| Writing is an indispensable part of college English learning. However, the present situation of college English writing teaching in China is far from satisfactory. Although many studies have been carried out concerning college English writing and its teaching, very few of them explored the writing strategies adopted by non-English majors in their composing process. It is expected that the investigation of writing strategies can help to discover what students actually do in composition writing and what strategy use distinguishes successful writers from less successful ones, and consequently provide some insights into the teaching of college English writing. This study also tries to uncover the relationship between writing strategies and writing outcomes as well as the effect of students' motivation on their choice of writing strategies and their ultimate writing achievements.The general research question addressed in this study is what strategies are used by non-English majors in their process of writing. The specific questions are the following:1. In what aspects are skilled writers' compositions better than those of less skilled writers?2. How do Chinese non-English majors employ strategies in their writing process?3. What is the relationship between writing strategy use and writing outcomes?4. Does students' motivation have some influence on their choice of composing strategies and their writing achievements?The investigation consisted of two parts: one was quantitative study and the other was qualitative study. The subjects under the investigation were totally 48 first-year college students in a class majoring in accounting at Zhejiang Normal University. They were asked to complete three writing assignments after class and respond to one questionnaire about English writing strategies and motivation.To analyze the data obtained from the quantitative study, four main statistical instruments from SPSS 10.0 were used. The cluster analysis was firstly performed to classify these subjects into 3 different groups according to their writing scores. Then, descriptive analysis, independent-samples T-test, and correlation analysis were conducted to elicit responses to theabove research questions.Among all the subjects, 6 students were selected by means of random sampling as the final participants for the interview in the qualitative study. The interview records were used as means of triangulation accompanying the quantitative study.The study produced the following major findings. First, (1) good writers scored much higher in the five aspects of composition, namely content, organization, vocabulary, grammar, and mechanisms, than average and poor writers. The result of independent-samples T-test showed that the differences in the five sub-scores and the total score of the compositions between the good and poor writers all reached very high statistical significance. (2) A further exploration into students' use of discourse connectives in their compositions revealed that successful writers outperformed the other two groups in both the quantity and the variety of conjunctions used.. Second, (1) the descriptive analysis showed that Chinese non-English majors did employ . diverse strategies in their composing process. Among the six strategy groups, memory strategies were the most frequently used. Compensation strategies were the next, while affective strategies were given the least attention. As for the specific writing strategies, the strategy of using discourse connectives was used most frequently by students, the strategy of discussing feelings with others was the least among their choice. (2) The detailed contrast in strategy use among three different clusters of students indicated that good writers differed from poor writers in the use of strategies of adjusting or approximating the message, using circumlocution or synonym, discussing feelings with others, and empathizing with others. The distinction between the good and average writers existed in their use of revising strategy. The former not only rev...
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