METACOGNITION, SYNTACTIC KNOWLEDGE AND STUDENTS’ SCIENTIFIC WRITING

SKILL OF ENGLISH LITERATURE DEPARTMENT OF PAMULANG UNIVERSITY

Writing is one of the essential skills in learning English. It is the frame work of our communication
as it reflects clarity in one’s thought. Clear and proper language is key to transmitting knowledge and
rendering an impact of the field in written communication. Without clarity, readers will not able to get the
message of the language. In other words, writing is not only used to reinforce repetitions of grammar and
vocabulary in modern English classrooms but rather it is a system of communication.
Learning in higher education involves students to master scientific writing skill as one important
aspects of education. According to Husin and Nurbayani (2017, p. 238), each university students is required
to write a final academic report as it is regulated by the Ministry of Research, Technology and Higher
Education of the Republic of Indonesia. Scientific writing skill is also needed to fulfill any academic
requirements at length such as writing observation report, research report, academic journal and thesis.
Moreover, students may comprehend any literature written broadly in English and can compete with other
students from all over the world in a matter of English writing in academic context. Students who have
scientific writing skill will produce good quality of writing.
In educational community, scientific writing is viewed as an empirical and knowledge based of
writing. Goctu (2017, p. 83) stated that scientific writing is related to both linguistic (vocabulary choice,
grammar used, spelling and style) and communicative (structure, topic and sub-topics, main idea, and
argumentation). It involves the forming of accurate sentences, the coherent structuring of the ideas, and
adopting the appropriate stance for citing previous work on the topic. Hyland (2004, p. 12) mentions several
characteristics that have to remind in making scientific writing. The characteristics are starting good ideas,
having clear sense of purpose, using logical progression of idea, and writing clearly and directly. In
scientific writing, the students are not only write the words in a paragraph, but also emphasize the linguistic
aspects. The skill of scientific writing contributes the quality of the writing. Therefore, most of the students
are known to face problems in developing their writing skills at the university level.
Many EFL learners still face some difficulties to master such skill since there are some differences
between Bahasa and English such as structural and grammatical terms as well as styles. In addition, EFL
students also should work hard on transferring the meaning from Bahasa to English context in order to
make the result of writing understandable and make sense when it is read by people especially native
speakers (Ariyanti, 2016). Many EFL students still cannot express their ideas into good scientific writing
(Anshori, 2004). It is proven by research which shows that the writing quality of students in English
department at IAIN Samarinda is still in average score (Husin and Nurbayani, 2017). Similiarly, the culture
of research or scholarly writing on campus is low considerably. This is evidenced by university students’
low abilities in writing research proposals and reports (Mulyaningsih, et al, 2013). Based on Indonesian
Scientific Journal Database, there are about 13.047 scientific journal in Indonesia that is still available
compared by Malaysia that produces 55.211 scientific journal and Thailand which produces 58.931
scientific journal.
Furthermore, scientific writing is not only requires a more systematic process but also influenced
by several factors. To write academically, students should understand two aspects. At the beginning, they
should understand the steps or process to present the meaning of an idea and the process to communicate
the idea into a writing form. In the process of writing, students’ mind’s eye enables them to write. Students
reach into their series of memories and retrieve experiences to write about. Being able to “see” those
experiences is essential to their ability to recount them through writing and communicate them to readers.
To put in another way, engaging in metacognition is a process that can help students be better writers.
Secondly, they should understand the aspects of writing which generally contain the content, the form, the
vocabulary, the grammar or language use, and the mechanics. One of the important aspect in scientific
writing is syntactic knowledge. Using syntax is not only on how students write and punctuate a sentence,
but also how the sentence is put together and constructed. A grammatically correct sentence is great, but it
is the well-crafted sentence that makes a massive difference to make good quality of scientific writing.
Related to the term of metacognition in writing, there are some fundamental theories that can be
taken as one of the keys to conduct the research. Ozsoy & Ataman (2009, p. 68) stated that “metacognition
means an individual’s knowledge on his own thinking process and his ability to control these process.”
