The current study examined the relationships among self-regulated learning, metacognitive awareness, and EFL learners’ performance in argumentative writing. We collected data through two questionnaires (i.e., Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ); Metacognitive Awareness Inventory (MAI)), and an argumentative writing task administered to 250 Iranian graduate students of TEFL in 11 universities across Iran. Using LISREL version 8.8, we ran structural equation modeling (SEM) to analyze the hypothesized relationships. The results revealed that although the SEM enjoyed a good fit on the hypothesized relationships among selfregulated learning, metacognitive awareness, and argumentative writing, the significant influence of metacognitive awareness and self-regulated learning on students’ argumentative writing performance could not be postulated. Finally, the pedagogical implications for writing instruction and research are discussed.

This study investigates English language learners’ writing strategies with reference to their gender and year of study at a university in Iran. To this end, a writing strategies questionnaire was employed to tap into the memory, cognitive, compensation, metacognitive, social, and affective strategies of 230 participants. Semi-structured interviews with participants were also conducted in addition to the questionnaire. Participants’ perceptions demonstrated no significant differences in writing strategy use for either gender or year of study. Metacognitive and cognitive strategies were found to be the most frequently used strategies by all writers, and both the low- and high-level male and female learner-writers used writing strategies with approximately the same frequency. Interviews identified sociocultural and contextual differences in students of both genders and years of study which reflect the challenges foreign language learner-writers of English face in an academic context. Further research on writing strategies taking more specific variables, task settings, and contexts into consideration is necessary to shed more light on EFL writing strategy use.