185 | Page INVESTIGATING EFL HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS' METACOGNITIVE AWARENESS IN WRITING Yoannes Yuka Krisdianata 1 Universitas Sanata Dharma, Yogyakarta, Indonesia e-mail: 211242003@student.usd.ac.id 1 Paulus Kuswandono 2 Universitas Sanata Dharma, Yogykarta, Indonesia e-mail: kus@usd.ac.id 2 Abstract Metacognitive awareness was beneficial when implemented in learning activities, especially in writing skills. This research was conducted to explore students’ metacognitive awareness in writing. The participants were 30 high school students. Metacognitive knowledge and regulation from Brown (1987) and Knospe (2018) were employed to get a report on students’ awareness in writing. Metacognitive knowledge is formed from declarative knowledge, procedural knowledge, and conditional knowledge, all of which consisted of planning, monitoring, and evaluating. A cross-sectional survey method was conducted to investigate the data collected. Questionnaires were used to collect the data, then analyzed partially using descriptive analysis, and reported in tables. The data displays that the declarative knowledge and task were respectively 35.1 % and 17.3%; procedural knowledge was 27.7 %; and, conditional knowledge was at 14.2%. Likewise, the results from Metacognitive regulation reported by senior high school students were planning 14.4%, monitoring 24%, and evaluating 11.1%, all of which are categorized at a low level of understanding. The result showed that high school students demonstrated a low level of metacognitive knowledge and regulation in writing descriptive text. Keywords: writing; metacognitive knowledge; metacognitive regulation 1. INTRODUCTION Learning strategies are crucial to be introduced to and acquired by learners as they can assist students for sustainable life-long learning. The examples of learning strategies are planning, practicing, monitoring, evaluating, and observing (Rodrigues et al., 2018). Implementing these strategies can help learners to learn effectively, especially when learning something new as they need more contrived effort to master (Baranova et al., 2019, p. 3; Hong & Ganapathy, 2017, p. 19). Furthermore, one prospective strategy is metacognition. According to Mbato (2013, p. 25), metacognition is the learners’ awareness of employing some strategies to achieve specific knowledge or skill. Metacognitive knowledge is related to a person’s knowledge regarding his/her cognitive process (Flavell, 1979). Metacognitive knowledge consists of declarative, procedural, and, conditional knowledge (Brown, 1987, p. 67). In addition, metacognitive regulation contains planning & drafting, monitoring, revision, and, evaluation (Maftoon et al., 2014). English as a foreign language in Indonesia can be so challenging to learn that they need more effort to overcome many issues in learning. Learning English as Foreign Language (EFL) is challenging for most Indonesian people (Putri et al., 2018, p.