A Study Of Task Knowledge In Perspective Of Avoidance Strategy In Writing Test Situation

Writing Metacognitive knowledge (MK) and writing strategy have been suggested by many researches that they are two important indexes of evaluating writing performance. Recent studies have also pointed out that Task Knowledge (TK), a component of MK, would affect choices of writing strategy (Victori, 1995; 1999; Wenden, 1995; 2001; Yang, 1999; Horwitz, 1987; Wu & Liu, 2004a; 2004b). As a popular strategy use, avoidance strategy (Miao, 2003; Petric & Czarl, 2003; etc.) has also been arousing many researchers' interest and claimed to be one of the resources resulting in fossilization, a head-aching issue in interlanguage development (Han, 2003; Hu, 2005; Selinker, 1972). Based on these previous studies, this thesis is trying to investigate the writing task knowledge in the perspective of avoidance strategy used in writing test situation.The participants in this study are senior 1 students from three schools of different levels in Beijing (They belong to key school at municipal level, key school at district level and ordinary school respectively). Through questionnaire and interview, the research makes a survey of task knowledge and choice of avoidance strategy of Chinese EFL writers. The characteristics of TK and avoidance strategy use of different participant groups are also compared and investigated.Data analysis shows that the definition of avoidance strategy needs further specification. In our study, it is confirmed that risk-taking and risk avoidance are in the continuum of language production. They are never absolute for all language learners, but would change in line with learners of different language proficiencies. In solving language problems, partly avoiding difficulty could be considered risk-taking to some extent, especially as to the senior middle school students. Based on this finding, the author redefined the questionnaire items about...