for translation were the basic annotation used. While the focus of the majority of the students’ annotations was on lexis and syntax, the more proficient students paid more attention to the discourse and organization of the text.

In an attempt to promote the students’ grammar in writing, Khoeriyah et al. (2018) implemented the self-monitoring technique through action research on 30 Indonesian high school students. Using tests, course observation, and interviews to collected data, the self-monitoring technique was incorporated through planning, acting, observing, and reflecting stages. The findings revealed that the students’ grammar and writing in general improved, and that the students became autonomous. To explore the learners’ perceptions about the use of the self-monitoring technique, Weerathai (2019) involved 30 Thai undergraduate university students doing English for International Communication. Using a questionnaire and semi-structured interviews, the study evinced that the learners had a positive perception as this technique assisted them in learning through a social process and promoting their critical thinking ability. However, the researchers found the learners’ lack of familiarity with various components of the writing skill and writing process, low self-efficacy in writing, and failure in interacting with peers owing to their low-intermediate proficiency level as the main challenges in the utilization of this technique.

A recent study by Nückles et al. (2020) highlighted the self-regulation perspective in writing-to-learn and found that journal writing as a writing task would optimize the cognitive load and enhance the learning outcome. Overall, self-monitoring as a technique in writing instruction is worthy of special attention since it provides “self-direction, sense of learner choice of learning focus, and acceptance of responsibility” (Dickinson, as cited in Cresswell, 2000, p. 235).Students’ use of self-monitoring can also assist teachers in using “more open-ended self-assessment forms, journal entries with prompts, and double-entry writing logs which record both learning events and reflective moments simultaneously” (Lam, 2018, p. 27).

Methodology

Participants

The participants in this research were drawn from a total population of 80 Iranian undergraduate English learners taking an essay writing course at a state university. To homogenize the learners and ensure that they were at the intermediate level, an expired version of TOEFL PBT test (Educational Testing Service, 2003) was administered at the outset of the study. Based on the results, those learners whose mean scores were within the range of one standard deviation above and one standard deviation below the mean were opted, and the remaining students, considered as the outliers, were excluded from the study. In total, 60 participants were found eligible. The final sample was a group of 60 female and male students, aged between 20 and 28, who were selected and randomly categorized into the control (N= 30) and experimental (N= 30) groups. As for the qualitative phase of the study, five EFL learners who had participated in the experimental group were selected through convenience sampling and requested to respond to an open-ended questionnaire.

Instrumentation

The instruments employed and the way they were used in the process of data collection are delineated in what follows.

TOEFL PBT Test

To ensure the homogeneity of the participants’ proficiency level in this research study, a retired version of the TOEFL PBT test (Educational Testing Service, 2003) was administered at the initial stage of this study. Owing to the time restriction, lack of cooperation, and focus of the study, only two sections of the TOEFL PBT test, including reading and structure and written expressions, were administered. The reading comprehension section consisted of 50 items, organized into five passages, each being accompanied by several multiple-choice questions. In this section, the students were asked to select the best possible answer out of a set of options. The next section dealt with the structure and written expressions. Questions 1-15 were incomplete sentences, and the participants were asked to choose among the four options one word or phrase that best completed the sentence. In addition, from questions 16 to 40, each sentence had four underlined words or phrases. The students were asked to specify the one underlined word or phrase that had to be altered for the sentence to be correct. To ensure the reliability of the test administered, Cronbach’s alpha was calculated which revealed a high level of internal consistency (alpha= 0.83).

