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An investigation of writing instruction of English as foreign language: the variation of
English proficiency learners’ strategy usage under process-oriented writing
Ch I introduction
Research Motivation
According to White and Arndt (1991), teaching and learning are an integration
involving both teachers and students in a partnership; among the four skills of
English language learning, writing is far from being a simple matter of describing
language of expressing thoughts. Simpson (2005) indicates that writing, however,
remains as one of the most difficult areas for teachers and students of English. Best
known of process writing, it focuses on the steps to instruct learners presenting ideas
or thoughts step by step (Unger & Fleischman, 2004); process writing is considered
as the more effective approach to work with individual needs and assist in the
writing methods (Wajasinski & Smith,
). Focusing on the individual needs, it is
said that the use of learning styles of differences of learners will lead to the
interaction of learning-centered approach to improve the learning outcome (Riding
& Rayner,
Shucksmith,
, Wenden & Rubin,
and Nisbet &
), and so does one of the learning strategies; the learning
strategies research does concern the classification of characteristics of effective
learners to determine the relation of learning styles and strategies usage (O’Malley &
Chamot, 1990). Learners have the preference of stylistic differences (Das, 1988); to
some extent, the cognitive styles mentioned to affect the learning behavior, so did to
the learning development (Schmeck, 1988). Understanding the interaction of
learning situations and learning styles can make learners more successful in learning
language (Pask, 1988). In addition, the studies of learning styles and learning
strategies noticed that individual learners have the different implements of learning
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in a simple task, not to mention the further integration of strategies use in the writing
activity; the more successful learners adopt more strategy use to integrate all
possible strategies as many as possible (Kirby, 1988; Schmeck, 1988 ; Chamot and
Kuper, 1989).
Therefore, the researcher conducted this study intend to find out what is the
relationship between learning styles and learning strategies of freshmen and senior
levels of English major in the university; the strategies use under process writing
approach was also concerned to reveal the differences of gender and learning
proficiency.
Background Introduction
The paper aims at discovering learners’ use of learning strategies under the instruction
of process-oriented writing and the connection between learning styles and strategies.
The question of how to teach writing rises from all differentiate appropriate ways;
since the 1970’s the expert such as Murray, gave the role of writing and better
revision of instruction to teach. Before taking a deeper look on process-oriented
writing, some divisions of learning need to be realized. The first part will be
discussed about learning, according to the theory of Philips and Soltis (2004), could
be traced from the ancient Greek times of what is famous for Plato’s theory of
learning.
In the learning theory field, the classical theories as Plato and John Locke, the
behaviorism that could be divided into classical conditioning, operant conditioning
and more contributor, Skinner, and to the extending Piagetian structures and
psychological constructivism; furthermore, to the social aspects of learning, John
Dewey and Vygotsky (1981) represented and, cognitive structures and disciplinary
structures, Bruner, Schwab, and Hirst did. In the research of English as second
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language (ESL) learning, many researchers have devoted much effort exploring what
variables play important roles to affect the learning efficiency of second language;
within many factors, the learning strategy use will be the focus at present based on
Griffiths’ description (ELT Journal, 2007). Individual differences also provide the
deep investigation of learning styles to some extent of cognitive notions to recognize
promoting the awareness of human behaviors, followed by Riding and Rayner’s
thinking (1998). A second/foreign language learner has to adjust to another language
system from the grammar, lexicon, syntax, and not to mention the most
differentiated integration to write as a performance. Within the learning skills, there
are four parts included: listening, speaking, reading, and writing; writing is
composed of various phases, and needs more integrations for learners to achieve.
Writing has changed from the grammar lexicon level to seek for the present of final
product, to the different perspective, focusing on the learning process and the whole
improvement of writers. Within various writing approaches, the process writing is
one of helping learners to focus on the learning process but the final result;
processing writing refers to a broad range of strategies/procedures that promote the
learners’ constant questioning in a supportive way, either by their peers or by their
teachers (Riberio & Alice, 1999). Process approach to writing is incorporated, and
identically suitable for the English as Foreign Language (EFL) teaching, with
integration to other skills of listening, reading and speaking (North Carolina State
Dept. of Public Instruction, Raleigh. Instructional Services, 1998). Due to filling in
the need of learner’s practical purposes, writing developed in a discourse rather than
a purely grammatically-based approach to language teaching (Holmes, 2006).
Writing is treated as the learners’ spontaneity, leading to the negative learning of
pressure to feed the requirement; the past instruction of writing was considered as
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the accuracy of grammar and content expression to diminish students’ self-learning
interest (Simpson, 2005).
The mainstream of writing instruction is to search for the final product, the
presentation of an essay. Composing is viewed as knowledge/thinking problem and
is seen as a cognitive process (Imtiaz, 2003). However, recent research in writing
may have thoughts about the goal of process, leading to the improvement of writers
themselves. Followed by the Hewins’ (1986) statement, process writing approach is
the proper way to create a supportive atmosphere in the classroom that motivates
students to write. Students are trained to generate ideas for writing, think of the
purpose and audience, and write multiple drafts in order to present written products
that communicate their own ideas indicated by Ghaith (2002).
The problem of searching for the final product, leading to the presentation of an
essay, causes the poor performance of writers. Weaker writers spend little time
planning, while skilled writers do more planning and reviewing, concurring by
Goldstein and Carr’s (1996) proposition of National Assessment of Educational
Progress (NAEP). Writing is a recursive process, that is to say, the planning and
revising is to be back and forth. Under the traditional writing pedagogy, the criteria
may be needed to fulfill with by the English language learners while acquiring,
however, the writers may lose a sense of ownership or a sense of purpose or
audience with only achieving the text required by the instructors (Lipson, Mosenthal,
Daniels & Woodside-Jiron, 2000; Kirstein, 2006).
To be more, students may have the added burden facing a new language and straggle
with expressing new ideas, comparing to the instructors, also have the depression
while all the students appear the same mistakes again and again searching for the
accuracy and appropriateness (Hewins, 1986). Some studies may focus on the final
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product of writing quality or length, while others mainly put more effort on how to
help English as foreign language (EFL) or English as second language (ESL)
learners to learn better. Time and effort are essential to the complementation of better
English writing practice, while the little opportunity for Taiwanese students situated
in the foreign language environment only in classroom (Huang, 2004). The teaching
situation for English writing faces difficulties, from the traditional thinking of
memorizing texts to pass the exams and tests, leading to mystery for current English
pedagogy. The Grammar-Translation method is the best known way to fit in the
current pedagogy, and still deep-seated nowadays (Huang, 2004). Though there are
different methods for English teaching such as Total Physical Responses (TPR),
communicative teaching, and Silent method, writing pedagogy seems to be a tough
task to solve easily by the adoption of methods above. The vision of demands to
adapting instruction promotes highly to the needs of diverse students, and the
capability of teachers for how to write successfully (Colville-Hall & Hunn, 1994).
It may also be noted that the feedback of teachers or peers and the opportunity of
revising written work based on the feedback are key to students’ development as
writers, suggested by Goldstein and Carr (1996) and Cowie (1995). Teachers give
feedbacks and tray ideas for the content of writing students write in their drafts
(Ghaith, 2002). Interestingly, under process writing instruction, “how do I write” and
“how do I get started” are the questions writers may raise themselves while
exploring to the beginning of process writing (Ghaith, 2002). Therefore, the
guidance from teachers and feedback timely in all phases of process writing are
crucial to the performance of students to write. Teachers encourage students
engaging in the inspiration of generating ideas and thinking, to some extent, and
reach to the most proficient skills demonstration with the learning disabilities (Marie
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& Denise M., 2002). Students who have learning disabilities can especially benefit
from the process writing approach because it works with individual needs and assists
in the writing methods suggested by Marie and Denise M. (2002).
The method of giving feedback could be divided into several sections, first,
reformulation is the way suitable for larger class (Cowie, 1995). Then, followed by
the topical structure analysis; student self monitoring would be the next step to
achiever and to the last one, peer response. Through all the phases, it may take some
time to proceed, but the teacher can handle the whole process as an advantage
(Cowie, 1995).
