A Study On The Application Of English Writing Strategies And Cognitive Processes Of Writing Of The Sophomores Of English Majors In Inner Mongolia

English writing strategies are the methods or processes of extracting, processing or conveying information, for which goal-setting , topic-analyzing, idea-forming, idea-organizing, presenting and checking strategies are conducted in the cognitive process of writing. Studies of writing abroad mainly focus second languages, and scarcely on foreign languages. Fewer researches have been done on the relationship between writing strategies and the cognitive processes of writing at home. I conducted an investigation among 168 sophomores from 3 universities representing respectively the universities of different types in Inner Mongolia, to probe into the relationships between English writing strategies and sub-cognitive processes of writing .The analysis of correlation by SPSS(13.0) shows: (1) Writing Strategies and Cognitive Process of Writing have a moderate correlation on the whole, with a relatively strong correlation between the topic-analyzing, idea-organizing and checking strategies and writing strategies(Group One variables ),and an even stronger correlation between goal-setting ,idea-organizing strategies and writing process (Group Two variables),which does not support the hypothesis that writing strategies and cognitive processes of writing have a strong correlation. (2) The frequency of the use of writing strategies and their respective significance may vary in the process of writing. Goal-setting, idea-forming, idea-organizing ,and checking strategies have a strong correlation with the cognitive process of setting writing goals ,forming ideas, organizing ideas and checking. Goal-setting ,idea-forming ,idea-organizing ,and checking strategies have great influence on the process of setting goals .The result supports the hypothesis that in the process of writing the application of the sub-strategies varies.(3)Analysis of variance and comparison between weights show that in writing teaching teachers may use different ways to improve students' awareness of learning strategies of writing and the use of them; there are significant differences between the use of strategies by students from the three universities. Students in Inner Mongolia University are more frequently applying these strategies than the students in both Inner Mongolia Normal University and Inner Mongolia Agriculture University. There are significant differences between the application of goal-setting and checking strategies between groups (P<0.01).There are no significant differences in the application of other strategies such as learning strategies of writing, topic-analyzing, idea-forming, presenting strategies .This result supports the hypothesis that there is significant difference between universities in the use of writing strategies in the writing process.