Writing Test

Before commencing the experiment, as one of the pre-tests, all the participants of the two groups were presented with a topic selected from those used in the International English Testing System exam (IELTS) general writing test task two (Cambridge ESOL, 2013) in which the students were given a point of view, an argument, or a problem, and they were supposed to compose a short essay entailing a minimum of 250 words within 30-40 minutes. The publicly accessible IELTS rating scale for writing was used to rate the students’ essays based on their scores from 1-9 on different aspects of writing such as task achievement, grammatical range and accuracy, lexical resources, and coherence and cohesion. To control for rater bias, the students’ essays were rated by another trained teacher, and the inter-rater reliability was measured to ensure the degree of agreement between the raters. To compute the level of agreement between the two raters, inter-rater reliability was measured for the writings of both groups in the pre-test and post-test phase employing Pearson correlation. Since all the coefficients were above 0.8, there was a very high level of agreement between the two raters.

When the treatment was finished as a post-test, the students of both groups were required to compose two other essays, one on the same topic which had been written in the pre-test and one on a different topic as the post-test using an expired version of the IELTS general writing test (Cambridge ESOL, 2009). The purpose behind such a second administration was to ensure that the tests were at the same difficulty level. The scoring process was also the same as the pre-test writing and the inter-rater reliability was measured as well (See below for details).

Self-Monitoring Questionnaire

A 50-item questionnaire in the form of a 5-point Likert scale was administered to both groups at the outset and end of the experiment as the other pre-test and post-test. The questionnaire started with demographic questions about the participants’ name, age, nationality, and their level of education followed by 50 statements on the self-monitoring technique with response options ranging from never to always. It should be mentioned that the questionnaire was adapted from Storch and Tapper (1996) and modified based on the context of the study. Subsequently, a group of 40 participants were selected in order to obtain the reliability of the questionnaire. Moreover, to ascertain its validity, 150 students with similar characteristics and language proficiency levels to the target sample participated in the study.

To measure the reliability of the self-monitoring questionnaire, Cronbach’s alpha as a measure of internal consistency of the test was calculated. The results indicated that the questionnaire had a high internal consistency (alpha = 0.87). Moreover, to examine the construct validity of the self-monitoring questionnaire, the principal component analysis (PCA), as a variant of factor analysis, was run to explore the underlying construct of the questionnaire. The PCA was conducted with orthogonal rotation (varimax) on the 50 items marked by 150 participants. The first PCA output is the Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin measure on the sampling adequacy for the analysis (KMO = 0.644), which is acceptable according to Field (2005). Furthermore, Bartlett’s test of sphericity [χ2(1225) = 2276.84, p< .001] was found significant indicating large enough correlations between the items for PCA; therefore, this sample can be considered adequate for running PCA. The scree plot was also checked, revealing that the questionnaire is a three-dimensional scale (tapping the three dimensions of the construct of the self-monitoring technique; the learners’ annotations, teacher’s response, and learner’s self-monitoring and evaluation). According to the total variance explained, the three main factors alone explain 23.67% of the variance, and the Rotated Component Matrix, it can be concluded that this questionnaire is of three dimensions.

Open-Ended Questionnaire

In order to gain in-depth information about the advantages and disadvantages of employing self-monitoring technique, an open-ended questionnaire, including 12 structured questions, was implemented (Appendix 1). To this end, five participants of the experimental group were requested to answer the questions which revolved around the use of self-monitoring technique in the writing class. The aim was to elicit the students’ opinion about the benefits and drawbacks of using this technique to develop writing.

Data Collection Procedure

To gather the data in this study, the pilot-testing, homogenizing the participants, administrating the writing tests along with the self-monitoring questionnaire as the pre-test and post-test, and treatment procedures were employed. The following sections contain the details on how the data were collected and prepared for analysis.

Before the initiation of the study, the self-monitoring questionnaire, which was developed and modified based on the previous studies, was piloted so as to ensure the reliability and validity of the questionnaire. To do so, 150 students with similar proficiency levels and characteristics to the final participants participated in the pilot testing. To measure the reliability of the questionnaire, a group of 40 students were picked through convenience sampling. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient reported for the questionnaire was .87, revealing that there was high internal consistency among the questionnaire items. In addition, the collected data from a group of 150 students were analyzed to ensure validity. To examine the construct validity of the self-monitoring questionnaire, Principal Component Analysis (PCA), as a variant of factor analysis, was run. According to the total variance explained, the three main factors alone account for 67.23 % of the variance. In general, it seems that this questionnaire is a three-dimensional scale tapping three dimensions of the construct of the self-monitoring technique.

