Strategy Use in EFL Writing by Undergraduate and Graduate Writers

Strategy Use in EFL Writing by Undergraduate and Graduate Writers

  The aim of this study was to identify the writing strategies of EFL undergraduate writers and to compare them with those of graduate writers. This comparison was to examine the degree of variation in writing strategies across different proficiency levels. Seventy-one students, 49 English major undergraduate writers and 22 English education major graduate writers, were given a questionnaire developed by Petri and Cz？rl (2003). The strategy items were framed in three different stages of the writing process: planning, while-writing, and revising. Results were found to be considerably affected by the unit of analysis of data: Analyses of individual items showed greater differences in while-writing strategy use between undergraduate and graduate writers, while overall group means of that strategy revealed no differences. The results of the comparisons in terms of the three writing stages indicated significant differences in the use of planning and revising strategies between the two groups. The use of while-writing strategy and self-assessed writing proficiency were significantly correlated. Female writers obtained higher scores across the strategy items than male writers.