Within the learning, especially, the investigation between learning strategies usage
and writing seems to be naive field. Learning involves the application of learning
activities in such a way that an individual’s knowledge base or his/her repertory of
skills changes (Vermetten, Lodewijks and Vermnut’s, 1999). The main research
focuses on the pedagogical strategies of teaching only, however, the learner self
strategies inventory in writing certainly doesn’t compatible with the pedagogical
research. The foreign language or English as foreign language research do attract the
attention after English as second language studies highly invested. The learning
strategy emerged as a field of inquiry in the mid-1970s, when second language
acquisition researchers began to focus their attention on individual variation among
learners suggested by Nisbet (2002). The strategies of learning are learner-generated,
enhancing and developing learners’ competence, and visible and unseen to the
information and memory (Nisbet, 2002). From the perspective of O’Malley and
Chamot (1990), the three items of learning strategy involved: metacognitive,
cognitive, and social/affective strategies.
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Research Questions
Based on the descriptions mentioned above, the research questions will be discussed in
the following descriptions:
1. What are the learning strategies learners adopt to achieve the goal of fulfilling the
process writing?
2. What are the learning strategies of male and female learners that apply under
process writing approach?
3. Is there any significant improvement after learners took the lesson of process
writing?
Purpose of this Study
In studying the research of learning, many literature reviews show that there are
many components affecting the efficiency of learning. The role of teacher (Philips &
Soltis, 2004) and the preference of learners (Riding & Rayner, 1998) play important
keys to learning performance; through repetition of strategy use, learners will
become autonomous to cope with language tasks if required consciously but inquired
unconsciously in their memory (Chamot, 2005). However, the study of process
writing is quite a few; the one which conducts learning strategy and process writing
is not significantly obvious shown to date. For the reason, the researcher hopes to
investigate the learners as English a major in the university learning strategy use
based on their preference dimensions to get the comparison of English levels and
learning proficiency to some extent. Furthermore, the research applies questionnaire
and random case interview to demonstrate the learning proficiency of learners’
differences while taking the process writing approach and further provides the data
about the differential strategy usage of genders and learning proficiency.
Overview of this Study
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Chapter one is an introduction, including basic information to three concepts
(relevant learning style, learning strategy, and process-oriented writing), motivation,
research questions, purpose of the study, etc. Chapter two is the literature review
included learning, learning style, learning strategy, process writing and the
relationship between learning strategy and process writing. Chapter three is the
methodology that presents subjects, instrument, the learning strategy dimension
questionnaire, random cases interviews, procedures and data analysis. Chapter four
shows the result and discussion reporting the findings of four research questions:
What are the learning styles learners will present in the process writing? What are
the learning strategies learners will adopt to achieve the goal of fulfilling the process
writing? What are the learning strategies of male and female learners that will apply
under process writing approach? Is there any significant improvement after learners
took the lesson of process writing? Chapter five is the findings and conclusion
supporting the study and more suggestions to the study and further research.
Limitation of the study
The major limitation of this study could be the sampling choices. The participants
would be chosen a limited area. The selection of teachers would be another concern
to limit the scope of study. In this study, all the instructors are from the department
of Applied English in one technology university, the numbers of instructors would be
five.
The second limitation of this study could be the methods. The researcher adopts the
questionnaire and the random interview to emphasize, to some extend, the scope of
the study may be narrow. However, the research is the example for a general sample
of English as foreign language (EFL) to convey the investigation the learning
strategy usage within the process-oriented writing, the credibility and pioneer study
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for further study was trust-worthy.
The relevant researches of learning strategy applied in the writing performance are
few, especially related to process-oriented writing. Wang (2004) has studied in the
writing process of Chinese EFL learners, providing that the rare information of
studying in EFL or foreign language contrast to the richness of researches in ESL
learning.
Thus, there are limitations for this study, the clarification to see clear the concepts of
learning strategies and process-oriented writing can help further research to move
forward to better solution and studies in the future to the learners and instructors a
scope to overcome the learning problems.
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Chapter II Literature Review
This chapter was divided into several sections, and firstly the researcher would like
to define some specialized terms: learning, process writing, learning strategies and
learning styles. Furthermore, the interaction between process writing and learning
strategies would be the concern to discuss. Finally, the implementation of process
writing in the classrooms will be presented.
Process Writing
Writing, both teachers and learners, considered as a tough work to produce a better
and well-structured pattern, especially being an EFL/ESL learner. In order to realize
what process writing is, the difference needs to clarify to distinguish from the
traditional teaching way-writing as a goal to fulfill and the complexity of change
indeed.
Writing as a process is a way to teach writing. Put it an easy way to describe, the main
focus is the process in writing, and the key point is how to write rather than what to
write. In traditional teaching of grammar lexicon class, writers may mislead the
topics or understanding of genre in order to write differently, and that concludes that
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the deflection of acquisition what instructors give, leading to negative learning
motivation for writers (Holmes, 2006).
Within writing instruction, traditionally, many teachers would have strongly beliefs of
what the writing should be taught; while in the seventies(1970s), the famous
presenter, Donald Murray, hold the thoughts that writing is the reflection of his own
writing to devote a framework of process writing. Writing pedagogy had different
viewpoints from an exclusive point to the process in writing. Since the 1970s, the
methodology of writing as a process has been taken as a better way to help learners
and instructors in the classrooms. There are some crucial factors to implement the
writing, however, undertaken by the learners. From the previous instruction, the final
written product will be the goal to write. Within the two major participants, teachers
as a key factor definitely guide in the writing process and put more emphases on the
complexity of writing process (Mol, 1992). The process writing instruction is one of
the ways to help learners immerge their thoughts into words, but interestingly, it
doesn’t focus on the final outcome but the learning process. Ribeiro and Alice (1999)
defined that learning and teaching writing through process writing is like mirroring
itself. To be more detailed description on process writing, it is a pure situated
learning (Ribeiro & Alice, 1999); within processing writing, there are four phases to
be presented: planning, composing, revising and editing. (Hedge, 1988)
In the view of Goldstein and Carr’s essay, “Can Students Benefit from Process
Writing”, also defines process writing as a broad range of strategies that include
pre-writing activities, such as defining the audience, using a variety of resources,
planning the writing, as well as drafting and revising. All the activities can be related
to “process-oriented writing to teach.” Writing is a recursive process from the
beginning to fulfilling the final product. It is also the approach that emphasizes a
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cycle of revision during which students draft, edit, revise, and redraft their work (G.
Genevieve, Lindsay & Rosa, 2004). The writer may rewrite, replan, redraft and
revise to the consequences of what they write (Y. Lipson, Mosenthal, Daniels &
Woodside-Jiron, 2000). In the process writing approach, brainstorming, prewriting,
drafting, writing, and revising are the main factors to move back and forth within
these stages (Argueta, 2006). During the process of writing phases, the mistakes are
acceptable for better revision. The message of learners trying to express to
communicate with is paramount and developing, and inaccurate, attempts at
handwriting, spelling, and grammar, are accepted, while the control of learning skills
for students will gain within the writing process of regular opportunities assumed by
Jarvis (2002).
During the interaction of process writing, except the writer’s stages of writing, the
instructor plays an important role as well. The instructor gives feedbacks to the
revise written work to help the learners develop as writers; from the feedbacks, the
learners get the opportunity to improve better (G. Genevieve, Lindsay & Rosa, 2004).
The classroom of process-oriented writing forms a workshop atmosphere that
enhances the learning of skills rather than correction of paper from teachers (Jackson,
1996). In the English teaching, writing is considered as the integrated skill contrast
to the other skills-listening, speaking and reading; within lots of ways, process
writing approach seems to be more popular nowadays. Jarvis (2002) proposes that
process writing approach is a valuable way for any ESL teacher who wants to
improve the writing of their students. Through the process writing instruction,
though it’s not concerned about perfection of text, learners can reach to the
perfection nearly by producing, reworking or revising (Simpson, 2005). At the
viewpoints of any ESL teachers, the abilities and grade levels of ESL writers vary in
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writing, however, process writing will assist ESL students, whatever their ability
level, improve their writing (Jarvis, 2002). Learning to write like learning to
accomplish things needs time and practice, in other words, all the students can be
excellent writers with enough time and practice to develop by Jarvis saying (2002)
and Ghaith’s (2002) assumption.
