The Effects Of Time Restraint On EFL Writers’ Cognitive And Metacognitive Strategy Use

English writing, an important language skill, is difficult to master as it is a complex,productive learning process. From the data published by CET4/CET6examination center,college students’ English writing competence is far from satisfactory. So it becomes anecessity to improve learners’ writing ability and writing strategies. Though researchers athome and abroad conducted many studies on the relationship between strategy use andwriting scores, the author has not found unanimous conclusions. Also, since timed writingis often used to assess learners’ writing skills in high-stakes tests, whether timed writingcan effectively assess learners’ writing strategies becomes a subject worth further research.Based on the above concerns, the present study aims to explore the differences of EFLlearners’ cognitive and metacognitive strategy use between timed writing and untimedwriting as well as the effects of time restraint on cognitive and metacognitive strategy useamong learners of different English proficiencies. There are altogether60participants,30of whom are sophomores chosen to represent high proficiency while the other30arechosen from freshmen to represent low proficiency. All the participants are required tofinish cognitive and metacognitive strategy use questionnaires immediately after writingtasks. Also, interviews closely followed to gain more specific information. The mainfindings of this study are summarized as follows:Firstly, between timed and untimed writing, significant differences exist in using thesecognitive strategies (drafting, composing phrases and revising on content and structurelevel) and one metacognitive strategy (planning) in cognitive and metacognitive strategyuse questionnaires. Qualitative data from interview reflect that untimed writing providedmore chances and time to use these strategies.Secondly, time restraint exerts different effects on the cognitive and metacognitivestrategy use among learners with different English proficiencies. To high proficiency group,11items involving7cognitive and metacognitive strategies, such as clarifying, composing,informing, revising, planning, monitoring, and considering the audience, have significant differences. But to low proficiency group, only one item (revising) has significantdifferences when the combined cognitive and metacognitive strategy use questionnairescompleted after timed and untimed writings are put into SPSS16.0forIndependent-Samples T Test analysis. In other words, time restraint exerts more negativeeffects in using cognitive and metacognitive strategies on high proficiency group.This study sheds light on writing strategy use and writing assessment. Though it hassome limitations, it still offers some implications for teaching and assessing Englishwriting and it is hoped that results of the present study can provide reference for furtherstudy.