Enhancing English writing competence and self-correction awareness through the RADAR process in argumentative writing

Abstract

Among Thai EFL learners, developing academic writing proficiency presents ongoing challenges—particularly in constructing grammatically accurate sentences, maintaining paragraph coherence, and engaging in self-directed revision. This study investigates the efficacy of the RADAR process—an instructional framework grounded in metacognitive strategies and recursive revision—in enhancing English writing competence and self-correction awareness. A one-group pretest–posttest design was conducted over a 16-week term with 30 junior students majoring in English under the Bachelor of Arts program, enrolled in a course on argumentative reading and writing. The instructional intervention followed the five-stage RADAR sequence: Recognition, Analysis, Diagnosis, Adjustment, and Reconstruction. Data were collected from pretest and posttest writing tasks, which were assessed using an analytic writing rubric, along with self-report questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. Quantitative findings revealed statistically significant gains in writing scores (t(29) = 3.56, p = .0017), particularly in sentence variety, grammatical precision, and cohesion. Qualitative data supported these results, showing increased metacognitive awareness, improved proofreading habits, and greater learner autonomy in revising writing errors. Despite these positive outcomes, the study’s scope was limited by the absence of a control group and its focus on paragraph-level writing tasks, which may not fully represent broader academic writing abilities. Overall, the study offers empirical support for the RADAR process as an effective instructional model that integrates linguistic instruction with cognitive engagement. It contributes to EFL pedagogy by fostering both writing accuracy and learner autonomy and provides implications for curriculum design, teacher training, and self-regulated learning.