Exploring the Relationship of All Strategies in Writing

Writing skills are vital in higher education for preparing students for the professional world. Although writing is a challenging task that requires careful planning and thorough revision, this study finds a strong relationship between cognition, behaviour, and the environment in writing, which can help improve writing instruction and foster self-directed learning. Peer support also plays an important role in enhancing students’ writing skills. This study examines the use of writing strategies—namely metacognitive, cognitive, effort regulation, social, and affective—and their connection to Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory. A total of 127 students from a public higher education institution, enrolled in Arabic as a third language or as an elective for basic communication, participated in the survey, which was conducted via Google Forms. At this university, students in elective language courses are required to complete listening tests, writing assessments, and role-play evaluations, thus highlighting the need for effective writing skills, whether for answering written test questions or preparing role-play scripts. The study’s findings indicate a significant relationship among various writing strategies. The roles of metacognitive, effort regulation, cognitive, social, and affective strategies are interdependent and collectively contribute to the development of effective and coherent writing. These relationships include correlations between metacognitive and effort regulation strategies, effort regulation and cognitive strategies, cognitive and social strategies, social and affective strategies, and affective and metacognitive strategies. All these interconnected components form a meaningful and positive network that supports and enhances students’ writing performance.