A Study Of English Writing Strategies Use By College Students Of Non-English Majors

This thesis is a research report of an investigation of writing strategies employed by the college students of non-English majors. The research is carried out to answer the following three questions: Firstly, what are the frequencies of writing strategies use by the learners in the study? Secondly, can the use of writing strategies predict the writing achievements? Thirdly, what's the relationship between the use of writing strategies and variables such as motivational intensity and gender?The classification adopted in the study is: 1. Pre-writing strategies: 1) Topic examining 2) Brainstorming 3) Outline listing 4) Free writing 5) Looping; 2. While-writing strategies: 1) Avoidance strategies (simplification strategy and mother-tongue reliance strategy) 2) Dictionary strategy 3) Social strategies; 3. Revising strategies 1) Dictionary strategy 2) Rewriting strategy 3) Proofreading.The answers were explored through a questionnaire survey and a writing task. The subjects of the study were 130 sophomores from Zhongnan University of Economics and Law and Huazhong Agricultural University. The questionnaire completed by the subjects consists of three parts: basic information about the subjects, their use of writing strategies in the writing process, and the measurement of motivation intensity. The writing task was used to measure students'writing achievement. The major findings are as follows:1) The students nearly employed all the writing strategies but differed in frequencies. As for stage strategy use, the students employed writing strategies more often in the while-writing stage than in prewriting stage and revising stage. And coming to individual strategy use, the students employed a variety of strategies with different frequency. For example, in the pre-writing stage, topic-examining strategy was attached great importance by the students. And in the while-writing stage, the most frequently used strategies were avoidance strategies while the social strategies were neglected. When students tried to revise their compositions, they paid much more attention to vocabulary and grammar than to content and structure; 2) The multiple regression analysis showed that the writing strategies as a whole predict 40.4% of the variance in students'writing achievement, while each individual strategy had no significant predictive power for the writing achievement. What's more, frequencies of individual strategy use differed between high achievers and low achievers. In the pre-writing strategy, high achievers more often used those strategies, say brainstorming, which are helpful to the generation of ideas. And high achievers attached more importance to revising and teachers'feedback than low achievers did; 3) High motivational students used topic-examining strategy, brainstorming strategy, and social strategies more frequently than the low motivational students did. Low motivational students were more likely to hand in their writing without checking; 4) The use of writing strategies differed a little between female students and male students. It is found that female students showed higher frequency of reporting use than male students in the while-writing stage. And in the specific categories of strategies, the female students employed brainstorming strategies more often than male students.Finally, pedagogical implications and limitations of the study were pointed out. The author also gave some suggestions on further related researches.