To confirm the homogeneity of the participants in both groups, an expired version of TOEFL PBT test (ETS, 2003) was administered to 80 students. To determine the degree of homogeneity and normality of distribution of scores within the participants, the mean and standard deviation of their score on the test were calculated, and those whose scores fell between the mean and one standard deviation above and one standard deviation below the mean were selected as the target sample which included 60 students.

In the first session of the experiment, all the participants in both groups were required to compose an essay entailing 200-250 words on a pre-specified topic selected from the IELTS general writing test tasks (Cambridge ESOL, 2013). Using the IELTS writing marking scheme, the researchers and another trained teacher who were all IELTS instructors and experts in the field of Applied Linguistics, marked the participants’ writings and the inter-rater reliability was measured to ensure the consistency of the markings. Additionally, the self-monitoring questionnaire was administered in the first week of the course. Both groups were given a 50-item questionnaire in the form of five-point Likert scale, together with the demographic questions about the participants’ name, age, gender, nationality as well as their education level. The questions were designed to uncover the students’ perceptions regarding the use of the self-monitoring technique in the L2 writing class.

After the pre-tests, the treatment was implemented. For the treatment, the experimental group was presented with the principles of how to write an essay, and some basic points about the features and components of essay writing. In addition, the instructor explained in detail how the learners could take advantage of the annotation technique in the first draft of their writing. They were supposed to plan and develop their essays in 30 minutes, and another 10 minutes were considered for typing, editing, revising, and proofreading. The instructor asked the learners to write an essay and annotate on their problematic areas, as an assignment, and the teacher responded to the students’ questions and concerns written in the margin of their essays. A sample of a learner’s essay annotation along with the teacher’s response is presented in Appendix 2. Moreover, the teacher gave explicit direct feedback focusing on the areas which needed correction. As Bitchener et al. (2005) have stated, explicit direct feedback refers to the time when an error is explicitly referred to, and the learner pays attention to the errors and the correct forms.

Afterward, the essays were given back to the students to be revised. They were expected to cover all the points mentioned by the teacher as feedback or response in the revised version of their writing. Regarding some of the essays, this sequence was repeated until the teacher ensured that the students’ problems were resolved. Moreover, they were supposed to write and keep a record of the points and the teacher’s response in a notebook, so that they could use them as a reference in their subsequent writing. The teacher also discussed and modeled the learners’ self-monitoring and error correction strategies in the class to show them how to better assess and provide appropriate feedback on their own writings. This process of planning, drafting, annotating, responding, and revising continued until the end of the course as the learners were expected to write at least eight essays.

There was no training on the self-monitoring technique for the control group. While the control group members were required to write eight essays during the course, none of them were explicitly told to monitor their writing through annotating in their essays. Instead, they were provided with the conventional writing instruction in which the students wrote the essays and they only received explicit and direct feedback on their writing. The students practiced some writing samples and models and were directed by the teacher. In particular, the instructor provided them with written feedback and explicitly asked them to concentrate on various aspects of language forms in their writing, such as the syntactic structures, choice of vocabulary, organization, and mechanics.

After the completion of the treatment period, the participants were given a post-test, in which they were supposed to compose two essays, one on the same topic which had been written in the pre-test, and another on a different topic, selected from the IELTS General Writing Test Task two. The post-test essays were also marked by two raters. The two raters scored the participants’ writings based on the IELTS rating scale. To determine consistency between the raters, the inter-rater reliability of the two raters was measured, employing Pearson correlation and Spearman rho, as was done in the pre-test. Since all the coefficients were above 0.8, the two raters had a high level of agreement in rating the learners’ writing performance.

