Relationship Between English Majors' Perceived EFL Writing Social Support And Autonomous Writing Ability

In recent years,the undergraduate education of English majors has made great progress.Students' English skills have been greatly improved,but their writing skills are still relatively weak.There are some problems in writing learning,such as lack of enthusiasm,initiative,planning,strategy and reflection.On the theoretical level,the development of autonomous writing ability is not only restricted by the internal factors of learners,but also related to the external environment formed by both teachers and students.There are many studies on the internal factors such as learners' writing strategies and self-efficacy in writing,but few studies have been conducted on how the external factors in learners' writing learning affect the development of autonomous writing ability,especially the lack of quantitative data support.In this context,this study,based on the actual situation of writing learning in English majors,comprehensively the quantitative and qualitative research methods adopted to explore the relationship between social support and autonomous writing ability of English majors.In this study,517 junior English majors from two universities in the Hengyang City of Hunan Province were selected as subjects to investigate their social support and autonomous writing ability in English writing learning through questionnaire and interview.The reliability and validity analysis,variance analysis and independent sample T-test of the questionnaire were conducted with the help of SPSS,the social statisticsoftware.According to the research results,the relationship between social support and autonomous writing ability in English writing learning for English majors was discussed: 1)The perception of writing support of junior English majors is highly correlated with the autonomous English writing ability on the whole;that is,there is a linear and positive correlation between the perception of social support and autonomous writing ability.2)There is no significant difference in student' perception of social support at different academic levels,but students at different writing levels have significant differences in social support and autonomous writing ability.3)The four dimensions of social support(teachers' academic support,teachers' emotional support,classmates' academic support and classmates' emotional support)have significant positive correlation with the five factors of English autonomous writing ability(the mastering of teacher's teaching aims,the setting of writing goals,the using of writing strategies,the monitoring of usage strategies and evaluation of writing process).Learners' perception of social support in the process of learning can significantly predict their autonomous writing ability.That is,students' autonomous writing ability can be predicted according to their perception of social support,so as to improve their autonomous writing ability.4)Compared with teachers' support,students' support is more correlated with English autonomous writing ability.And teachers' academic support and emotional support from peers' support have a significant impact on students' autonomous English writing ability than the emotional support from teachers' and peers' academic support,which means that the teachers' academic support and peers' emotional support have been defined as a promoter for students' ability of autonomous English writing.In other words,teachers' academic support and peers' emotional support for autonomous English foreignlanguage writing ability have stronger prediction ability.Through statistical analysis and interpretation,this study provides some references for how social support network can be constituted to enhance the effectiveness of foreign language writing instruction.