Metacognition can be explained as individuals’ information while they are writing and a deliberate
organization in cognitive processes. It involves individuals’ planning of their information about their own
and others’ cognitive processes before they fulfill their task, observing their thinking, learning and
understanding while performing a task, controlling and regulating their thinking by making arrangements
on site and evaluating after they have completed their task. With this in mind, the students are expected to
understand the knowledge about metacognition and how to improve it. Metacognition is one way of deep
thinking which focus on self-control and self-awareness. The activity of metacognition exists while students
realize to adjust and to manage their thinking strategy in problem solving and shaping goals (Santrock,
2010, p. 340). In other words, when the students realize to shape their goals and how to achieve the goals,
they would have effort to manage their selves, knowledge, and experiences relates to the goals. Moreover,
Miranda (2010, p. 187) states that the learning goals would be qualified when the students realize that they
can control the cognitive process and affect to the development of their metacognition. To put in another
way, the activities such as planning the approach of their assignment, monitoring their understanding, and
evaluating the progress of their learning goals are included in metacognition activities.
As one of the main factors that influence student’s scientific writing skill, metacognition becomes
the essential ability to manage the writing process. Students which give understanding on how the readers
interpret the words on the page can help them communicate more clearly and reach them through the written
language that used to tell the experiences. When students understand that other people experience the mental
process of reading and writing differently than the others do, and when students understand how their own
mental process influences what and how they write, they are going to write in better ways.
The research that was conducted by Negretti (2012, pp. 142-143) shows that theories of
metacognition and self-regulated learning apply to understand how beginning scientific writers develop the
ability to participate in the communicative practices of scientific writing. The data suggest a link between
task perception and students’ conditional metacognition—their understanding of how to adapt writing
strategies to specific rhetorical requirements of the task and why—and performance evaluation.
Metacognition also seems to have a reciprocal relationship with self-regulation and students’ development
of individual writing approaches. The ability to control their cognitive is useful to succeed in scientific
writing. It is also supported by the statement that metacognition can be understood as how learners think
about thinking (King, 2004). When it comes to writing specifically, metacognition deals with how students
understand their own writing processes, and how they adapt their processes to evolving demands.
Similarly, Pitenoee, (2017, pp. 594-600) conducted experimental investigation to explore how the
metacognitive strategies can affect the content of EFL intermediate learners’ writing. The comparison of
the post-test scores of the experimental groups revealed that there was significant difference between the
performances of the two groups, holding that there was no significant difference between the performances
of the two groups in the pretest. That is, metacognitive writing strategies led to a higher level of writing
content, although the two techniques were equally effective in improving the EFL learners' writing
performance (Pitenoee, 2017, p. 599). The result found that metacognitive strategies implicates to the
content of students’ writing. With this in mind, it is also known that there are some aspects of linguistics
that is important in this process especially in scientific writing.
The quality of a word’s representations is composed of multiple linguistic factors, such as
morphology, syntax, and meaning. A great deal of empirical research also has found that specific language
skills such as morphological awareness, syntactic knowledge, and vocabulary knowledge were all important
in predicting students’ writing skill. Syntax is the part of grammar that governs the structure and elements
of a sentence. It is made up of all the rules in grammar that apply to the formation of a sentence and the
positioning of its elements. For instance, syntax describes which elements there may be or need to be in a
particular type of sentence and where the elements, particularly the verb, are to be placed. It is the way in
which words and phrases are put together. The fact that certain syntactic structures are acquired and
considered to be more difficult than others suggests that scientific writing skill might be affected by these
differences in structural complexity. In scientific writing, students not only produce paragraph toward a
topic, but also engage in a neutral writing rather than a subjective (or personal) dialog with the reader. The
audience is assumed to be a general unknown reader who does not necessarily have an in-depth knowledge
of the topic. Therefore, all information must be clearly explained so that a general reader can follow it.
