Metacognitive Strategies in Academic Writing

Among all the learning strategies, metacognitive strategy is a higher-order executive skill which entailsplanning, monitoring and evaluating. Once learners have a good command of a metacognitive strategy, they willbecome more independent and autonomous and will be more capable of planning, monitoring and evaluatingtheir learning process and thus become efficient learners. This research aims to investigate whether freshmenstudents at the Faculty of Computer Technologies and Engineering at International Black Sea University (Tbilisi,Georgia) use metacognitive learning strategies (MLS) in their academic writing and they are aware of them; also,to find out whether their lecturers provide the development of MLSs in the classroom. In a class there were 20students, however, just 15 volunteered to respond the interview questions. The findings showed that less thanhalf of the participants used and were aware of metacognitive learning strategies. Although teachers mentionedsuch strategies during the classes, less than half of the 15 respondents used them or were aware of them. Thispaper, therefore, intends to introduce metacognitive instruction in order to raise EFL writing instructors’awareness in teaching and in order to train students to become self-regulated learners.

The Taxonomy of Visual Aesthetic Preferences: An Empirical Study

Earlier work has suggested the existence of two major dimensions of aesthetic preference judgments: 1) A general factor of “good taste,” and 2) a bipolar factor based on a preference for simplicity as opposed to complexity. Two tests measuring these two factors were administered to an artistic and a control group, and a zero correlation was predicted for both. In addition, the effects of artistic training were studied for the artistic group. Finally, ratings for aesthetic sensitivity and executive skill for members of the artistic group were correlated with the two tests. The tests, as predicted, were not correlated. Artistic training had a small but significant effect. The tests were not correlated with the ratings of aesthetic sensitivity and executive ability in drawing skill.