The instructor also can give guidelines to the learners, according to Unger and
Fleischman (2004), there are five stages involved- 1) engaging in the prewriting
tasks; 2) creating an initial draft; 3) revising the text; 4) editing for conventions; 5)
publishing or presenting a polished final draft. Under the process-oriented writing
instruction, workshop seems to be one of the appropriate discussions from peer’s
feedbacks to revise the text, that is, the publishing would be the final goal to achieve
or get rewards psychologically. Jarvis (2002) proposed that the Process Writing
method values the talents and growth of individual writers and makes them want to
continue writing because they feel good about their abilities.
The main stages of process writing, would be stated as four parts: planning,
composing, revising, and editing mentioned above. Though lots of authors or
researchers have other opinions on division of process writing instruction, there is
still the main category to make it clarify. They will be described as followed. Here is
the flow chart of process writing stages below:
Figure 1. The flow chart of process writing stages proposed by Cowie (1995)
Planning
Composing
Revising
Editing
As the four stages of process writing simply indicated, the arrows of two direction
mark between planning and composing/ composing and revising imply that learners
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go through these stages and can be back and forth to revise to a better performance
of drafts.
Planning
Planning is the initial stage of fulfilling the process writing. It is the previewing the
main ideas or generating information necessary for the conditions in advance
(O’Malley and Chamot, 1990). Simpson (2005) also proposes that prewriting
includes topic selection and planning what to say. The brainstorming activities are
the convention to achieve within this stage. Furthermore, the argument learners state
may also appear to show.
Composing
To be frank, composing is the draft learners produce; no grammar mistakes will be
the main concern, and learners only focus on the expression of their thinking. Within
this stage, learners need to involve the knowledge of syntactic and semantic
constraints and the motor skills of writing (Argueta, 2006)
Revising
Learners expand the composing (or the first draft) by gaining the feedback from the
peers or instructors to form a second draft or better version writing, and to more even,
this stage could be reverse back to the composing back and forth (Rebeiro and Alice,
1999). To that situation, learners are not limited for second draft, and the third or
fourth version are even acceptable. All the grammar or semantic mistakes would be
revised and used appropriate expressions to show.
Editing
The final draft will be written and revised and needed to proofread again (Hewins,
1986). Group works of peer reviews would be the activities to improve learners’
drafts. The form and content of writing product may be the main concern for
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instructors to indicate for learners to revise (Simpson, 2005).
Among all the phases, rewriting is a crucial factor to accomplish a better writing
draft; proposed by Cowie (1995), rewriting is the key to improve writing, being
fundamental clearly.
The feedback activities also have an impact on learners to write, too. In Cowie’s article
(1995), feedbacks of process writing may make a difference on the quality of writing.
The surface errors such as grammar mistakes, syntax and spelling often are corrected
by teachers rather than the global concerns such as overall organization, cohesion
and clarify of meaning. It is because teachers tend to be language instructors rather
than writing teachers (Cowie, 1995). The early stage on surface level errors would
have an impact learners write a first draft and rewrite other drafts responding to the
writing without focusing on the writers, to the extend, the global concerns.
The method of feedback can be four parts to accomplish. First, the reformulation is
the step to give model to the larger class. From the description of Cowie (1995),
reformulation, initially, the teacher will give a middle paper from the students and
then rewrite it as a native speaker might; then the students will compare and contrast
between the original and the reformulated one on the surface errors and global
concerns; students are trained through discussion to cultivate the ability of giving
comments and feedbacks, and through the discussion in the class, students may pay
attention to it. The reformulation is viewed as a teaching strategy for a common
writing task and performs by Allwright and Allwirght (1988).
Secondly, through Lautamatti’s identified progressions of topic structure analysis
mentioned in Cowie’s (1995) essay, the parallel topics, being identical; sequential
topics, being different; extended parallel topics are interrupt sentences. By adopting
topic structure analysis, the cultivation of organizing ideas and focusing on the
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topics, and improving the coherence of writing arise students’ autonomy willing to
analyze, even facing the redundant technique they have learnt.
Thirdly, the students self monitoring, the application by Charles proposed by Cowie
(1995), have students write down the comment on the margin after reading through
an article, then teachers giving feedbacks to the comments; then students rewrite the
article after seeing the feedbacks. Ghaith (2002) demonstrated that peer conference
check and teacher-student check for drafts to revise the writing, also providing the
model to improve students’ papers. Students as self-commenters are allowed to give
feedbacks to content and clarity of meaning to reorganize and sequence relevant
ideas, and add or delete details as they details as they strive to make their meaning
clear, performed by Ghaith (2002) instruction. Fourthly, the peer response is the
guidelines from peer to give criticism or comment on each others’ work. The peer
writing conference proposed by Ghaith (2002) may provide the suggestions to revise
others’ work though there’s a disadvantage of reluctance of criticism or comment
(Cowie, 1995).
Through the stages of process writing, students go through the stages mentioned above
(planning, composing, revising, and editing) in a conscious way. The instructors can
interfere as a guider to the stages and give suggestions or strategies to help learners
to achieve (Mol, 1992).
The perspective from teachers’ expectations on learners’ writing is also a factor to
affect the implementation of process approaches. McCarthey (1993) suggests that
the instructors without extensive training of process approaches may lead to focus on
the traditional teaching to fix the errors such as grammar, punctuation, and spelling
rather than the interaction with writers, the process of writing.
Caudrey (1995) puts more emphasis on input efforts both on teachers and students;
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the individualization of learners may mislead to the correspondence of teaching
syllabuses. The two reasons above are the two crucial factors within the
process-oriented writing. The learning process of adopting process approach in
writing focuses on the process, contrast to the examination tested a single pattern
only within a short time, caused a conflict. We focus on the essence of process
approach-the learning process rather than a final product. Overall the teaching
methods, diversity and simplification are the two trends to apply within the language
teaching. Through the suggestion of Caudrey (1995), the characteristics of adopting
process approach may bring one step at a time to follow and the self-learning of
students spontaneously. Some learners may consider the process writing a
complicated phrases in learning, however, it is a clear vision to see through the
writing itself, leading to a better solution to writers. Under the thinking of process
writing, though the main focus is the process of learning stages, contrast to the
traditional teaching of stressing on writing product finally, may need a broad
rethinking toward process writing. Caudrey (1995) and some others indicate that
process writing is not only focusing on the process of all learning phases but also
fitting to the need of product eventually. Based on the respondents’ experiment of
Caudrey (1995), he found that the respondents would solve the problems by
simplification in practical. The situated learning is the need to direct the practical,
social, personal problems to participate in the learning process completely (Ribeiro
& Alice, 1999)
Learning
Before talking to the perspectives of learning styles and strategies, we may need to take
a deep insight of what is learning.
Going back to the ancient time, the famous Greek philosopher, Plato (428?-347 B.C.),
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emphasized that his ideas of learning thought in a usual conversation concerned the
impact of stories and examples through dialogues. Plato thought learning was a
process of recalling inside human mind that has existed from birth and further
explained why some people can learn better than others, even firmer. From his
thinking, teaching is just an assist of learning better. Another perspective of Plato to
the learning regards it as a passive process to human mind. Based on his story of
cave, he proposed that humans can only see on the wall in the cave is what they
believe it is all knowledge until releasing outside to face the reality. Through that,
teaching is helping humans away from ignorance; learning is a process of passive to
see clearly. However, the Lockean atomistic model didn’t approve Plato’s thoughts
that knowledge was innate. The British philosopher John Locke (1632-1704)
developed a theory of learning that made an impact to the modern psychology, and
so did to the pedagogy till now. He described that human is an empty cabinet from
being an infant, so knowledge is something needs to show to learn. He realized that
human has the evolution development, but he couldn’t explain how to acquire all the
capability with his theory. He assumed that the newborn baby knows nothing, but it
immediately starts to have experience of its environment via its senses. Under this
circumstance, we may provide his thought-no seeing, no knowledge gaining. If the
children have no experience, they may be lack of some thoughts, and then a result of
deficiencies of deeper construction appeared. For Plato and Locke, they are the
theorists focusing on physical and mental activities emphasized; based on Phillips
and Soltis (2004), they consider that activity was indeed to be irrelevant and
intruding physical factors. Dewey also holds that thought as well according to his
proposal () They suppose two explanations to oppose Locke’s perspective; for one
thing, it is not at all clear that experience comes to us in atomic units that get
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bundled together into meaningful complexes by our minds; for the other, there are
also a number of well-known optical illusions that are difficult for Locke’s atomistic
theory to explain. The simple ideas under Locke’s atomic model would be
mechanical; not all learning can be simple tasks to complete, and the deficiency will
grow up infinitely.
