A Study On The Correlation Between English Writing Strategies And Writing Proficiency Of Senior High School Students

English writing is one of important language skills that senior high school students are required to master;however,current situation of their writing is not optimistic.How to improve their writing proficiency has attracted numerous teachers' and researchers' attention.Writing strategy has been found to be an important factor influencing their writing proficiency,therefore,researches on writing strategies is beneficial to students' English writing.This study employs questionnaires and interviews to investigate senior high school students' English writing strategy use,including what writing strategies they use,the differences in their strategy use between high proficiency and low proficiency writers,and the relationship between English writing strategies and writing proficiency.This thesis first reviews researches that have been done on writing strategies.Drawing on Petric and Czarl's(2003)writing strategy questionnaire,the author revised a writing strategy questionnaire designed by a Chinese researcher to cater for senior high school students.The questionnaire was given out to six classes in Guangming New District Senior High School,and 272 valid questionnaires were collected.Students ranking top 27%are considered as high proficiency writers while students in the bottom 27%are identified as low proficiency writers.Data included their writing scores in two English exams,their questionnaire data,and their interview reports.With SPSS 22.0(Statistical Package for Social Sciences),the author first analyzed the means of their strategy use,and then ran an independent-samples t-test and correlation analysis of the two groups' data.The results are as follows:(1)On the whole,the frequency of the six general writing strategies used by senior high school students falls into a medium level.The most frequently used strategies are linguistic strategy and conception and organization strategy.And the least frequently used strategies are dictionary strategy and social/affective strategy.(2)The frequencies of high proficiency writers' strategy use were higher than low proficiency writers,except for social/affective strategy.And there was a significant difference between the two groups in terms of five types of English writing strategies,including linguistic strategy,conception and organization strategy,compensation strategy,resource management strategy and dictionary strategy.(3)There exist correlations between six types of English writing strategies and writing proficiency,and the compensation strategy has significant and high positive correlation with writing proficiency.As for the subcategories,eleven individual writing strategies significantly correlated with writing proficiency,among which nine individual strategies positively correlated with writing proficiency while two individual strategies negatively correlated with writing proficiency.It is hoped that this study will provide practical suggestions for students in English writing.The thesis ends with its implications for English writing teaching and learning in senior high school.