A Study On The Effects Of Planning Conditions On Complexity,Accuracy,and Fluency In Non-English Major Graduate Students' English Academic Writing

As a key link in the chain of writing processes,planning functions as the preparatory reflection on what and how to write.Planning condition is the planning type according to the situation where planning activity takes place.Depending on the participatory structure,there are individual planning and collaborative planning.Previous researches have shown that the defects in the English Academic Writing of Chinese graduate students lie in their poor performance of complexity,accuracy,and fluency and have suggested that planning condition has certain impact on language performance of General English Writing in terms of complexity,accuracy,and fluency.As task type is a factor that affects language performance,previous research results from General English Writing may be different from those from English Academic Writing.Therefore,the relationship between planning condition and English Academic Writing performance is vague.To clarify the relationship between the two will help to address the defects in the English Academic Writing of Chinese graduate students.Based on the knowledge above,the researcher set out to probe into the effects of individual planning and collaborative planning on English Academic Writing.The study deals with three questions:1)Are there any differences between the English Academic Writing performance under collaborative planning and individual planning in terms of complexity,accuracy,and fluency?2)Are there any interactive effects between English proficiency and planning condition on complexity,accuracy,and fluency?3)How do writers allocate their planning time in English Academic Writing?The participants of this study are 36 first-year graduate students from the School of Education of a key normal university from Shandong province.According to the results of the pre-test,they were divided into two groups,and each group has three proficiency levels.The researcher randomly assigned one group as the experimental group to perform the writing task under the collaborative planning condition,the otheras the control group to perform the writing task under the individual planning condition.An abstract writing task,test papers from TOEFL part 2,and an interview were used in this study,and the data were analyzed via SPSS 19.0.The results showed that participants under the collaborative planning condition performed better than those under the individual planning condition in terms of accuracy and lexical complexity.Participants under individual planning condition gained higher scores on the measures of fluency.Planning condition and proficiency have interactive effects on MSTTR and W/T.Specifically speaking,collaborative planning can significantly better the performance of high and intermediate level learners in terms of MSTTR but has no significant effects for low level learners.High level learners performed significantly better under individual planning condition than did those under collaborative planning condition in terms of W/T.However,the difference in W/T was not significant between collaborative planning group and individual planning group for intermediate and low level learners.In addition,learners under both planning conditions spent most time in language related issues.With respect to the language related issues,word selection took up most time.The results of this study can provide some pedagogical enlightenment on the teaching for graduate students' English Academic Writing.However,constrained by the available resources,there are some limitations in this study,which are listed at the end of this thesis along with some suggestions for future researchers to refer to.