Behaviorism
The second theory of learning relates to the behaviorism that appeared around the
nineteenth century that searching for how animals learn, the nature of drives and
instincts, problem solving, and so on, based on the short description of Phillips and
Soltis. The starting was from Darwin’s theory of evolution, at that time, people
watched and observed animal’s learning; some experts presupposed that the learning
behaviors and research can applied to human learning (for example, John B. Watson
(1878-1958)), however, Watson didn’t explain what people have learned and make it
a tough assumption of spot of observable behaviors. Because of the serious
assumptions, psychology raised to work on the interest of human differences such as
inner problems; the behaviorism developed gradually. Behaviorism mainly concerns
humans were biologically wired or equipped so that they could interact with the
environment, and profit from this interaction, according to the Philips and Soltis
(2004). Behaviorists notice how a behavior acquired not how new knowledge is
acquired, that is, they mainly discuss the process of behavior while learning, not the
mind of learners; that may fall into the cliché of subjectivity, not a science presented.
For example, while learning a new theory, behaviorists demonstrate how to lead a
learner to achieve learning but the result of understanding a theory.
Basically, there are two separations of behaviorism; one is the classical conditioning
proposed by the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov while he observed dog’s digestion
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behavior to realize whenever he fed the dogs, they started to produce saliva. He
found there is a stimulus, there is a response presented; in other word, classical
conditioning could be replaced as a name of stimulus substitution. The other of the
behaviorism is operant conditioning, stated by E. L. Thorndike (1874-1949) for his
study of observing cat’s behavior. From the observation, he found that a cat may get
the learning curve to be more successful by overly trials, that is, practice makes
perfect to reach the goal. The law of exercise presented stronger pleasure would
bring strong reaction. Furthermore, besides these two, Skinner needs to be
mentioned as well. B. F. Skinner found an action or response needs not be reinforced
or rewarded every time; he found that his rats can learn effectively by rewards but
randomly. Another effort he made was the experiment of teaching pigeons to present
shaping behavior that he would make pigeons move or circle by reinforcement. He
also applied the assumptions to human learning that human gets the right answer to a
question via rewarding. In other words, there is a mechanism of reinforcement of
response in learning. However, both Thorndike and Skinner have a different
approach, according to Philips and Scotis (2004), they all neglect what happened to
the behavior after stimulus occurred. They both propose one system in learning and
we could learn easily; effective treatment for humans can develop human’s behavior
for human disorder or antisocial behavior. Through the description of Philips and
Scotis (2004), they suggest the concern of psychologists to make use of mind and
consciousness is unscientific (Skinner also agreed), so there is a need to gain more
data to support to be objective and accessible to the public.
Learning Measurement
According to the theory of Vermunt and Vermetten (1999), they proposed that the
measurement of students learning may conclude four components, they are in the
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following list-cognitive processing, metacognitive regulation strategies, conceptions
of learning, and learning orientations.
Before mentioned this four categories, the teaching principles need to be clarified to
make clear conception of learning. Learning is the basic idea, or put it another way, a
general term to the styles and strategies of learning. Based on Schmeck (1988), he
proposes that there are three perspectives of learning: the experiential, the behavioral,
and the neurological. The first perspective is the experiential (or called
phenomenological). It differs from everyone whose learning is the literal retention of
knowledge or the realization to reality by interpretative process. The second one
refers to the behavioral that relates to cognitive views, the reaction to respond all
stimulus through observing changes. Finally, the neurological perspective of learning
is the stimulus passed to the nervous system and then transforms itself through tracks
left by thoughts (Schmeck, 1988). Learning is a framework of integrated mental
concepts to help personal identity but just a repetition of memorized activity. That is,
one needs stimulus accepted by his/her neurological system then to transform it
through the “memory tracks” of thoughts.
Based on the proposal of O’Malley and Chamot (1990) of learning in cognitive theory,
they suggest that second language acquisition cannot be understood without
addressing the interaction between language and cognition, and indicate that at
present this interaction is only poorly understood. While learning in the second
language process, there are parallels between cognitive skills and theory interacted.
Besides, the awareness and learning work functionally and separately to most
learned behaviors. Language and linguistic processes interact with each other, but
they actually are separate entities. Motivation is also related to affect the process of
social processes to bring out the formulation about learning; though the explanation
22
of all theory did concern about the importance of learning development but it failed
to address the implication of roles in learning such as the cognitive theory and
learning research to be extensive worked, neither is the learning strategy mentioned.
From the cognitive psychology, the development of learning is based on information
processing and studies and theory (O’Malley & Chamot, 1988). The framework of
human brain to process information suggests in two distinct ways, either in short
term memory, active working that is modest amounts of information in a brief period
of time, or in long-term memory that sustained storage of time isolated elements to
be interconnected networks for the after-use.
The learning styles
Clusters of procedures (or called tactics), that is, clusters of questions reveal how
students combined them to form inventory scales of the questionnaire made by
Schmeck (1988), called the scores measurement to be the learning styles, but he
would name it learning orientation instead. Learning styles are narrower than
learning orientation properly. Learning style is the inclination of an individual used
strategy in varied situations proposed by Schmeck (1988) and he suspects it is the
presence of a style. It is agreed that there might be a major dimension of cognitive
styles: global-holistic attention, perception, and thinking at one end and
focused-detailed attention, perception, and thinking at the other (Schmeck, 1988);
there are some alternative terms represented above. The terms field dependent and
field independent, or global and articulated, to imply to attentional and perceptual of
a classification of style (Schmeck, 1988). Others proposed impulsive and reflective
styles and Kirby (1988) stated global and analytic; Pask (1988) referred to holist and
serialist to the comprehension and operation of styles. Das (1988) also suggested
successive and simultaneous processing to the reflection of learning of individual
23
preference. In terms of development of style, Kirby (1988) addressed that either
global at the first stage moves to analytic at the later stage of learning, the synthesis
of both would be the better result as a whole achievement; the filed dependent and
field independent, based on the same point of Kirby (1988), should be the integration
of both rather than a single appearing.
Learning style are fairly stable and consistent approaches to learning across a variety
of learning activities suggested by Peternson (2003).
Furthermore, the factor, motivation, did have an important impact to the learning styles
that are abstract to the visible behavior but observable through longitudinal
observations of the same individuals; Schmeck (1988) also states this perspective to
be observable as well, but the main concern of this study are not addressing on this
influential factor here to discuss.
The cognitive processing constitutes the patterns of thinking activities that students
use to process learning content proposed by Vermetten, Lodemijks and Vermunt
(1999). The metacognitive regulation is concern about the manifest and control over
cognitive processing; these two are strategies may be undertaken learning styles.
The learning strategies of learners
The foreign instruction has been transferred from the teacher to students and from
teaching strategies to learning strategies followed by Chang’s (2003) description.
Based on definition of Schmeck (1988), the term strategy was originally a military
term that referred to procedures for implementing the plan of a large-scale military
operation. The research of language learning strategies might start from Joan Rubin
(1987), in the late 1970s, proposed at her work with the good language learner
(Rubin, 1987). Furthermore, Oxford (1990) also made it specific that strategy
involves the optimal management of troops, ships, or aircraft in a planned campaign.
