A Study of EFL Taiwanese Senior High School Students’ Writing Strategy Use and English Writing Proficiency

• Main Authors: FangLi Cheng, 程方麗
• Other Authors: Pengling Nieh
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2014
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/4v3h4e

碩士 === 南台科技大學 === 應用英語系 === 102 === The present study aims to explore EFL Taiwanese senior high school students’ writing strategy use and their English writing proficiency. It was conducted mainly in a quantitative method of collecting self-reported questionnaires to investigate the general tendencies of how currently EFL Taiwanese senior high school students deployed writing strategies in their learning English writing process and to what extent their use of writing strategies was correlated with their English writing proficiency. Besides, whether high English writing proficiency achievers differ from low English writing proficiency achievers in terms of writing strategy use and whether gender plays a role in affecting EFL Taiwanese senior high school students’ choice of writing strategies are also the issues under investigation in the present study. The total number of responded questionnaires was 1955, and the valid questionnaires without any missing or unrecognizable values were 1583 in number. These subjects were randomly chosen from two normally-distributed senior-third-grade classes from twenty-six public and private senior high schools in Tainan city. The findings of the study were summarized as follows. 1. Most subjects regarded English writing as somewhat difficult, but nearly ninety-six percent of those defined as low English writing proficiency achievers regarded it difficult or very difficult. Besides, English writing seemed to bother male subjects more than female subjects. As for English writing difficulty aspects, over half of the subjects, regardless of their English writing proficiency levels or gender, found them trapped in the limited vocabulary size. 2. The group of compensation strategies was most frequently used by all subjects, regardless of gender. To high English writing proficiency achievers, the group of memory strategies was most frequently used. 3. Overall, high English writing proficiency achievers and female subjects were respectively more strategic in English writing, thus deploying various groups/subgroups of writing strategies more frequently than their counterparts to a statistically significant degree. 4. As rare users of the subgroup of translating strategy, low English writing proficiency achievers in English writing tended to turn to ‘word for word translating’ strategy to convert the written texts in Chinese first into the English-written texts later with higher frequency than their counterparts, but such strategic behavior did not contribute to enhancing their English writing proficiency. 5. Of the six groups of writing strategies categorized based on Oxford’s (1990) definition of language learning strategies, the group of memory strategies was found to be statistically highly correlated with English writing proficiency. Besides, the groups of metacognitive and cognitive strategies were found to have statistically moderate positive correlations with English writing proficiency. The group of affective strategies was found to have the weakest positive correlation with English writing proficiency. 6. Such subgroups of strategies as ‘checking’ strategies, ‘key words’ strategies, ‘mental linkages’ strategies were found to be statistically highly correlated with English writing proficiency. And the subgroups of ‘generating ideas’ and ‘planning’ strategies were found to have statistically moderate positive correlations with English writing proficiency. 7. All subjects, regardless of gender, seldom made revisions of the written texts at ideational level if they edited their written-texts. And female subjects were found to revise what’s written at textual level more frequently than male subjects to a statistically significant degree. 8. The subgroup of ‘peer feedbacks’ strategies was used with higher frequency than the subgroup of ‘teacher feedback’ strategies by all subjects, regardless of English writing proficiency levels or gender. Thus, collaborative teamwork in helping teenagers learn English writing might deserve to be implemented.