Students’ Beliefs about Writing, Their Writing Strategy Use and Writing Performance
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Date
2018-02
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
This study aimed at investigating students’ beliefs about writing, writing strategy use and their writing performance. To achieve the purpose of this study, a descriptive-correlational design was employed. The design was also used to see the relationship between beliefs about writing and writing performance, writing strategy use and writing performance, and beliefs about writing and writing strategy use. Data were collected from 97 respondents in three public universities. Four sampling techniques (convenience sampling, purposive sampling, availability sampling and simple random sampling) were used to select the sample universities, department and batch, and respondents. The data were analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. The findings indicated that students have positive beliefs about writing. However, the descriptive data analysis revealed that students have low writing strategy use and poor writing performance. The correlation analysis indicated that there were positive, but non-significant, relationships between beliefs about writing and writing performance, writing strategy use and writing performance, and beliefs about writing and writing strategy use. The degree of influence the independent variables have on writing performance was also found to be non-significant though it was positive. Students mentioned several educational and psychological factors such as their negative attitude towards learning English, their lack of interest to use the differernt approaches and strategies of writing, the marginalization of the writing strategies from the curriculum, universitiy’s system of assigning students to the English department as the main reasons for their low use of writing strategies and poor writing performance. Based on the major findings, it was chiefly recommended that the current curriculum and course materials should be revisited considering the current approaches and methods in writing pedagogy. It was also recommended that students should be assigned to the English department based on their interest. Furthermore, further studies should be conducted to clearly identify the major factors affecting students’ writing performance.
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Writing Strategy Use, Writing Performance