A Study On Gender Differences Of High School Students' English Writing Strategies

Gender differences in language learning strategies is a hot topic in second language acquisition.Many researchers have explored gender differences in listening strategies,reading strategies.However,there are few research investigating high school students' gender differences in English writing strategies in China.Besides,it is observed that many Chinese high school students have difficulties in English writing,like spelling mistakes,the use of unreasonable structure and low using frequency of strategies.And it is found that middle or high school teachers tend to ignore the strategy instruction for students.Therefore this thesis is going to explore whether there are gender differences of high school students' English writing strategies.Based on O'Malley & Chomat's(1990)classification about language learning strategies,the author divides English writing strategies into three categories: cognitive English writing strategies,metacognitive writing strategies and social/affective writing strategies.To find out the strategies used by high school students and whether there are gender differences in using English writing strategies,high school students are chosen to join the investigation and interview.Qualitative and quantitative methods are applied to analyze the research data.The results show that on the one hand,high school students use a variety of English writing strategies which include metacognitive strategies,cognitive writing strategies and social/affective writing strategies.And the using frequency of high school students' English writing strategies lays in the medium or low level;on the other hand,significant gender differences are shown in the overall use of high school students' English writing strategies.The use of two kinds of English writing strategies,metacognitive writing strategies,cognitive writing strategies and three specific strategies which include language input strategy,deducing strategy and monitoring strategy also show significant gender differences.Based on the research results,the author advocates that participants should raise awareness of using English writing strategies and do more writing practice,and they are also suggested to notice the gender differences in English writing strategies and to communicate with and learn from other gender.As for teachers,they are needed to give students instructions on English writing strategies according to gender differences and to provide more opportunities for students to practice English writing so that students can have more opportunities to apply English writing strategies to improve their English writing proficiency.