At the end of the course, both groups were required to respond to the self-monitoring questionnaire once more to check whether or not any difference existed between the two groups in their perceptions of using the self-monitoring technique in the L2 writing class. In the last stage, some of the participants in the experimental group were asked to respond to the open-ended questionnaire and express their views regarding the benefits and challenges of using the self-monitoring technique to improve their writing.

Results

Difference in the effects of self-monitoring technique compared to conventional writing technique on EFL learners’ writing performance

IELTS writing tests were administered to the participants of both groups at the pre-test and post-test stages. Table 1 indicates the descriptive statistics pertaining to the two groups’ pre-test and post-test writing scores. This table reveals the mean scores, standard deviation, and standard error of the mean in both groups.

Table 1: Descriptive statistics of the groups’ pre-test and post-test writing scores

As presented in Table 1, the experimental and control group’s mean scores which were 5.27 and 5.37 respectively in the pre-test changed to 5.77 and 5.37 in the post-test. The experimental group outperformed the control group in their writing scores. To respond to the first research question, the post-tests of both groups concerning their writing performance were compared. To this end, the Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) was employed, which considers the pre-test differences between the two groups.

Table 2 indicates the findings relating to the main ANCOVA and the check on the homogeneity assumption of regression slopes. The first row reveals that the homogeneity assumption of regression slopes is met; Interaction F (1,57) = .70, p > .05. The second row uncovers the divergence of the groups on the pre-test; Pre-test effect F (1,57) = 22.60, p < .05, and the last row shows the significant difference of the two groups on the post-test; Group F (1,57) = 32.10, p < .05, eta squared = .36 medium to large effect size. The descriptive statistics (Table 3) results demonstrate that the experimental group (mean= 5.80, SE= 0.55) achieved a higher post-test mean score on the writing test than the control group (M= 5.35, SE= 0.55). In other words, the null hypothesis associated with the first research question was rejected.

Table 2: Tests of between-subjects effects for writing test

Table 3: Adjusted means after controlling the covariate (Writing Pre-test) 

Hence, it was confirmed that there was a statistically significant difference between the effect of self-monitoring technique, compared to conventional writing technique on the Iranian EFL learners’ writing performance.

Difference in the perception of the Students using self-monitoring technique and those taking advantage of conventional writing classesm

The second question of the research called for the examination of the differences between the experimental and control group in their perceptions of the self-monitoring technique. The descriptive statistics of the groups’ pre-test and post-test scores is presented in Table 4.

Table 4: Descriptive statistics of questionnaire pre-test and post-test scores

According to Table 4, the experimental and control group’s mean scores in the pre-test were 182.53 and 176.73 respectively, which changed to 195.50 and 179.40 in the post-test. Apparently, the experimental group had a higher perception of the self-monitoring technique compared with the control group in terms of the questionnaire scores. Similarly, to respond to the second research question, the posttests of both groups regarding the self-monitoring perception were compared via the ANCOVA procedure.

Table 5 reveals the findings regarding the main ANCOVA and homogeneity assumption check of regression slopes. According to the first row, the homogeneity assumption of regression slopes is not met; Interaction F (1,57) = 4.58, p < .05; however, ANCOVA is considered robust when group sizes are equal. According to the second row, the groups were indeed different on the pretest; Pretest effect F (1,57) = 12.415, p < .05. Moreover, according to the last row, the groups were significantly different on the posttest; Group F (1,57) = 6.10, p < .05, eta squared = .09 small effect size. Likewise, the descriptive statistics (Table 6) findings uncovered that the self-monitoring group enjoyed a higher posttest mean score on the self-monitoring perception (Mean= 194.03, SE= 3.74) than the control group (Mean= 180.87, SE= 3.74). In other words, the null hypothesis related to the second research question was rejected.

Table 5: Tests of between-subjects effects for self-monitoring tests

Table 6: Adjusted means after controlling the covariate (Self-Monitoring Pre-test) 

Thus, it was shown that a statistically significant difference existed between the perception of the students using self-monitoring technique and those taking advantage of conventional writing classes.

