A Survey and Analysis of Senior High School Students’ English Writing Strategies

Along with the reformation and development of the education in China, foreign language researchers pay more and more attention to the teaching of language output. However, because the high school students in our country lack real language acquisition environment,“low efficiency of writing teaching”is still a prominent problem in the present English teaching. Through the statistics from the high school students’English exam, it is found that there is still a serious problem in students’writing which results from the fact that they are not able to use writing strategies to direct their writing.Since the 1970s, linguists, language researchers and language teachers have become interested in language learning strategies. They found that the proper use of writing strategy is of great help to the enhancement of writing ability. In this paper, through classroom observation, three questions are put forward: (1) What writing strategies are most frequently used by the students in NO.2 Senior High School of Xinxiang, Henan Province? (2) What writing strategies are the most effective ones according to the performance of skillful English writers? (3) What are the differences between the skillful English writers and the unskillful English writers in the using of writing strategies? And based on relative theories and through the questionnaire to the 120 students in No. 2 Senior High School of Xinxiang, the students’problems in English writing were preliminarily exposed and then analyzed; From the results and the discussion of this survey, it’s found that senior high school students really use learning strategies in English writing, but no wrting strategies are always used. Most of the writing strategies are sometimes or seldom used. Senior high school students still lack the awareness of using resourcing strategies and communication strategies in English writing. Therefore, all of the senior high school students should be given instructions on how to use learning strategies, especially English writing strategies. It is obvious that skillful English writers are more skilled with metacognitive strategies in English writing, while unskillful English writers are more likely to employ some inappropriate writing strategies. This means that the unskillful English writers can apply effective writing strategies which the skillful English writers have already used in writing and give up the inappropriate writing strategies which they have used in their writing. Last but not least, each student is different from others, so they cannot mechanically copy the strategies which are used by the skillful English writers. The strategy using is affected by a lot of factors, so the learners should choose the appropriate strategies for their own. Then this paper discusses and gives suggestions to English teachers on how to use writing strategies to solve the problems in English writing.The thesis consists of five parts.The first part is the general introduction of the whole study. The second part is the literature review. It introduces previous study of writing strategies at home and abroad. The third part is the research design, including the research questions, objectives and motivation, subjects, instruments and the methods. The forth part is the detailed analysis and discussions of the questionnaire. The last part is the conclusion and summary of the study. It proves that the writing competence is greatly influenced by the using of writing strategies.