The Effect of Explicit Teaching of Concept Mapping in Expository Writing on EFL Students’ Self-regulation

The present paper investigated the effectiveness of concept mapping as a learning strategy on EFL students’ self-regulation (metacognitive self-regulation, time and study environment, effort regulation, peer learning, and help seeking). Sixty university students participated in the study. They were randomly assigned to control and experimental groups, each including thirty students. They were at the intermediate level of English proficiency and studying English either Translation or Literature. Their language proficiency was determined by the Michigan Test of English Language Proficiency (MTELP) (Corrigan, 1979). The instrument to collect data on the students’ self-regulation was the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) (Printrich et al., 1991). The findings revealed that students gained higher self-regulation in writing tasks as the result of the explicit instruction of the concept mapping strategy. The findings have implications for pedagogy as well as for research.