EFL Students’ Perceptions Toward the Merits and Demerits of Using the Self-Monitoring Technique to Promote Writing Performance

The qualitative data of the study were obtained from the experimental group's responses to an open-ended questionnaire, revealing the advantages and disadvantages of the self-monitoring technique from the participants’ perspectives. The learners’ responses were analyzed using both content and thematic analysis, and the frequency and percentage of the learners’ responses to the items were calculated (Appendix 1). In particular, inductive data analysis has been used for coding the participants’ responses to the open-ended questionnaire items and extracting the themes. The following themes were extracted from their responses.

Theme 1: Engagement in annotation as part of the writing course requirement

The majority of the participants had the experience of being engaged in annotation as part of the writing requirement. But among them, there were few students who had difficulty engaging in it. In this regard, one learner stated that “I have engaged in it before, but the problem was in my inability to express my concerns by annotation” (Participant 2).

Theme 2: Opinion about the use of annotation technique in writing classes

Regarding the employment of annotation techniques in writing class, one learner mentioned that “I use them when writing in the margin about the points I was doubtful” (Participant 5). Another learner stated that “we use the techniques on what we weren’t sure about their correctness while writing” (Participant 3). The majority of the participants believed that the annotation technique was beneficial for them. But, one of the learners mentioned that “it was beneficial, but one semester wasn’t enough for me to get used to using this technique” (Participant 5).

Theme 3: The usefulness of the technique for helping one in fixing essay content and organization of the ideas

All the participants in the experimental group stated that this technique has helped them in fixing their essay content and organization of the ideas. One of the participants claimed that “this technique has assisted me in better identifying and presenting my ideas. Even, I have become more conscientious about how I can develop my ideas using the right structure and lexical items” (Participant 4).

Theme 4: The use of annotation in correcting language mistakes in essays

More than half of the participants believed that the employment of annotation helped them in correcting the language mistakes in their essays. In this regard, one learner pointed out that “I have received a lot of fruitful feedback for most of my annotations, and they have helped me so much in correcting my mistakes and resolving my writing problems” (Participant 1).

Theme 5: The writing aspects (content, grammar, vocabulary, organization of the writing, generation of idea) for which the use of annotation technique is most helpful

Learners had different perspectives regarding the effectiveness of this techniques in various dimensions of writing. Among them, one believed that “annotations can help students improve the content and the organization of their essays” (Participant 4). Another participant found annotations mostly useful “in dealing with punctuation problems, having variations in the use of vocabulary (avoiding repetition of the same clauses/phrases), and ensuring about the use of the right grammatical structure” (Participant 1). The other stated that “it is most helpful for grammar and collocations, because they are the first things to come to one’s attention when one is writhing” (Participant 2).

Theme 6: Annotation as a successful revision technique

The majority of the learners regarded annotation as a successful technique for reviewing one’s writings, although one learner stated that, “its success depends on the learners’ level of proficiency” (Participant 3).

Theme 7: Aspects of annotation which are difficult for the learners

More than half of the students mentioned that they have had no difficulty in any aspects of annotation. However, one learner mentioned that “I don’t feel the need to use annotations”

Theme 8: The reasons why some students are reluctant to make annotations in their writing

Regarding this theme, one participant mentioned that “students are not used to the technique and they may not know how to use proper annotations” (Participant 5). Another participant stated that “students may think of this technique to be time-consuming and they do not know of the benefits (Participant 3), and another one stated that “I have difficulty in expressing my problems through annotations” (Participant 2); that they may have by using annotations” (Participant 3). Last but not the least, as mentioned by Participant 2, "students may have difficulty in expressing their problems".

Theme 9: The effect of annotation technique on students' motivation to receive the teacher’s feedback

The majority of the participants believed that by the use of the annotation technique, the students would become more motivated to receive the teacher’s feedback. Nonetheless, one participant believed that “some students may feel like these annotations are a threat to their reputation or the teacher uses annotations in order to grade them” (Participant 4).

