Metacognition in Writing

This chapter discusses people’s abilities to think about their own mental activities. Much of the research on metacognition has focused on metacognitive knowledge. People demonstrate metacognitive knowledge when they can accurately describe their own cognitive processes. To understand metacognition fully, one also needs to attend to what is called metacognitive skill, that is, to people’s ability to exercise deliberate control over their own cognitive activities. It is clear, though, that the contrast between what children do when they are asked to write well and what they do when they are asked to write badly is a very sensible and appropriate measure of deliberate metacognitive control of writing skills. The idea of metacognitive skill is a very important one, not just in the primary grades but for adult writers as well. In the late 70’s, the plain speech movement operated on the assumption that good writing is writing that conveys its message as simply as possible.