A cross-linguistic approach to investigating metacognitive regulation in writing among Chinese EFL learners: Insights for its trait/state distinction

Metacognitive regulation refers to learners’ ability to use a repertoire of metacognitive strategies to guide, observe, and manage thoughts, actions, and emotions in learning activities. It has been widely acknowledged as a significant predictor of language learning success, including writing. However, this line of research has been conducted in a single language context, and the interactions across L1 and L2 contexts have received insufficient scholarly attention. Situated in mainland China, we raise an innovative attempt to investigate metacognitive strategies in writing with a cross-linguistic approach, thus illuminating the conceptualization of metacognitive regulation by testing its trait/state distinction. A group of 502 university students from different disciplinary majors were recruited to report their metacognitive strategy use in L1 and L2 task-situated writing by filling in the assigned post-task questionnaires. Multigroup confirmatory factor analysis (MGCFA) on the two questionnaire datasets provided empirical evidence for the cross-language generalizability of metacognitive regulation in writing with the identified measurement invariance of the factor structure between L1 and L2 contexts, indicating its trait facet. However, the latent mean comparison results revealed that the actual usage frequency of metacognitive strategies scored significantly higher in L1 writing than in L2 writing, suggesting the state facet. These results are discussed extensively in this study to inform relevant theories and pedagogical activities.