Theme 10: The ways the instructor can motivate students to take annotations seriously

The majority of the students contended that by providing abundant feedback and by paying attention to the details of annotation, the instructors can motivate students to take annotations more seriously. One of the participant’s concerns was that "it needs time for the learners to get used to employing this technique in their writing" (Participant 1).

Theme 11: The ways annotation forms can be improved

The last theme, extracted from the qualitative data, revealed that by teaching annotations to students and showing a variety of effective and ineffective annotations to them, annotation forms and strategies can be improved. Particularly, one learner mentioned that "by using computer technology and different platforms, novel annotation forms can be practiced and enhanced" (Participant 4).

All in all, the results of the analysis showed that most of the learners regarded the use of the self-monitoring technique as a beneficial method for promoting their writing performance and abilities. They had a good perception of the various uses they could make of the self-monitoring technique and found its advantages outweighed its disadvantages. However, they were of the conviction that in using this technique, awareness, purpose, and forms of annotations should be considered.

Discussion

The present research attempted to investigate if there was a significant difference between the effect of the self-monitoring technique in comparison with the conventional writing technique on Iranian EFL learners’ writing performance. Moreover, the perceptions of EFL learners using the self-monitoring technique were compared with those experiencing the conventional writing course in terms of self-monitoring. The final objective of this study was to explore the participants’ views regarding the benefits and challenges of using the self-monitoring technique to enhance their writing performance. The results of this study are discussed hereunder.

Regarding the results reported from the learners’ writing pre-test and post-test analysis and the comparison of the groups’ means scores, it was revealed that a statistically significant difference existed between the two groups concerning their writing performance. Put it in another way, a possible conclusion is that the use of self-monitoring technique has had a great impact on the learners’ writing performance. The finding is consistent with that of Xiang (2004), who found the use of self-monitoring technique beneficial for learners. However, Xiang concluded that this technique was mostly useful for the high achievers. Moreover, the results of the study corroborated the ideas of Charles (1990) who initially introduced the self-monitoring technique and suggested that this technique has great advantages and benefits for both learners and teachers. A possible explanation for this is that convenient feedback affects the written accuracy and performance of learners (Bitchener & Ferris, 2012).

This finding further concurs with Yeh et al.’s (2014) study which revealed that a web-based error correction practice mechanism (being attached to an online annotation system) positively affected error correction performance and written accuracy of students during the process of peer feedback. Similarly, using an online annotator for EFL Writing, Yeh and Lo (2009) demonstrated the outperformance of the participants in the experimental group in monitoring and recognizing the writing errors. Even in learning paragraph structures and elements (topic sentence, controlling idea, or supporting details), Lo et al. (2013) found the positive effects of paragraph annotator on EFL learners’ reading comprehension. Likewise, Winfield (2010) found the effectiveness of a self-monitoring technique in promoting the production of academic skill in reading fluency.

Nevertheless, the outcomes of the present research are in contrast with the findings of Sadeghi and Doulati’s (2012) study, which investigated the impact of self-monitoring technique in conjunction with group as well as pair peer feedback on the writing development of Iranian EFL learners. Such inconsistency might be due to the difference between the learners’ proficiency level in these two studies. The participants in Sadeghi and Doulati’s study were the low proficient learners, whereas in the current study, the participants involved were intermediate level EFL undergraduate students. Sadeghi and Doulati (2012) admitted that the learners’ difficulties in identifying their mistakes and using correct grammar to indicate their problems in their annotations, as well as limited number of treatment sessions were the factors affecting the results of their study. Xiang (2004) and Chen (2009) have also found that students at high-proficiency levels take more advantage of the self-monitoring strategy.

