Engaging Chinese EFL Students In English Writing: Attitude, Process And Strategies

The present thesis is designed to study a research project which involves an English Writing Course aiming to motivate Chinese EFL students in English writing.The purpose of the study is to explore how to inspire EFL students'interests in learning, engage them in English writing and hopefully improve their English writing ability. A semester-long writing course is designed to help the students adopt positive attitudes towards learning, involve them in writing process and use writing strategies consciously and effectively. The writing strategies are all embedded and taught in class and writing activities.The students'attitudes, writing process and strategies are assessed through observation, introspection and evaluation by the methods of questionnaires, class observation, writing samples, and interview.The findings show that most students have adopted positive attitudes towards the process approach and English writing. Those who have positive attitudes towards writing are more confident, and engage more enthusiastically, actively and cooperatively in their writing. Most students have been involved in writing process, although the revising stage of peer review is not well performed due to the educational and traditional environments, and individual differences. Writing strategies have been used more consciously and frequently in writing process. Different students prefer different writing strategies and some writing strategies work better than others. The discussions are mainly from three perspectives including the effects of positive attitudes on learners' interests in writing, the impacts of process writing on learning style, and the influence of writing strategies on learning autonomy. Implications for classroom instruction are also discussed in the paper.