A Study On Communication Strategies In English Writing By Students In Senior High Schools

The National English Curriculum has some specific demands of the writing ability of students in senior high schools.However,most of them have difficulty in writing even some students who have a good command of English grammar and vocabulary,which may result from the shortage of the strategic competence.With more importance has been given on English communications,TEFL pays more attention to develop students' communicative competence.As one of the essential part of communicative competence,the strategic competence can be applied to the real communication by communication strategies.Whereas,compared with communication strategies in oral English communication,people often ignore communication strategies in English writing.Therefore,based on the predecessors' researches of communication strategies at home and aboard,this thesis applies the interview and questionnaire to do a study about communication strategies in English writing by students who come from three different classes in Grade two in the Zhangzhou Experimental High School,which aims to find out the general situation of senior high school students' employment of communication strategies and explores statistically significant differences between females and males as well as the significant differences among students who have different level of writing scores.Thus,according to the data of the interview and questionnaire,this thesis demonstrates the major finding as follow:Firstly,the general average scores of senior high school students' employment of communication strategies are less than “3” in the Likert scale,which means students don't use the communication strategies often.Among the communication strategies,the frequency of avoidance strategies are the highest while achievement strategies are the lowest one.In general,senior high school students apply more asking for assistance strategies(AFAS)than cooperation strategies within compensatory strategies.Secondly,female students apply communication strategies to their English writing more frequently than male students.Furthermore,the application of compensatory strategies is the only statistical significant difference of communication strategies in writing between males and females,which especially reflects in the use of AFAS.Thirdly,the high-performance students have statistically significant difference from the low-performance students in the application of L2-based strategies,AFAS,cooperation strategies and the general communication strategies in English writing.Meanwhile,they also have statistically significant difference from the mediocre students in the use of cooperation strategies and empathy strategies in English writing.In addition,the mediocre students have statistically significant difference from the low-performance students in the employment of AFAS in English writing.Besides,empathy strategies,L2-based strategies,AFAS and cooperation strategies have significant positive correlation with students' writing scores,but only AFAS have a linear correlation with it.Based on these finding,this thesis puts forward some useful teaching suggestions: firstly,teachers should teach students the knowledge of communication strategies and help them set a proper consciousness of communication strategies.Secondly,teachers can use heuristic education and divergent thinking to advocate L2-based strategies,cultivating empathy strategies by teaching English culture and thinking,promoting the use of cooperation strategies through peers work,implementing AFAS by optimizing the proper awareness of using AFAS as well as using avoidance strategies in moderate so that teachers can integrate communication strategies training into English teaching,which attempt to improve students' communicative competence,writing ability and the command of English language.