The Impact Of Planning Participatory Structures On English Majors’ Planning Processes And Writing Performance

As an important role in the writing process,planning has greatly raised researchers’ attention.Flower and Hayes’ s writing model(1981)divides the writing process into three stages: planning,translating,and revising,where planning is considered the primary and fundamental skill.Rod Ellis made great distribution in defining and classifying planning.He divided strategic planning into individual planning(IP)and collaborative planning(CP)in terms of the planning participatory structures.There are already studies investigating the different impacts of individual planning and collaborative planning on the quality of writing text,but the results are mixed.However,little research investigated writers’ planning processes.And there is still a blank in the field of investigating writers’ planning processes under different planning participatory structures.Therefore,the present study adopts a mixed method to explore learners’ planning processes and writing performance under individual planning and collaborative planning,addressing the two questions:(1)What is the effect of planning participatory structures on learners’ planning processes?(2)What is the effect of planning participatory structures on learners’ writing performance,i.e.,complexity,accuracy,and fluency? The present study not only conducts in-depth research on learners’ planning processes and the use of planning strategies,but also analyzes the complexity,accuracy,and fluency of learners’ writing text,with a focus not only on learners’ planning processes but also on the writing performance.The present study took 34 English-majored freshmen in Y University as participants.There were two rounds of writing experiments.The whole writing contained 15 minutes for individual planning or collaborative planning(with the help of planning task sheet)and 30 minutes for individual writing.After writing,participants were given 20 minutes to finish the questionnaire and reflective journal.Four volunteers received at least 20minutes’ interview respectively.In order to avoid the interaction effect of the sequence of individual planning and collaborative planning,the participants were divided into two groups randomly.In the first round of writing,group 1 received individual planning,while group 2 received collaborative planning.In the second round of writing,group 1 received collaborative planning,while group 2 received individual planning.The main research instruments contained planning strategy questionnaire,reflective journal,and reflective interview.Both qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis were conducted to investigate writers’ planning processes and writing performance under different planning participatory structures.Results show that in terms of the influence of planning participatory structures on the planning processes,different planning participatory structures have different effects on the improvement of learners’ planning strategy ability.Specifically,collaborative planning could improve learners’ planning strategy abilities.In addition,different planning participatory structures also have an impact on the specific planning processes.Collaborative planning can provide content negotiation for most planning processes,which is the most obvious difference between collaborative planning processes and individual planning processes.By exploring the planning processes under different planning participatory structures,this study further explores the overall writing planning processes of English majors:(1)in exploring topic category,there are four codes:translating and comprehending,circling keywords,grasping writing instruction,and relating to oneself;(2)for setting goal category,four codes were: complexity of the topic,subject preference,social values,and being persuasive;(3)for extracting information category,four codes were: examples of others,own experience,external information,and knowledge learned before;(4)in evaluating information category,there were four principles: pertinent to the topic;avoiding redundance;social value;within language command;(5)for the last category,organizing information,there were three codes:dimensions of information sources,inner logic of information,and relating to writing instruction.The results also show that writers with different planning abilities performed diversely.Unskilled planners can benefit more in collaborative planning compared with those skilled planners;while skilled planners might improve their audience awareness in collaborative planning.As for the effect of planning participatory structures on writing performance,the results show that collaborative planning can improve accuracy and fluency,while individual planning benefits complexity more.This study can give instructors some implications about how to organize the pre-task planning of writing tasks in order to improve learners’ writing performance,and can help instructors learn more about students’ planning processes so that more appropriate instructions for different planning types can be provided to students with different planning abilities.For students themselves,they can have a better understanding of their own performance and preference towards different planning participatory structures to become more autonomic and skilled writers with great planning knowledge.The present study further investigates the planning process of Chinese English majors during writing,and expands relevant research on writing planning.