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                        Correlation Between Writing And Metacognitive Skills 

Well-developed metacognitive thinking skills associated with improved learning. While some students develop metacognitive skills on their own, others need explicit instruction. Talking about meta knowledge, I found an article titled ‘Using Writing Strategies in Math to Increase Metacognitive Skills for the Gifted Learner’. The rhetor of this article is Knox. The audience to her research includes every individual part of the community, but specifically she tries to get the attention of mathematics teacher who may play an important role in helping gifted children better improve their metacognitive skills. She tries to emphasise the fact that teachers should pay attention to helping gifted children further improve their metacognitive skills which prepare and provide these students with problem solving skills for solving complex problems. According to her, these gifted children may solve all mathematical problems in seconds but in reality, if they are asked to explain their reasoning behind why they solve a problem the way they do, they come up with no answer. She believes that even though these students possess all the conceptual knowledge they still lack the knowledge about problem solving skills. She believes that their metacognitive skills could be increased by making them write about how they learn a concept in math and problem solving techniques they use. According to Knox, gifted learners are able to solve the math problems quickly and solve them accurately. However, when it comes to conceptual reasoning with mathematics or the problem-solving process, they sometimes struggle with communicating the steps taken to solve the problem and explaining why those steps are valid. Further developing their metacognitive abilities can be a way to help gifted learners reflect on their thinking in a more methodical way, allowing them to break down and communicate the steps, to make connections, and to reason the process used when solving math problems. Writing is one way to increase a student’s metacognitive ability. Journal writing in the mathematics classroom can help students by clarifying their thought process while further developing content knowledge. Implementing writing can lead to increased understanding of the problem, identification of additional strategies that can be used to solve the problem, and reflective thinking during the problem-solving process. Reflective writing in mathematics can help students evaluate solution strategies and identify strengths and areas of improvement in their mathematical understanding.

Middle Tennessee State University alumna Heather Knox was selected as a Tennessee State Finalist for the Presidential Awards for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching. Knox received her master’s degree in education from Middle Tennessee State University and doctorate from Carson-Newman. From her profile, known as the best teacher, it is clear that she is a credible source. But at the same time, at some instances, while reading her article I felt that she was making the same point repeatedly, for example, she kept saying that gifted students should be made to learn more metacognitive skills and their capacity of learning these cognitive skills is more than an average student and at the same time she focuses her point on the fact that they should be taught these skills so that they can have a better understanding of how to solve complex problems. She did not give any explanation about the role of metacognitive skills in the lives of non-god gifted student. She did emphasize the fact that gifted students are faster at learning metacognitive skills but no description given about why she focusing teachers to help gifted students and not an average student. As an audience, one cannot find exigence for writing this article. Even though, one can see the exigence behind this essay, but one cannot tell why she tries to persuade teachers towards metacognitive skills only for gifted students. She should have explained why she was just talks about gifted children, is it because she feels that gifted, smart students are not seen in need for enhanced meta cognitive skills by a teacher in schools, or if she believes that it is worth just focusing and helping gifted students with enhancing their complex problem solving skills. One point hitting my head again and again is that she uses a large number of sources for proving her argument, most of them from between nineteen fifties or sixties. I believe that these sources from nineties were written a long time ago and a large number of educational and academic changes has already prevailed in our educational board. She wrote this research paper in year two thousand seventeen, and using sources from early nineteen fifties make her point irrelevant with a student in this new era. Knox follows a very unique writing style, first she started talking about why metacognition has an important role, and as the essay flowed Knox tried establishing a relationship between metacognition and gifted learner and how a teacher develop mathematical metacognition in gifted learners. Towards the end, she occupies the niche by giving suggestions on how to help gifted learners improve their metacognitive skills. Her suggestions include pushing students towards journal writing using mathematical prompts, developing mathematical definitions using their own view, developing test questions on topic studied, etc. In her writing, one can find a repetition of certain words. The best example of repetition in her writing includes using words like metacognitive skills, problem-solving process. I believe that her repetition of these words intended to make and remind the readers, and the audience that metacognitive skills and problem solving process are interrelated and serve best for carving out a higher level skilled brain. 

Knox explains that regulation of cognition includes the ability to plan, monitor, regulate and evaluate one’s learning process. For persuading her audience she used the fact that even though gifted learners possess high level conceptual skills, however they might lack sufficient required for solving complex problems. She emphasizes this fact by telling how a gifted learner in a math class if asked to solve a math problem with a new or different methodology gets nervous because he or she lacks the ability to process what they already know. In conclusion she uses a getty line to grab the attention by challenging its audience by making a comment about trying one of her strategies for enhancing one’s cognitive skills. Therefore, throughout the essay, her motive tells that she want teachers and students to adopt her strategies and see the difference.