24
It is assumed that different learning outcome suitable to the verified learners and
learners may use different learning approaches to be successful in learning (Rubin &
Wenden, 1987). The sub-category to be more specific steps to fulfill a plan is called
tactics, which are tools to achieve the success of strategies (Oxford, 1990). To be
more general, strategy can be defined as the implementation of a set of procedures
(tactics) for accomplishing something. Through the description above, learning
strategies can refer to a sequence of procedures for accomplishing learning
(Schmeck, 1988) or operations employed by the learner to aid the acquisition,
storage, retrieval, and use of information (Oxford, 1990). In that concept, learning
strategies are specific actions taken by the learner to make learning easier, faster,
more enjoyable, more self-directed, more effective, and more transferable to new
situations (Oxford, 1990; Riding & Rayner, 1998; Nisbet & Shucksmith, 1988;
O’Malley, 1987).
Another specialist, Kirby (1988), includes an excellent discussion of the subtle but
important distinctions between strategies and tactics plus the closely related “skills.”
He notes that a skill may either by intentionally conscious decision or by
automatically unconscious decision to apply. Skills are things we can do; strategies
and tactics involve the conscious decisions to implement those skills (or called plans)
(Schmeck, 1988). And plan can be conceptualized by motivation. Conscious learning
can proceed deeply through intentional awareness and more responsible. Through
internal control (or strategy use) and incorporation with skills and plans can achieve
the successful learning. We all know learning can be achieved by certain strategies,
but how important they are. Oxford (1990) states that learning strategies are steps
taken by students to enhance their own learning, especially important for language
learning because they are tools for active, self-directed involvement, which is
25
essential for developing communicative competence. More strategies may assist
learners to be improved to higher proficiency (Oxford, 1990; Wharton, 2000);
learning strategies are sensitive to the learning context and to the learner’s internal
processing preferences (Chamot, 2005; Ramsden, 1988) based on learners’ past
successful strategy use (though one strategy is suitable in certain context may not be
the antidote for the other). Learning strategy is the procedures or actions under
conscious options to make learning easier and learner-oriented situations (Peterson,
2003).
In Oxford’s strategy types correspond to the Strategy Inventory for Language
Learning (SILL), they are described as followed:
Memory Strategy-remembering effectively.
Cognitive Strategy-using mental processes.
Compensation Strategy-filling in the missing information by compensating.
Metacognitive Strategy-planning and organizing.
Social/ Affective Strategy-emotions and peer works.
The basic proposition by Carson and Longhini (2002) gives a clear view to see the
Oxford’s strategy inventory. They defines the strategy inventory into six categories
(memory, cognitive, compensation, metacognitve, social, and affective; conversation
is included in compensation.); however, the research is based on the distinction
between meta-cognitive and cognitive strategies to be useful in second language
acquisition supported by O’Malley and Chamot (1990). Through the elaboration and
active mental processing of strategy usage, it is still important to take into
consideration the SILL types, but the fundamental framework to divide the strategy
inventory into three classes. Here the description is not to omit or ignore the
appearance and importance of not adopted strategies, it is that they will be the
26
combination with other strategies.
Within the ESL learning, three dimensions of learning strategies-metacognitive,
cognitive and social mediation would provide a basic framework to define. From the
model of learning strategies proposed by O’Malley and Chamot (1990), planning,
monitoring and evaluation would be in the subcategory of metacognitive strategies;
cognitive strategies involve with grouping, transfer, summarizing, and elaboration;
social mediation includes question for clarification and cooperation. Under the
distribution of EFL learning strategies, the metacognitive, cognitive and social
/affective strategies would be the options to state.
In the metacognive strategies, planning would be the main focus to discuss; in the
cognitive strategies, translation, substitution and contextualization is included, and
social would present as self-talk to reduce the psychological anxiety to learn.
Metacognitve strategies, refer to self-regulatory strategies in which learners are
aware of their own thinking and learning, and plan, monitor, and evaluate their own
learning endeavors from Chamot and Kuper’s emphasis (1989); the cognitive
strategies, the learners work with and manipulate the task materials themselves, and
moving towards to task implementation; as for the social or affective strategies, is
the interaction with teachers or peers to solve problems and affective actions of
learning behaviors.
The roles between style and strategy
Now that the styles and strategies of learning are the essential factors while learners
involve in the situations of learning; the two factors should be the perspectives to
help learners well.
Process can include styles, strategies, tactics and skills involved to compose; put it
another way to say, the most process-differentiated aspect would be in the analyzed
27
level to think and less strategies and styles differentiated aspect, more general level.
Plan is the integration of codes, in Kirby’s point of view (1988), which needs literal
recording of experience to represent our behavior in the process of learning. A
learning strategy is the approach that an individual adopts to overcome the limits of
their styles suggested by Sadler-Smith (2005). From the perspective of Rossi-Le
(1989), the explanation of Reid for learning styles and strategies,
“-unconscious or subconscious learning styles can become conscious learning
strategies, and to even more, the degree of learning strategies students apply in
language learning can reflect the preference of their learning styles related to the
background.”
It is not possible to observe one’s learning styles, however, it’s easier to observe
learning strategy by asking questions to some extent “which an individual adopts
particular behaviors in a given situation” (Sadler-Smith, 2005). The styles and
strategies of learning may be the main concern in language learning, but at the same
time, some issues such as preferences, motivation and age also matter as well to the
learning achievement, especially learning foreign languages (Oxford, 2003). The
relationship between styles and strategies usage are the focus examined by analysis
to testify the implication in language learning.
Strategy training is undoubtedly an important part of classroom language acquisition,
but it may be the case that strategies are not as modifiable as we have thought, given
the possibility of the overriding influences of learning styles suggested by Carson
and Longhini (2002). Both learning styles and strategies can be manipulated by
language learners once they are aware of them.
The relationship between processing writing and learning strategies
The cognitive processing and metacognitive regulation strategies are both labelled as
28
learning strategies indicated by Vermutten, Lodemijks and Vermunt (1999). Teachers
can teach how to learn, but would have the preference because of their priorities;
whatever they are, teaching a general approach to learners is the basic goal to
achieve.
Based on the Collins and Collins (1994), process writing would be the application
with learning strategies to instruct. To be more frankly, the interaction of process
writing and learning strategies would be the crucial tools to improve learners better
learning; writing processes and writing skills are not separately. Though there is a
shortage that process-oriented writing tends to ignore all learners is not literacy,
Collins and Collins (1994) propose that less successful learners are more likely to
benefit when skills and instructions are presented as learning strategies. That is to
say, better successful learners tend to use learning strategies individually to help
involving in the learning situation, leading to a better performance. According to
Chalk, Hagan-Burke and D. Burke (2005), strategies instruction can engage students
with tasks requiring active understanding and assist them with constructing and
personalizing a strategy. Strategic writing instruction refers to, based on Collins and
Collins (1994), teaching and acquisition of rhetorical and self-regulatory strategies
for use during writing processes.
In general, the implementation between learning strategies and process-oriented
writing is an integration that the instructors and learners interact within the learning
process, analyze the problems of writing, and the problem-solving through the actual
experiences (Mol, 1992). The goal of process-oriented writing is to reach that all
learners can be inspired as an individual writer but not just a follower through the
direction of instructors. Mol (1992) informs that the customary teachers/students
relationship could be an obstacle to ill-situated learning of ideal collaborative
29
learning as writing a process- a student can do, learn, and write being coached by
their instructors. The relationship under process writing may be a concern from not
securing a firm position and clear responses students should give. Furthermore, the
teachers’ expertise also assists the possibility of process writing. The background
knowledge of teaching methods and skills lead the deflection of teachers being
willing to concentrate the interpretation and regulation for the quality of learning
environment (Mol, 1992; Patthey-Chavez, Matsumura, and Valdes, 2004). The
instructors, as humans, are reluctant to change from the unstable habits, behaviors,
and customs for the improvement of students to have a high quality of writing (Mol,
1992; Patthey-Chavez, Matsumura, and Valdes, 2004). Instructional designers and
teachers can design and provide the context for learning in such a way as to strongly
influence the learning strategies employed by individual learners followed by
Sadler-Smith and Smith’s proposition (2004).
