Becoming a self-regulated writer: A social cognitive perspective

Becoming an adept writer involves more than knowledge of vocabulary and grammar, it depends on high levels of personal regulation because writing activities are usually self-planned, self-initiated, and self-sustained. We present a social cognitive model of writing composed of three fundamental forms of self-regulation: environmental, behavioral, and covert or personal. Each of these triadic forms of self-regulation interact reciprocally via a cyclic feedback loop through which writers self-monitor and self-react to feedback about the effectiveness of specific self-regulatory techniques or processes. Well known writers' personal descriptions of ten major self-regulatory techniques are recounted, and empirical studies demonstrating the effectiveness of these self-regulatory techniques are discussed. We conclude that writing self-regulation is a complex system of interdependent processes that are closely linked to an underlying sense of self-efficacy, and we discuss implications of the proposed model of self-regulatory processes and self-beliefs for guiding future research and developing innovative writing instruction. (C) 1997 Academic Press.