A Study Of English Writing Strategies Used By Non-English Majors Of Xinjiang Normal University

Aiming at surveying the state of writing strategies used by non-English majors，and revealing the relationships between writing strategies and writing proficiency,the author investigated312students of two grades(2011and2012), who come fromnon-English majors of Xinjiang Normal University. All the subjects attended CET-4test before the investigation. The research instrument is the questionnaire of Petric&Czarl (2003), to suit this study, the author made a tiny revision of the questionnaire.Based on the writing process theory, the body of the questionnaire contains threestages (pre-writing stages, while writing stages and revising stages).From the dimension of writing process, using SPSS17.0and EXCEL2003, theauthor analyzed the overall situation of using writing strategies of each stage: that ispre-writing stage, while-writing stage and post-writing stage. The author firstlyanalyzed the using frequency of writing strategy, and then compared the level ofwriting strategies using belong to the higher score group and lower score grouplearners.At the same time, the author introduced Oxford’s classification of learningstrategy (cognitive strategies, metacognitive strategies, compensation strategies andsocial affective strategies), and applied his classification to the study. Under thisdimensions, the statistical analysis is as follow: Firstly, descriptive analysis wasmade for the cognitive strategies, metacognitive strategies, compensation strategiesand social affective strategies. Secondly, the author made the independent T test toget a detailed comparison for the differences among these four types of strategies ofthe higher achievers and low achievers. Also, correlation analysis was done betweenwriting proficiency and writing strategies using. Lastly,8students attended to theinterview.Through analyzing the results on the questionnaire and interview，the followingconclusions are got:1. The using of writing strategies of non-English majors in Xinjiang NormalUniversity is not good at overall level. During the English writing process, thestrategy using frequency at while-writing stage is higher than pre-writing andpost-writing stages. Also, the using frequency of meta-cognitive strategies and socialaffective strategy are both low.2. There is difference between higher score group and lower score group in strategyusing. The difference is mainly reflected at the pre-writing and post writing stages,also reflected in the using of cognitive and compensation strategies. The results show that no significant difference between the other strategy types.3. Writing score significantly correlates to the writing strategies, which indicates thatwriting strategies play an important role in English writing and they have greatsignificance in English writing. Through writing strategy training, and strengthen theusing of writing strategies consciously, learners can enhance their writingproficiency.