Strategy Use and Regulation in the Writing Tasks of Chinese EFL Students

• Main Authors: You-Lian Huang, 黃有廉
• Other Authors: Feng-Sheng Hung
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2003
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/33682640610474894146

碩士 === 國立高雄第一科技大學 === 應用英語所 === 92 === This study aims to investigate how Chinese EFL students use and regulate writing strategies when dealing with different composition topics and genres. Participants were 23 juniors majoring in English at National Kaohsiung First University of Science and Technology. In order to examine the research questions and find out if any differences existed between Chinese EFL students at different levels of writing proficiency, based on their performance in the first semester, 3 students were selected (1 proficient student, 1 average student, and 1 less proficient student) as participating subjects, and only their data were analyzed and discussed. The students were taught and practiced on five genres of composition topics. For each genre, two topics were assigned for them to write about. The students were asked to fill out a 41-item questionnaire concerning the strategies they used each time they engaged in a writing topic. Along with the questionnaires, data collection and analysis also included individual interviews. The findings of the study show that the students at each level of writing proficiency used strategies differently in terms of the number of strategies and types of strategies. In addition, results indicate that the students possessed metacognitive knowledge—that is, they would regulate their use of strategies to deal with different writing tasks according to topic familiarity, topic difficulty, strategy familiarity, and strategy effectiveness. It is thus suggested that EFL students should be taught how to use strategies effectively and how to approach a variety of writing tasks.