An Empirical Study On The Relationship Among Non-English-major Students’ Learner Autonomy In Writing, Writing Strategies And Writing Performance

The present study makes an empirical study on the relationship between learnerautonomy in writing, the use of writing strategies and writing performance. In the contextof college English curriculum reform and development, college English teaching hasgradually shifted from the language knowledge learning to the focus on learners’autonomous learning ability and learning characteristics. However, such factors as limitedteaching and students’ learning characteristics，such as bad learning habits, preventstudents from writing good articles and lead to various problems in writing, mainlyincluding lower level in learner autonomy and deficiency in writing strategies use.The author firstly introduces the background information, and then clarifies thedefinition of autonomous learning and autonomous learning awareness, and analyzes theautonomous learner characteristics in the end. As for the writing aspects, the authorclarifies the development of learning strategies, analyzes the classification of writingstrategies and the relevant studies at home and abroad. Based on these theories mentioned,this thesis attempts to research the following aspects: the level of learner autonomy inwriting and its relationship with writing performance; the use of writing strategies and itsrelationship with writing performance; the relationship between the level of learnerautonomy and the use of writing strategies.In this empirical study,100non-English-major college students are chosen as thesubjects in one university in Zhejiang Province. In the process of data collecting,questionnaires and a writing task are chosen as the instruments and software SPSS17.0isapplied in the data analysis.By analyzing the Questionnaire and writing performance, the following discoveries are made:1) the students’ learner autonomy is at a moderate level, and among the7components in the learner autonomy, learners’ belief is at the highest level, while othercomponents, such as selecting materials, writing planning, monitoring the writing processand outcomes, time managements, and general knowledge of writing strategies are at arelatively low level.2) The overall level of learner autonomy is significantly correlatedwith the writing performance. Among the seven components, selecting materials andmanagements is closely correlated with writing performance, while other componentsshow no correlation.3) The students almost employ all the writing strategies but differentin means, with the cognitive strategies the highest mean, and cognitive strategies andsocial/affective strategies coming next respectively. In the three writing stages, pre-writingstrategies use gets highest mean.4) Statistical analysis shows that cognitive strategies,pre-writing and while-writing strategies are closely related with writing performance.Coming to individual strategy use, some strategies (such as, coherence strategy andrevising strategy) show correlation with writing performance.5) The overall level oflearner autonomy and the employment of writing strategies are positively correlated. Theseconclusions show that cultivating learner autonomy ability stimulates the use of writingstrategies, and hence improve the writing performance.Pedagogical implications, limitations of the study and suggestions based on the resultsare proposed. The author hopes that they could be of some value to English writingteaching.