Sentence structure within a sentence can impact the quality of scientific writing.
Prescriptive grammar involves a set of rules that speculate the way in which language should be
written and punctuated to follow agreed conventions. In a sense, grammar does not add enhanced meaning
to the sentences. It simply prescribes the form that should be used. Syntax is concerned with how a sentence
is worded and structured and involves the type of sentence used, the order in which the words appear, and
the length of the sentence. Chomsky (2002, p. 11) states syntactic knowledge can be viewed as a device of
some sort for producing the sentences of the language under analysis. In EFL context, syntax is considered
to be milestones in the language development of students, specifically coordination and subordination.
Vappingo (2018) states that there is a distinct difference between writing that is grammatically correct and
writing that is interesting to read. Syntax adds meaning and vibrancy to the sentences, where grammar
simply ensures that the rules of language are followed within that sentence.
Other works such as Morvay (2011), Yu Chen (2014), and Guo, et all (2011) investigate syntactic
knowledge and its relation to the language skill. Morvay (2011, p. 430) examines the contribution of
syntactic knowledge to second language students’ reading comprehension. The result found that first
syntactic abilities have some effects, while syntactic abilities in second language have a much stronger
effect on second language reading comprehension. On the other hand, Yu Chen (2014) studies the impact
of vocabulary and syntactic knowledge on reading comprehension. The findings of the study lead to the
conclusion that syntactic knowledge is as important as vocabulary knowledge on second language reading
comprehension. Thus, Guo, et al, (2011) examines the structural relationships among vocabulary
knowledge, morphological awareness, syntactic awareness, and reading comprehension in English-
speaking adults. Notwithstanding the limitations of the topic that are discussed, it is necessary to study
syntactic knowledge relates to the other language skill.
In spite of the significance and the connection among the variables to scientific writing skill, some
problems are considered to be the fundamental aspects for conducting further research. First, scientific
writing test is considered as one of the indicators of students’ foreign language skill. Scientific writing is
taught as one of lecture in English literature department. After the students got syntax lecture in fifth
semester, they have scientific writing lecture in the sixth semester. Scientific writing is considered as one
of the difficult lecture in the sixth semester. The syllabus of scientific writing in English literature
department in Pamulang University considered scientific essay as the final examination of the lecture. The
students are expected to have scientific writing skill for gaining the writing ability to write scientific paper
such as an essay. The goal of the lecture is to make students understand the concept of scientific writing
theoretically and how to write scientific essay comprehensively. In contrast, most of the students are still
low in their writing skill. It is seemed that they did some mistakes related to vocabulary choice, grammar
used, and spelling. They are still find problems to develop paragraph correctly based on the concept of
scientific writing. They are also difficult to combine the sentence comprehensibly. Second, some theories
support the relationship among scientific writing skill and metacognition. Since the process of writing
involves metacognition activities as it proven by some theories which has been elaborated above. In other
words, metacognition is one of factors that may affect scientific writing skill. Therefore, most of the
students in Pamulang University are still not aware with their knowledge concerning their own process.
They have little knowledge about metacognition and how to improve it. Based on the pre interview to the
lecturer, the problems appear when the students are difficult to focus manage their selves, knowledge and
experience while doing their work that result they hard to involve optimum metacognition to achieve
learning goal. Thus, syntactic knowledge is one of linguistic aspect that necessary for measuring writing
skill. However, it rarely exposed by the students. Syntactic structured are considered to make good quality
of scientific writing. The studies that relates syntactic knowledge and language skill such as reading skill
and listening skill are discussed. Therefore, a little number of research that focus on scientific writing and
its relationship to syntactic knowledge.
Based on the problems stated above, the researcher seeks to conduct further study that investigate
metacognition, syntactic knowledge and scientific writing skill in particular point of view. The study
involves the students of Pamulang University by using correlational method in order to know the
relationship among those variables. So, this research choose the metacognition, syntactic knowledge and
scientific writing skill as the variables that assumed to have relationship each other.