With respect to the second research question, a statistically significant difference was found between the two groups regarding their perception of using the self-monitoring technique, before and after the treatment. Although most of the studies on the use of the self-monitoring technique and its effectiveness have revolved around gaining insight into the learners’ perceptions and attitudes toward this technique, they all concluded that the learners valued this technique and had a positive view toward employing it in the writing instruction (Chen, 2009; Cheong, 1994; Cresswell, 2000; Storch & Tapper, 1996; Xiang, 2004). For instance, the obtained result is in accord with the study by Xiang (2004), which showed that the students found the self-monitoring technique to be effective for revising their drafts and enhancing their writing proficiency. In Xiang’s study, the students also declared that they were more willing to receive the teacher’s feedback on their annotations.

Moreover, Sarabia et al. (2012) examined the students’ views regarding the effectiveness of this technique by administrating a questionnaire and concluded that the learners considered this technique beneficial. In another study conducted by Storch and Tapper (1996), the majority of the learners favored using the annotation technique and they declared that the technique provided an opportunity for them to find answers to their concerns and questions. In addition, this finding corroborates the idea of Cresswell (2000) who concluded that the learners perceived the self-monitoring technique so valuable, for they believed that it gave them a high degree of independence. Moreover, the learners in Cresswell’s study showed their willingness to use this technique in their subsequent writing tasks.

Interestingly, the participants who were involved in Lo et al.’s (2013) study, using an online annotation system, also had positive views regarding the paragraph annotator in terms of its ease of use, usefulness, and intention and attitude to use it. The current study outcomes revealed that the experimental group held higher perception of self-monitoring technique, which means that they came to value the benefits of using this technique in the writing class. In particular, the students felt that they could freely enter a written dialogue with their teacher and let him/her know about their problems in writing. More importantly, the students found this technique beneficial, because the teacher’s feedback directly approached their concerns. As Storch and Tapper (1997) maintained, one of the important features of teacher feedback is the essentiality of addressing “the students’ own perceived strengths and weaknesses” (p. 245).

As for the merits and demerits of self-monitoring technique, most of the participants found this technique beneficial for improving their writing and considered it as a learning tool. However, a few learners believed that this technique has had some disadvantages. For instance, some students were reluctant to employ the self-monitoring technique in their writing because they were not aware of its benefits. Therefore, teachers should highlight the advantages of this technique and encourage the learners to use this method efficiently in their writing.

This finding can be explained based on the students’ preferences for corrective feedback. As the findings of the study by Amrhein and Nassaj (2010) revealed, the students tended to receive the teacher’s explicit and explanatory written corrective feedback on as many errors as possible. Many of the student considered written corrective feedback as a learning tool which should be provided by the knowledgeable teachers as much as possible. Therefore, the students would rather rely on the teacher’s comments, transferring the responsibility of error correction to the teachers, than independently monitoring and correcting their own writing.

Additionally, the finding showed that some of the learners experienced difficulty in expressing their problems in their annotations. This can be another reason why some students were reluctant to make annotations in their writing. This finding may confirm the ideas of Sadeghi and Doulati (2012) who found that some of the students were not able to identify their own writing problems, and even if they were aware of their problems, they did not know how to express them. Hence, the learners’ inability to express their difficulty was another factor influencing the success of the self-monitoring technique. Teachers need to find practical ways to help students at different levels of proficiency express their writing problems. The results also corroborate those of Weerathai (2019) who found the leaners’ low proficiency level and lack of familiarity with various aspects of writing and writing process and low self-efficacy in writing and interacting with peers as the main challenges in the implementation of this technique.

Similarly, the results of the analysis revealed that some of the students viewed the effectiveness of the self-monitoring technique to be dependent on the learners’ level of proficiency. This is one of the issues which other researchers such as Cresswell (2000) and Charles (1990) pointed out. Likewise, Yu and Liu (2021) have underscored the role of feedback literacy in developing academic writing literacy. The students in this study particularly believed that the self-monitoring technique was often useful for the learners at higher levels of proficiency, which can be regarded as another disadvantage of this technique. However, conducting further studies in this area can provide more evidence in this respect.

