Influence Of Writing Beliefs And Writing Strategies On Writing Quality In Second Language Writing

The present study is an empirical study on the writing beliefs and strategies adopted by the English majors in China. The research goals mainly center on answering the following questions: 1) what is the profile of writing beliefs and strategies used by the English majors? 2) What is the relation between writing strategies and beliefs? 3) Are the writing beliefs and strategies adopted differently by the students with different levels of writing quality, grades and genders?4) Which writing strategy and belief can influence writing quality and to what degree can they exert impact on writing quality?200 English majors, including freshmen, sophomores and seniors from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, were investigated through a self-designed questionnaire and a writing task. The questionnaire was designed to investigate the writing strategies and beliefs used by the participants, and the writing task was adopted to measure their writing quality.Exploratory factor analysis extracted 16 factors underlying writing strategies and the corresponding beliefs. The 16 factors are: text arranging, self management, interactive study, compensation, simplifying, free thinking, back reading, revision, outlining, L1 use, asking for help, simulating, reader awarenesss, timing, using dictionary and affection. Descriptive statistics showed that English majors prefer to use text arranging, self-management and revision strategies rather than free-thinking and outlining strategies. The writing beliefs were adopted more or less with the similar preferences. Pearson correlations analysis indicates that there are correlations between beliefs and strategies, strategies and strategies, beliefs and beliefs. Regression analysis further suggested that the causal relations between writing beliefs and strategies are circling instead of unidirectional. Results of One-way ANOVA showed that there are differences in writing strategies and beliefs adoption between high and low writing quality achievers, girls and boys, and among different grades. Finally, Multiple Regression analysis was operated to generate a prediction model of writing quality dependent on the writing beliefs and writing strategies. The results suggested that, both writing strategies and writing beliefs can predict the writing quality and the former's influence is greater. Timing beliefs, back-reading strategies and reader-awareness strategies can contribute to writing quality, while L1 use beliefs, affective strategies and outlining strategies can possibly influence writing quality in a negative way.According to the results, the paper presented suggestions to both learning and teaching of English writing in China. In the meantime, the limitations upon data collection and sampling were pointed out with the suggestions for further studies.