Metacognitive writing strategies, critical thinking skills, and academic writing performance: A structural equation modeling approach

The present study adopted the structural equation modeling approach to examine Chinese university students’ metacognition, critical thinking skills, and academic writing. In par- ticular, this research explored whether awareness in metacognition can foster critical think- ing and, thus, lead to enhancement in academic writing. The measure for exploring meta- cognitive writing strategies covered metacognitive knowledge and regulation in academic writing. The measure for understanding learners’ critical thinking encompassed the follow- ing five skills: inference, recognition of assumptions, deduction, interpretations, and evalu- ation of arguments. The academic writing assessment was based on an internal test. The participants consisted of 644 third-year students from a Chinese university. Three models tested: (1) the role of metacognition in academic writing; (2) the role of metacognition in critical thinking; and (3) correlations between metacognition, critical thinking skills, and academic writing. The results indicated significant relationships between the three vari- ables, and the implications based on these findings were discussed.