Furthermore, the students considered the use of self-monitoring technique time-consuming. This result is in line with that of Storch and Tapper (1996) who found the same. Once more, it provides another justification for the students’ unwillingness to make use of the self-monitoring technique in their writing performance; however, finding the correct and appropriate answers which address the students’ problems might be more time-consuming for the learners than writing a note in the margin of their text.

Overall, the research findings showed the usefulness of employing this technique in the writing course. The participants claimed that the learners’ level of proficiency would play an important role in how well they employ the self-monitoring technique in their own writing, and it would influence the way they make use of the annotation technique in terms of its form and content.

Conclusion and Implications

By drawing on these results, it can be concluded that the self-monitoring technique could positively influence the learners’ writing performance and their perception of using the self-monitoring technique in the writing course. The self-monitoring technique, in contrast with the traditional and one-way instructional mode, assists the learners in monitoring their errors and recognizing their problems during the process of writing. This technique helps the learners become the active agents in the dialogue over the text and enables them to control what feedback to receive, what kind of comments they are willing to and are ready to receive, becoming more motivated to employ the teacher’s comments in their own writing (Charles, 1990). Equally important, teachers can develop a more thorough understanding of their students’ writing and the problems they face in the writing process so that they can provide them with more effective feedback, which directs their needs and concerns. It is satisfying when the teachers know that their comments exactly address their learners’ problems to allow them to focus on what is needed to improve their writing skills (Charles, 1990).

Teachers need to encourage and motivate the learners to efficiently use the self-monitoring technique in their writing so that the learners can take an active role in revising their own work. As Chen (2009) believes, this technique “offers a long overdue supplement, not a radical alternative, and achieves a better balance between peer review and teacher response because they combine the writer with the reviser and they provide compensation for the inadequacy of peer response and teacher feedback during the writing process” (p. 116). Hence, it is worthwhile to use this technique in the writing courses.

On the whole, by following the self-monitoring technique and procedure in EFL context, the findings of this study can add to the literature on the teaching of writing. The findings can assist instructors and language researchers in examining and employing miscellaneous types of feedback, e.g., dialogic feedback as a self-monitoring technique, and determining the effectiveness of the feedback model. The use of self-monitoring technique is also beneficial for the learners to express the difficulties and uncertainties they encounter during writing. By adopting this technique, they can easily move forward as they know their teacher is ready to support them in various and important aspects of their writing. Teachers can also make use of the annotation technique especially in the ongoing (formative) and informal (classroom-based) assessment of the learners’ progress. For instance, they can ask the learners to make annotations while performing a task as a marginal or endnote in the areas that need more explanation and support to fairly assess the students’ work. By reflecting on the learners’ annotations, teachers gain knowledge of the learners’ strength and needs, as well as the points which require more focus and practice.

This study focused on the use of self-monitoring as a writing technique by EFL learners at the intermediate level, doing an essay writing course at a state university in Iran. Like all other research studies, some inevitable limitations were imposed to this study. Since during the treatment the learners were required to make annotations in the margin of their writing tasks, they might consider writing annotations as the requirement of the teacher; therefore, they might deliberately focus on some aspects of writing, which were not their main concerns, and they merely wanted to satisfy their teacher. Therefore, the Hawthorne effect, in which the learners change or modify their behavior in response to their teacher’s request, was a limitation of the study. In responding to the questionnaire’s items, the learners’ cognitive and affective factors, as well as their social background, were the other limiting factors, which were out of the researcher’s control.

Since the current research focused on the influence of using the self-monitoring technique on EFL students’ overall writing performance, future experimental investigations are needed to estimate the effect of this technique on the accuracy, lexical richness, complexity, and density of the students’ writing. Additionally, examining the role of individual differences, such as personality factors and different learning strategies in the use of self-monitoring technique in writing classes would be of particular interest.

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