A Study On The English Summary Writing Strategies Of Senior High School Students

In recent years,summary writing has gradually become more widely used in high-stakes language tests at home and abroad,and this type of test task has also been introduced into the English test of the College Entrance Examination in China.The new English curriculum standards also put forward new requirements for students’ ability of summary writing.The use of writing strategies runs through the whole cognitive process of reading and writing when students complete the summary writing tasks,which may profoundly influence students’ writing performance.However,the existing theoretical and practical research of English summary writing strategies by Chinese scholars is somewhat insufficient and mainly focuses on specific writing strategies,while seldom considers affective strategies.The research subjects are mainly college students.Therefore,it is highly necessary and important to explore the use of strategies by senior high school students when they undertake English summary writing tasks.This current study adopts the methods of questionnaire survey,text analysis and interview to investigate the characteristics,internal relations and the impact mechanism of the meta-cognitive strategies,cognitive strategies,affective strategies and test strategies used by senior high school students in their English summary writing tasks.After a thorough review of the relevant literature at home and abroad,the study has constructed the analytical frameworks to design the questionnaire and analyse students’ summary writing performance.250 senior three students of Shanghai S High School participated the questionnaire survey,among whom 6 took the follow-up interviews.The results include,first of all,the use of meta-cognitive strategies is at a medium to high level,while that of cognitive strategies,affective strategies and test strategies are at a high level.In terms of the difference between students of different proficiency levels,upper group students tend to use more meta-cognitive strategies and cognitive strategies,while lower group students tend to use more affective strategies and test strategies.In terms of the internal relationship of each group of writing strategies,meta-cognitive strategies,cognitive strategies,emotional strategies and test strategies are all positively correlated,forming a dynamic strategy system,which produces a resultant force on writing performance.In terms of the impact mechanism of writing strategies on writing performance,cognitive strategies directly and positively affect writing performance,test strategies directly and negatively affect writing performance,meta-cognitive strategies play an indirect and positive role,and affective strategies play an indirect and negative role.Based on the above results,this study puts forward the following suggestions: teachers should promote the use of cognitive strategies,help students develop meta-cognitive strategies and adjust their emotional strategies,and discourage the use of some opportunistic test strategies for summary writing.