Figure 2. the simple flow chart of relationships between teaching, learning and
strategies adopted from Sadler-Smith & Smith (2004)
30
Start
Teaching Strategy
Learning Strategy
Learning process
Learning
outcomes
&
knowledge of results
Figure 2 are the simple flow chart to present the relationships between teaching,
learning, and strategy use proposed by Sadler-Smith and Smith (2004). The teaching
strategy affects the learning strategy, learning strategy interfere the learning process,
and learning process leads to the learning outcomes and knowledge of results. The
three arrows pointing to three items (teaching strategy, learning strategy, and
learning process) within the whole learning process indicate that the modifications of
instructors and learners to run smoothly back and forth. Within the process of all
stages, the conscious and unconscious learning activities may affect to the learning
performances and differentiated because of individuals’ preferences.
To sum up, the important factors such as learner self preferences, learning strategy
use, and instructors’ intervention do cause an impact on learning performance,
leading to poor or better learning situations. The crucial factors do need a deeper
concern to rethink and adopt within the learning process.
31
Chapter III Methodology
In this chapter, the research methodology was listed chronologically. The
questionnaire and interview were described as follow with the participants, the
procedures of questionnaire and interview and data analysis process.
Design of the research
This study involves the pirate study to investigate the basic background information
of participant students. Followed with the pirate study, the questionnaire was
designed under the main three dimension of EFL learning strategies; they were
metacognitive, cognitive strategies and social /affective strategies. According to the
O’Malley and Chamot (1990), the different levels of learners could have various
32
usage of learning strategies, that is, higher lever learners use more strategies to learn.
This study utilized freshman and junior students of an Applied English department,
and the objects to interview would be chosen randomly from all the participants.
XXThe dependent variable is process writing instruction and the independent
variables are the English levels (what years of the AE department) and learning
strategies usage. The questionnaire design was based on the Strategy Inventory for
Language Learning (SILL) proposed by Oxford (1990) and adapted to learning
strategy classifications, divided into three classes-metacognitive, cognitive, and
social/affective strategies to form the questions for learners.
Participants (mention the background of the participants)
A: high school students
B: most of them majored in Applied English in vocational high school
C: distributed to this department according to their score of the entrance exam
The study utilized a questionnaire for the specialized English writing class of
Applied English department under process-oriented writing. The dimension of
students was from freshman and junior levels of an Applied English department in a
technology university. XXIn quantitative research, the number of participants would
be a little small to make generations. However, the interview for the qualitative
research would be the supportive resources to reduce the inappropriateness and
strengthen the credibility of the research. In this study, every participant was viewed
as a separate case and the researcher would choose some cases to interview as
examples to classify.
XXAll the participants studied in an Applied English department of an technology
university. The institute of English department had classified the students into three
33
levels of English proficiency from class A to C; class A means the English
proficiency level of students was the best, and the level of class B was better; class C
was the minor group.
From freshmen and junior students of English department, the English levels of
proficiency would be the only factor to divide into English writing class instruction.
Instrument
Questionnair
The classifications of learning strategy of foreign language study proposed by
O’Malley and Chamot (1990) would be the application to operationalize the learning
strategy preferences investigation. The instrument measures the frequency and
patterns of learning strategy use, which providing English and Chinese versions (see
Appendix A &B). The instrument consists of learning strategy questions such as “I
will presuppose the strategies needed to write my essay before the class. ”, “I will
check the completed work.”, and “I will use the vocabulary that I learn in other
classes in my writing assignment.” The participants responded to the questions with
the Likert-scale inventory ranging from 1 (never) to 5 (always) to present the
learning strategy use frequency and investigation.
The questionnaire had 40 questions related to metacognitve, cognitive, and social
affective/social strategy inventory, randomly distributing from the options to cover
with the framework of EFL usual strategy types. To determine the correlations of all
variations in this study, the questions were randomly arranged in the questionnaire
format and answered by participant students. Three groups of strategy types per
group are included.
The overall purpose of EFL strategy classification proposed by O’Malley and
Chamot (1990) is to assess the frequency with which learners apply the learning
34
strategies, both cognitive and metacognitive ones to determine the direct and indirect
ways.
The questionnaire was designed based on the learning strategies classifications of
EFL learners proposed by O’Malley and Chamot (1990) and the research adapted a
revised version. The strategy inventory includes three major types-cognitive,
metacognitive, and social/affective strategies. Cognitive and metacognitive strategies
were designed for about per 17 questions, and social/affective strategy was 6
questions or so. The total questions were 40 for students to answer, worried about the
intolerability of time-consuming for students, the format was designed to 5-Likert
scale to make a mark on items to choose.
???
Furthermore, the questionnaire would have two trials for giving students to
answer. As mentioned below, the two time sections were the beginning of the
semester and the mid-term of the semester.
Interview
(See Apeendix C &D)
Data collection procedures
XXThe data were collected at the stages of the beginning and the mid-term of the
semester. At the time of the end of last semester, the research conducted a
questionnaire of 10 open-ended questions to testify the basic situation of two groups
with beginning level of English writing instruction. Then, the questionnaire for 40
questions was to give to test the learning strategy usage of students as English major
in university of technology. After receiving the questionnaire of beginning in
semester, the research revised another specified version of questionnaire based on
the beginning one to give another round for questionnaire. A total of about 150
35
questionnaires may be given to participants.
Data analysis
The groups given the questionnaire to testify were three classes of freshmen and
three classes of junior.
Within the questionnaire, the first part was the background information, to the need,
the levels of English proficiency were also added to clarify the performance of
learning strategy usage as a factor to take into consideration.
The second part of questionnaire, moreover, was concerned about the three main
dimension of strategy-cognitive, metacognitive, and social/affective. The questions
were divided into three time sections-before the class, during the class, and after the
class to design and make it clear to realize the differences of how process writing
instruction could affect the learning strategies students applied to overcome the
writing assignments. Here was the simple organization chart to see below:
Figure 3. the simple organization of three time sections under process-oriented writing
Process-oriented Writing
Before the class
During the class
After the class
Questions for each section and what kinds of strategies
XXAfter analyzing the questionnaire, the research would choose the interesting cases
for case study and further interviews. The cases were randomly chosen to explain
further. Also, the gender may also be the factor to concern the influence of learning
36
strategy usage.
Gender and English proficiency levels would be the variables to affect the research if
the assumptions of the researcher were correct. Here were the assumptions below:
The factor-gender, do have an influence on learning strategy usage.
Better English proficiency learners do have more learning strategy usage.
Process-oriented writing did have the impact on learners to writer better.
Learners have better efficiency on learning because of the highly adoption of learning
strategies.
The levels of English proficiency of students, though subdivided by the institute of
English administration to three groups of writing instruction, depend on individual’s
self-performance to decide and vary in the learning performance. For example, there
was one learner with certificate of General English Proficiency Test (GEPT) in
group C of freshmen writing; he may have better learning performance compared to
his college classmates within the same group.
Furthermore, the gender may also be the crucial factor to have an impact on learning
performance of adopting learning strategies. Writing, as an integration of several
skills, needs more efforts to accomplish and achieve.
Intervening variables
Based on the Peterson description (2003), potentially intervening variables were
identified for the purpose of determining their impact on the relationship between the
independent variables and the dependent variables. The potential intervening
variables such as age, gender, and the hours learners participating in the study enroll
indicate the learning strategy use and learning outcomes, or more frankly, the whole
learning process to the final product present.
Within this study, two crucial intervening variables would be the English proficiency
37
of learners and gender, and to have more investigation, the researcher wants to find
out the relationship between the pre-class and after-class within process writing
instruction, to see how differentiation learners could achieve.
Learning strategy inventory
The three major types of learning strategy inventory of 10 open-ended questions to
pre-test were described as followed:
In writing group A of freshmen, the more relevant for strategy use focuses on the
monitoring and elaboration; on the contrast to group C, adopts more elaboration
strategy usage to writing performance. Within two groups, the learners all had the
tendency to use grammar and translation to emerge mother language to target
language.
Table 1. The situation of learning strategy usage from freshmen writing
strategies
Group A
Group C
Monitoring strategy
+
-
Elaboration strategy
+
+
Translation +
+
Grammar
strategies
groups
&
38
Chapter IV Results and Discussions
Introduction
This chapter presented the findings from the questionnaire and interviews from the two
groups of freshmen and junior of AE.
