An Investigation Of Writing Strategies Employed By Chinese Non-English Majors

This thesis is a research report of an investigation of writing strategies employed by Chinese non-English major sophomores. The purpose of this investigation is trying to find out what writing strategies and how frequently the student writers use these strategies in their process of writing; whether the employment of writing strategies varies with gender difference; what relationship between writing strategy employment and writing proficiency is; and to what extent the first language (L1) exerts an influence onto the second language (L2) writing. It is hoped that this study can be of great benefit to millions of college English learners who are now studying diligently and trying to master English as well as to the teachers who are trying to improve their students' writing.The empirical investigation, by taking use of a questionnaire and a writing test included in the CET-4 (College English Test-Band Four) on December 22^nd, 2007, was carried out among 84 subjects chosen from two different majors at Shaanxi Normal UniversitySeveral major findings revealed by this empirical study are as follows:Apparently, the student writers did consciously employ a variety of writing strategies with a moderate frequency; the patterns of writing strategy employment between groups of male and female student writers were different; and groups with different writing proficiency also differed in their choice and the frequency of using writing strategies.A significant difference had been found between male and female student writers—when compared with male student writers, female ones were in higher English writing proficiency, had stronger motivations and clearer attributions of their unsatisfactory writing performance, and employed writing strategies better .Frequency of writing strategy use varied with writing proficiency. Both high achievers and intermediate achievers reported significantly more writing strategy use than the low achievers, while there was no significant difference in their frequency of employing writing strategies between high achievers and intermediate achievers.The study revealed that L1 did exert a moderate influence on L2 writing,. And there was a significant difference between male and female student writers—female ones received much stronger influence from mother tongue on their foreign language writing than males did.For the questionnaire used included general writing strategies and specific writing strategies, analyses were done between them with the conclusion that, on the whole, student writers were likely to use specific writing strategies more frequently than the general ones.Finally, limitations of the study and pedagogical implications were subsequently pointed out, with the recommendations for the further study in this field.