An Empirical Study On English Writing Strategies Training For Senior High School Students

This thesis reports on an empirical study which investigates the correlation between writing strategies and writing scores,and the effects of strategy-based instruction on learners' writing performance in a senior high school.Despite previous studies have been conducted to testify the impact of writing strategies training,there is little research into explore the effectiveness of writing strategies training on senior high school students in mainland China.To fill the gap,the following research questions are strived to be addressed in this study:Research Question 1: What are the changes of the senior high school students' writing strategies use after the training?Research Question 2: To what extent can writing strategies training affect the senior high school students' writing performance?On the foundation of the review of previous studies on writing teaching,the writing process is divided into pre-writing stage,writing stage and post-writing stage in the present research.Additionally,the writing strategies involved in this research are divided into metacognitive strategies,cognitive strategies and social strategies.The research experiment,which lasted three months,was conducted in Tianjin Hangu No.1 Senior High School.The 85 participants with the same proficiency level were selected from two parallel classes in Grade 1.They were divided into experiment class and control class.A pre-questionnaire in writing strategies and a pre-test were used to identify the correlation between writing strategies and writing scores.Moreover,pre-and post-questionnaires,together with tests and the students interview were used to explore the effects of writing strategies instruction on learners' writing strategies use and writing performance.Subsequently,the research data were analyzed by the Statistical Package for the Social Science(SPSS)program.The findings show that writing strategies have significant influence on writing scores.Furthermore,the students' writing strategies use have changed greatly after the strategies training.They attempted to orchestrate more writing strategies in writing process.Meanwhile,writing strategies training could positively promote the students' writing skills and stimulate the students' internal motivation to English writing.Finally,based on the research findings,some suggestions for English writing strategies training and for further research are proposed in this thesis.