Metacognitive Strategy Use and Academic Writing Effectiveness: A Case Study of UNTAN Students

Abstract

Academic writing is a critical competency in higher education, yet many university students struggle to produce coherent and academically rigorous written work. This challenge is particularly pronounced in Indonesian higher education, where metacognitive writing strategy instruction remains empirically underexplored. This study aimed to analyze the use of metacognitive strategies among university students and examine their relationship with academic writing effectiveness in the Indonesian Language General Compulsory Course (MKWK Bahasa Indonesia) at Tanjungpura University (UNTAN), Indonesia. Deploying a quantitative survey design, data were gathered from a heterogeneous sample of undergraduate students across multiple faculties, including Law, Early Childhood Teacher Education (PAUD), Guidance and Counseling (BK), and Agriculture. Metacognitive strategies were operationalized through planning, monitoring, and evaluation components, while writing effectiveness was measured across five dimensions: structure, coherence, language accuracy, argumentative strength, and reference completeness. Data were analyzed using non-parametric statistics via Spearman's rank correlation. Results indicated that students'reported metacognitive strategy usage was at a moderate level, with mean scores surpassing the theoretical midpoint. A significant and strong positive correlation was found between metacognitive strategy use and self-perceived academic writing effectiveness (r= 0.7551, p< 0.000001). Descriptively, planning and monitoring dimensions displayed a stronger association with writing quality compared to the evaluation phase. The simple linear regression model revealed that metacognitive strategies shared 61.79% of the variance with perceived writing effectiveness, leaving the remaining variance linked to unmeasured individual and environmental factors. These findings suggest that the strategic integration of metacognitive scaffolding into writing curricula is highly relevant for fostering scholarly writing competence within linguistically and academically diverse higher education contexts.