The questionnaire was delivered to 254
participants to fill it out completely. There were 121 questionnaire sheets for the
junior students and 133 ones for the freshman students. The following description
and data analysis would present the more detailed information about the
questionnaire. XXThe first part would be the overall results of the questionnaire,
using the orders of research questions to suggest the findings. Then the effects of
gender of differentiated preferences would be noted as well. (how about the
background information of the participants?)
In this study, the purpose of this research was to investigate the strategy usage of
differentiated learners of English proficiency under the process-oriented writing.
Participants were the college students of AE department in one technology university.
The participants speak Mandarin Chinese but major in English, learning English as a
foreign language (EFL). XXBefore the students were grouped into different writing
classes, the AE department divided them in three classes from A to C according to
their English proficiency levels. Class A was the best group of English proficiency,
class B was the better one and class C was the minor one.
XXBased on the research questions proposed by the researcher, the questions are
listed below:
1. What are the learning strategies of differentiated English proficiency learners will
present?
39
What are the learning strategies learners will adopt to achieve the goal of fulfilling the
process writing?
What are the learning strategies of male and female learners that will apply under
process writing approach?
Learning strategies preferences within the freshman
Metacognative strategies
Cognitive strategies
Social strategies
Learning strategies preferences within the junior
Metacognative strategies
Cognitive strategies
Social strategies
The strategies used before the class, in the class, and after the class
The comparison and contrast of learning strategies preferences within the junior
and the freshmen (English profiency level)
Metacognative strategies
Cognitive strategies
Social strategies
Gender and learning strategies
(Interview data)
40
Subtitle (could be metacognitive strategies…..__)
Subtitle
Subtiles
Discussion
From the points of questionnaire investigation, the distribution of learning strategy
preferences within the freshman were averaged. In class A, there were 24 students for
positive tendency contrast to 23 ones for negative part. In class B, there were 17
students for positive tendency contrast to 18 ones for negative part. In class C, there
were 24 learners for positive tendency contrast to 27 ones for negative part.
XXWithin the 5-Likert scale, the researcher divided five distributions from never to
always as the questionnaire multiple choices (5 choices are never, seldom,
sometimes, usually and always).
In the participants of freshman, there were 133 students from 3 classes (from A to C) to
fill out the questionnaire. The writing classes are taught by six teachers and the
classes’ environment are the same as well. The teachers tend to promote students’
engagement for brainstorming to make students think what they want to write,
though the topics may be chosen by the instructors sometimes.
The distribution of
language learning approach for learning strategies included three major
parts-metacognitive, cognitive and social/affective strategies based on the O’Malley
and Chamot (1990) proposition. XXThe age distribution of participants was from
17-22 years old, compared to the freshman and junior phases of college.
41
Parts-metacognitive strategies
In the class A, the students of female were 40 and the ones of male are 7. The
distribution of question 1-5 were…..XXXXvoting positive options (more usually
and always) was female of 20 and male of 4; the negative distribution (more never
and seldom replying) was female of 20 and male of 3. In the class B, the participants
of female were 32 and the ones of male are 3. The distribution of positive choices
showed female of 15 and male of 2; the negative part for the class B was female of
17 and male of 1. In class C, the learners of female were 42 and the ones of male are
9. The positive tendency to vote was female of 19 and male of 5, compared to the
negative one, female of 23 and male of 4. The total of female learners was 114 and
male ones of 19. Though the averaged of genders were not equal, the positive and
negative tendency of genders are quite the same. The following tables were the
number showing the situation of genders differences in learning strategy usage of
process writing.
Table 2. The number of female and male in three freshman writing classes
Freshman writing classes
Female
Male
Class A
40
7
Class B
32
3
Class C
42
9
Table 3. The distribution of positive, neutral & negative responds for learning strategy
usage of process writing
The tendency of Positive (F)
options
Neutral
& Positive (M)
Negative (F)
Neutral
Negative
&
42
(M)
Class A
20
20
4
3
Class B
15
17
2
1
Class C
19
23
5
4
p.s. F means female respondents; M means male respondents.
The relevance of proficiency test and learning performance
a. In the group of positive respondents in Class A, there were 18 learners with
certificate such as GEPT (General English Proficiency Test), TOEIC and JEPT,
which might prove that they have highly motivation in English learning. There were
also 2 learners of the International Business Department (IBD) providing positive
tendency to the questionnaire with certificate of TOEIC. The last 4 students without
certificate showed the positive responding as well (one of 4 respondents is the
learner of IBD).
Within the positive respondents with certificate, there were 5 highly positive learners
(give options of usually and always more than 25 times) to specify more detailed
explanation for learning performance. Two female students might apply the learning
strategies such as metacognitive ones, planning, self-monitoring and self-evaluation
of highly use to help her learning well, and so did the elaborate strategy of cognitive
level. One male respondent of positive tendency proposes highly use of
metacognitive strategies (self- monitoring and self-evaluation) and cognitive ones
(elaborate). One female learner showed that she prefers self-monitoring and
elaborate to learning; the last interviewee provided self-evaluation and elaborate
strategies highly use performance as learning strategy.
43
There were some choices 5 positive respondents holding positive and neutral
thinking, for example, the social strategy-giving rewards after completion of tasks
and peer’s feedbacks, however, two of them voted for negative options more.
The three IBD major students showed more neutral trend (more sometimes for
options) in English learning compared to the ones of English major to indicate that
English is a language to communicate for them to learn.
In the Class A, mentioned that having better performance on group proficiency test
while joining college, the 13 positive learners (vote for usually and always in
questionnaire more than 20 times) suggested their options for less tendency in the
planning, self-monitoring, self-evaluation and elaboration.
The social strategy usage for 13 positive respondents tended to give neutral choices
while 2 positive learners’ approval of positive options, presupposed that positive
learners have the tendency to choose the strategy usage more to learn the process
writing better.
Another neutral group for learning strategy usage of 16 respondents with certificate
tended to give neutral answers while 7 learners without certificate held the neutral
options (neutral means vote for sometimes more than 20 times).
There were 4 neutral students have more tendency of negative options (seldom and
never choices) to respond over 15 times. The negative segments focused on the
planning, self-monitoring and elaboration strategies. Interesting to conclude, these
learners also had two certificates with TOEIC and GEPT.
b. the group in Class B, the 11 positive respondents with certificate of GEPT and
TOEIC highly adopted the learning strategies in process writing. There were 6
positive learners without proficiency certificate holding positive options as well.
Moreover, there were two female students of highly positive tendency toward
44
learning strategy usage, giving positive choices more than 25 times. Their
responding showed that the metacognitive strategy such as self-monitoring,
self-evaluation and imitation, the cognitive strategy of elaborate, and the social
strategy did have an obvious adoption in process writing.
The positive learners with certificate tended to adopt the self-evaluation,
self-monitoring and elaborate strategies more, compared to the ones without
certificate less positive options. One female respondent had neutral tendency toward
strategy adoption, or less positive options to select strategies.
As for the neutral and negative group, there were 11 students with certificate contrast
to 7 ones without certificate, suggesting that the optional adoption for strategies
tended to omit or ignore. The frequency of sometimes option in the 18
questionnaires was highly chosen, and even more, the most obvious ones of three
respondents were over 30 times for the choice-sometimes.
There were four obvious negative respondents to indicate that half of the strategy
usage options tended to be seldom, however. The self-monitoring, self-evaluation
and elaborate strategies were less taken into consideration; even more, the choices of
them only kept in the level of neutral, and the percentage of strategy adoption in
these 4 learners is minor obviously.
c. In the group of Class C, there were 24 positive respondents, 17 ones with
certificate of GEPT or TOEIC and 7 ones without proficiency certificate. Within the
positive group with certificate, there were 5 learners presenting the highly positive
options over 25 times to apply learning strategy in process writing.
The positive tendency for metacognitive of self-monitoring and self-evaluation and
cognitive of elaborate strategies was adopted more; the 5 obvious respondents
applied those mentioned above and added social strategies as well. One male and
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one female participants had higher scores on the TOEIC test as the more obvious
learners of positive learning.
Moreover, the neutral and negative group includeed 21 respondents with GEPT or
TOEIC certificate contrast to 6 ones without any certificate.
