An Investigation Of Writing Strategies By High School Students

This thesis is a research report of an investigation of writing strategies employed by high school students . The purpose of this investigation is to find out what kind of writing strategies the students use; the frequency of the strategies used by the students; what's the relationship between writing strategies and writing proficiency and to investigate the relationship between gender, school year and proficiency in writing by the use of writing strategies. It is hoped that this study can be of great benefit to millions of high school students who are now studying diligently and trying to master English as well as to the teachers who are trying to improve their students' writing.Through empirical study, it has been found that the students consciously employed a variety of writing strategies with moderate frequency. They chose avoidance strategies as most frequently used, whereas they may have possibly avoided, or were unaware of how to apply affective strategies.First of all, the findings of this study support the assumption that there is a relationship between gender difference and the choice of writing strategies. A significant difference has been found between boys and girls in the use of writing strategies in this study. In overall strategy use, girls made use of writing strategies more than boys. In the specific categories of strategies, girls used avoidance strategies and proofreading strategies significantly more often than boys.The use of strategies varied with school year level. Senior Three students used affectiveAn Investigation of Writing Strategies by High School Studentsstrategies more often than Senior Two students, whereas Senior Two students employed the simplification strategies significantly more often than Senior Three students.Frequency of strategy use changed with writing proficiency. The high-level proficiency students reported significantly more on-line planning and used more proofreading strategies than the low level proficiency students.Limitations of the study and pedagogical implications are subsequently pointed out in this thesis. Finally the author gives some suggestions on how to conduct such kind of research later.