Students in higher education are expected to develop into proficient academic writers in the course of their education. This might be a particularly daunting task for students of a foreign language. Entering an academic discourse filled with tacit knowledge and expressing themselves in a foreign language, these students often become concerned with “knowledge-telling” rather than “knowledge-transforming” (Bereitner & Scardamalia, 1987).  Therefore, one of the challenges facing educators in higher education is how to raise L2 students’ awareness of the various metacognitive processes involved in academic writing.  

The study’s main research question is formulated as follows: how can the development of metacognitive skills help our students improve their written L2 academic language proficiency? Two elements in particular will be in focus of the investigation: firstly, the students’ development in reasoning and explaining; secondly, their ability to integrate relevant theory and research into their texts and to construct disciplinary knowledge. Dialogue journals will be used to analyse and discuss the individual student’s development within these areas.

Within the scope of the main research question two additional elements will be considered. First of all, for the purpose of investigating progress, an initial questionnaire will be used to establish the participants’ current understanding of and experience with academic writing so far in their education. Finally, the project will consider to what extent dialogue journals can be useful in the process of developing and improving written L2 academic language proficiency in higher education.

The main objective of this study is to investigate the role of metacognitive skills in the development and improvement of L2 written academic language proficiency in higher education. It follows a group of students studying English at the Faculty of Teacher and Interpreter Education at Sor Trondelag University College in Trondheim, Norway over a period of four semesters. The project investigates their development in written proficiency in academic English through the use of dialogue journals.

The study is based in the field of applied linguistics which, among other things, study language use in the context associated with specialized registers. More specifically, the study is grounded in the theoretical field of English for Academic Purposes (EAP), which underscores the importance of the cognitive dimensions of language learning; in other words, how academic literacy requires not only linguistic ability but also the development of higher order thinking skills. Another aspect of EAP which is relevant to this story is that it aims at assisting “students to learn to write in ways that are valued in academia and in student’s chosen disciplines of study” (Woodward-Kron 2009, p.165).

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