The distribution of frequency mainly focused on the seldom to usually options,
mostly on sometimes to present the level of learning strategies usage. Though there
were one participant with even averaged for five options and one for only one option
of sometimes to be invalid questionnaire, the neutral tendency of these learners did
suggest the evidence of less adoption of learning strategies in process writing.
In the negative group of Class C, the negative responding was less than 14 times to
the questions to be more neutral than one of Class A and B. There was no obvious
negative participant in Class C.
The representation of negative group in Class C indicated that self-monitoring and
self-evaluation were the minor elements to take a part in the learning strategy
adoption. The elaborate strategy tended to be more neutral and less effective to the
selection of strategy to process writing. And the participants with and without
certificate didn’t have precisely differentiation but tendency of more sometimes
options to the strategies.
II. The Junior Group
In the junior group, there were also three classes (3A-3C), proposing that the
division of English proficiency performance to teach learners writing section from
the best, better and the minor students.
The total number of female positive learners was 61 and male ones, 9. The negative
participants of female were 42 ones and of male, 9 students. The whole learners of
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female were 103 ones compared to 18 male students.
In Class 3A, the students of female were 31 and male of 4 ones. In Class 3B, there
were 36 female learners and 5 male ones; in Class 3C, there were 36 female learners
and 9 male ones.
Table 4. The number of female and male in three junior writing classes
Junior writing classes
Female
Male
Class 3A
31
4
Class 3B
36
5
Class 3C
36
9
As for the positive and negative segments of participants, they would be discussed
below. In Class 3A, female positive learners were 14 and male one was 1 only;
female negative students were 17 and male ones were 3. In Class 3B, female learners
of positive options were 24 and male ones were 5. The negative participants of
female were 12 contrast to zero male one. The female positive group in Class 3C had
23 people and the male one, 3 persons. The negative respondents of female were 13
and male, 6 persons.
Table 5. The distribution of positive, neutral & negative responds for learning strategy
usage of junior process writing
The tendency of Positive (F)
Neutral
options
& Positive (M)
Neutral
Negative (F)
Negative
(M)
Class 3A
14
17
1
3
Class 3B
24
12
5
0
&
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Class 3C
23
13
3
6
p.s. F means female learners; M means male learners.
a. In the group in Class 3A, the positive participants were 13 with TOEIC, TOEFL or
GEPT certificate and 2 without any certificate. Within the positive group, there were
7 highly positive tendency to reach mostly the application of metacognitive and
cognitive learning strategies, especially of self-monitoring, self-evaluation and
elaborate subcategories.
The neutral and negative group had 20 participants to involve and respond, 16
neutral with TOEIC or GEPT certificate and 4 negative without any ones. The 16
positive certificated learners, though the neutral respond as the most options for the
strategies, the positive tendency was more than the one of 4 negative students. The
thoughts about metacognitive and cognitive strategies 16 neutral respondents held
tended to be neutral and there was only one learner adopting those strategies more.
The four negative respondents represented less adoption of self-monitoring and
self-evaluation strategies, even more, to the degree of neutral options. One learner
suggested his options positive social strategies application though most of the
metacognitive and cognitive strategies were less applied into the process writing
learning. The planning and self-management strategies strongly presented the
negative tendency of 4 respondents, moreover, the preview of the preparation for the
learning didn’t have obvious presentation to show the positive application of
subcategories of metacognitive strategies.
b. In the Class 3B, there were 20 positive learners with TOEIC, Business English
Test, GEPT and TOEFL certificate and 9 positive respondents without any
certificate.
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The positive respondents included 24 females and 5 males, moreover, 3 females and
2 males were the mostly positive respondents within this group. The obvious
positive strategies were self-monitoring, self-evaluation and elaborate, to be contrast,
the neutral ones were planning and advance organizers. As for the other positive
learners, they were also being neutral to the planning and advance organizers, and
less positive for the most obvious strategies-self-monitoring, self-evaluation and
elaborate. The social strategies were neutral in this group except 3 positive learners.
The 9 positive students without certificate also tended to choose the neutral or
negative responds to the planning and advance organizers; the thoughts for the
obvious strategies of positive group-self-monitoring, self-evaluation and elaborate
were more neutral than the respondents with certificate.
In the neutral and negative respondents, there were 9 learners with GEPT and one
TOEIC certificate, contrast to 3 students without any proficiency certificate. The
strategies of planning and advance organizers in metacognitive learning strategies
tended to be negative; the ones of self-monitoring, self-evaluation and elaborate
strategies were neutral tendency though some of the options such as checking the
topic related, connecting phrases or paragraphs and checking completed work have
the positive responding. The 3 learners without certificate had the tendency of
neutral choices to the learning strategies.
c. In the group of 3C, there were 36 females and 9 males students to respond the
questionnaire. In the positive group, there were 23 females and 3 males; positive
learners with TOEIC or GEPT were 13 and positive ones without certificate are 13.
The group of positive respondents with certificate presupposed that they tended to
adopt the metacognitive and cognitive strategies more, especially the self-monitoring,
self-evaluation and elaborate ones. Interestingly to find out, the 13 with certificate
49
also had the negative tendency or being neutral for planning and advance organizers.
The 3 obvious positive learners, moreover, responded over 30 times for positive
options;
they
also
had
the
negative
responding
to
the
metacognitive
subcategory-advance organizers.
The 13 learners without certificate, though tended to be positive, were more neutral
and negative than ones with certificate. They had more negative options to respond,
and even more, the most negative one-never would appear.
In the positive group, there were 2 junior students of Finance Department, one with
TOEIC certificate and one without certificate. The one with TOEIC responded more
positive than one without certificate (25 positive v.s.16 positive options), indicating
positive learners tended to have proficiency certificate as well.
In the negative group of 3C, there were 13 females and 6 males. 12 neutral
responding and 7 negative ones were included. The advance organizers of
metacognitive strategies responded as negative option, however, the metacognitive
and cognitive strategies tended to be neutral. The 12 neutral learners tended to be
neutral for social strategies such as giving feedbacks, rewards and techniques to
relax, but there were 3 of them responds negative for social strategies.
The 7 negative learners, moreover, had the tendency of metacognitive and cognitive
as negative responding but being neutral to social strategies adoption.
The advance preparation in metacognitive strategies of recalling words or phrases to
write for the 7 negative students tended to be neutral, or even more, 2 respond
positive option.
The most obvious negative respondent, however, tended to have the tendency of
negative but neutral in directed attention for searching the main concepts and
self-monitoring for topic relation.
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The investigation of learning strategy usage in process writing, the former test by
giving 20 open-ended questions to find it out, preceded the latter conclusion of
making a deeper questionnaire. The results of giving test for freshmen of AE
students might realize the factual thinking and basic understanding of strategy usage
toward process writing.
◎ 20 open-ended questions about learning strategy usage in process writing
1
Before the writing class, will you plan what is the task taught?
2
Before the class, will you check the expression about tasks?
3
Before the class, will you expect your performance finally?
4
During the writing, will you plan the particular description or sentences to
illustrate the composing?
5
During the writing, will you correct the expression you write related to the
items?
6
During the writing, will you oversee the performing of writing the tasks?
7
After you write sentences, will you have plans to organize your ideas?
8
After you write, will you check other information you can add to help your essay
completely?
9
After you write, will you examine the strategy you use in your writing?
10 After you write, will you judge the achievement of strategy usage in your
writing?
11 Before you write, will you check the dictionary/textbooks to find some useful
sources?
12 Before you write, will you think what the content of task is?
13 Before you write, will you apply the topic related to your personal experiences?
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14 During the writing, will you replace words/phrases to accomplish the missing
parts in your writing?
15 During the writing, will you brainstorm the knowledge to the task?
16 During the writing, will you structure the whole body of writing?
17 During the writing, will you relate the ideas of L1 to present in the task?
18 After the writing/or each paragraph, will you connect writing sections with each
other?
19 After the writing, will you summarize the task you write?
20 After the writing, will you examine the relation of materials you write to the
topic?
From 20 open-ended questions of basic learning strategy usage in process writing,
the respondents described what they actually thought of three stages-before the class,
during the writing and after they write.
52
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