A Survey Study On Senior High School Students' Strategies Of Self-regulation In English Writing

English writing ability is a core skill emphasized in English language teaching.Successful writing requires not only knowledge of vocabulary and grammar,but also a high degree of self-regulation ability,and one of the key factors influencing the self-regulation is learning strategy.For a long time,English writing and self-regulation learning strategies have been hot research aspects.However,there are relatively few domestic studies that combine the two to study Senior High School students' strategies of self-regulated in English writing.In order to enrich this field,this paper is undertaken to investigate the general pattern of Senior High School students' strategies of self-regulation in English writing through questionnaires and interview.The research questions are as follows:1.What is the general pattern of Senior High School students' strategies of self-regulation in English writing?2.Are there any gender differences in the use of strategies of self-regulation in English writing among Senior High School students?If yes,what are the differences?3.What is the correlation between Senior High School students' strategies of self-regulation in English writing and their English composition scores?1)What is the overall correlation?2)What is the respective correlation between four dimensions of strategies of self-regulation in English writing(Cognitive,Meta-cognitive,Social behavioral and Motivational self-regulated dimensions)and English composition scores?3)What is the correlation between strategies of self-regulation in English writing and English composition scores in terms of gender differences?In this study,both quantitative and qualitative methods are adopted.The quantitative research involves a questionnaire designed by Teng and Zhang(2016)whose whole internal reliability reaches.909.The questionnaires are handed out to 101 Senior One students from Hanjiang High School in Yangzhou on November 7th,2019 and finally all the questionnaires are found valid.In addition,the author collects the English composition scores of each student from three formal English examinations,and calculates a composite score of each student.Then,the collected data are input into SPSS 22.0 for statistical analysis.The qualitative research adopts the form of semi-strructured interview so as to further explore Senior High School students' strategies of self-regulation in English writing and the correlation between different variables.Eight students are interviewed,all of whom participate in the previous questionnaire survey.The interview is conducted in Chinese and the whole process is tape-recorded.Later,the results are transcribed into English and the transcriptions of the interview are carefully analyzed.After the detailed analysis of the information collected from both quantitative and qualitative research,this study draws the following conclusions:Firstly,the results show that in general,Senior High School students' use of strategies of self-regulation in English writing is at a medium level,with Cognitive self-regulated strategies ranking the first,followed by Motivational self-regulated strategies,Social behavioral self-regulated strategies and Meta-cognitive self-regulated strategies coming the last.When it comes to nine minor dimensions,the mean scores are above 3.00 with the exception of Idea planning,Goal-oriented monitoring and evaluating,Peer learning as well as Interest enhancement.Besides,Feedback handling is the most popular strategy among the students,while Peer learning is the least favored by the students.Secondly,there do exist some differences between female students and male students in the use of strategies of self-regulation in English writing.Generally speaking,female students adopt all the four broad dimensions of strategies of self-regulation in English writing more frequently than male students,although the differences are not significant.In terms of nine minor dimensions,the significant difference between female students and male students lies in the dimension of Motivational self-talk(p=.037<.05).In addition,male students get higher mean scores in Peer learning and control than female students.Thirdly,strategies of self-regulation in English writing as a whole is positively correlated with the students' English composition scores(r=.379**)at the.01 level.Besides,of the four broad dimensions,Cognitive,Motivational and Meta-cognitive self-regulated strategies are positively and highly correlated with the students' composition scores,while there is no significant correlation between Social behavioral self-regulated strategies and the students' composition scores.As to nine minor dimensions,except for Idea planning and Peer learning,the other dimensions are significantly and positively correlated with the students' composition scores.In addition,there exists a certain correlation between strategies of self-regulation in English writing and English composition scores in terms of gender differences.For female students,Cognitive and Motivational self-regulated strategies demonstrate significant correlations with their English composition scores.For male students,Cognitive and Social behavioral self-regulated strategies do.Based on the findings,this paper puts forward some beneficial pedagogical implications.For teachers,they should attach more importance to students' self-regulated learning,take a variety of measures to inspire students' awareness of strategy use and instruct students to deploy specific strategies of self-regulation in English writing.Meanwhile,more attention should be paid to the differences between male and female students in strategy training,so as to improve the effectiveness of English writing teaching.For students,they must raise the awareness of strategy use,deploy various strategies of self-regulation in English writing and strive to become self-regulated learners.