GSTF International Journal of Law and Social Sciences (JLSS) Vol.2 No.1, December 2012
Tasks and Writing Strategy Use: Is Mapping Out
Possible?
Radhika De Silva (Author)
Department of Language Studies
Open University of Sri Lanka
Nawala, Sri Lanka
[email protected]
Abstract—This paper discusses the findings of a research study
carried out at a university in Sri Lanka. The study attempted to
find out the connection between English for Academic Purposes
(EAP) students’ writing strategy use and task types. It also
investigated the strategy use during different stages of writing.
The study used both quantitative and qualitative methods for
data collection and data analysis. The findings show that students
use different strategies for different tasks and at different stages
of writing.
II.
Most of the studies in language learner strategy research have
used general learning strategy questionnaires. Relatively few
studies have been carried out on the relationship of strategy
use with task variables. Oxford, Cho, Leung & Kim (2004)
report the findings of an exploratory study which tried to
investigate the effects of the presence or absence of a task and
difficulty of task on strategy use using 36 students enrolled in
ESL classes in the U.S. They found distinctions between
reported strategy use between the no task at hand and task at
hand conditions and propose that task-based questionnaires
have real purpose and utility. As Oxford et al. (2004) point
out, ‘when a specific task is present as part of strategy
assessment, L2 strategy questionnaire respondents are
explicitly asked to focus on the strategies they used with
regard to that particular task’ and this may reduce the level of
ambiguity (p. 16).
Keywords-academic writing; strategy use; tasks
I.
STRATEGY USE AND TASK VARIABLES
INTRODUCTION
Research on language learner strategies (LLS) began with the
intention to discover what good language learners do. Early
researchers (e.g., Naiman, Frohlich, & Todesco, 1978/1996;
Rubin, 1975) identified strategies used by successful language
learners and compiled lists of strategies which they called
good language learner strategies. Grenfell and Macaro (2007)
reviewing developments in the area of LLS research claim that
in the 1980s and early 1990s the research has been carried out
in two different perspectives: a) ‘describing general patterns of
desirable behavior with high levels of within subject variation’
b) ‘eliciting specific examples of behavior with little or no
scope for within-subject variation, but still related to no
specific task’ (p. 27). While acknowledging that the research
focus has now changed and more research is being carried out
on learners’ specific strategic behaviour in relation to specific
tasks and skills, Grenfell and Macaro believe that it is
necessary to study learners’ cognitive responses to task
demands carefully and methodically and map out specific
strategies to specific tasks scientifically. However, strategies
could not only be task specific but also be situation or context
specific and hence it would be necessary to take those
variables also into consideration if such mapping is to be done.
The present study thus attempts to find out strategy use for
different types of writing tasks in an EAP context.
Anderson (2005) also supports the above argument and says
that there are no good or bad strategies but the difference is in
how effectively they are used to accomplish a particular task,
how they are ‘executed and orchestrated’ (p. 762). Chamot
(2005) stresses the value of allowing students to explore and
experiment with a range of strategies and finally to evaluate
and select the ones that are useful and effective in performing
a language task.
III.
RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND METHODOLOGY
The main study investigated the effects of strategy instruction
on learners’ strategy use and writing performance and as part of
it the following research questions were also investigated. The
present paper discusses the findings related to the following
research questions.
•
Do learners use different types of strategies when
attempting different types of tasks?
DOI: 10.5176/2251-2853_2.1.90
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© 2012 GSTF
•
GSTF International Journal of Law and Social Sciences (JLSS) Vol.2 No.1, December 2012
data and to motivate the students to write regularly, it was
decided to provide them with a basic outline for their diary
entries. In the first column, students were asked to describe the
task briefly and they were advised to tick Column 2 if the task
was assigned by the teacher and tick Column 3 if it was
chosen by the student himself/herself. Column 4 was to record
the problems they had and Column 5 was to record the
strategies they used to overcome those problems. They were
also advised to assess and report how well those strategies
worked in the next column. The last column was for them to
list other strategies they could use to make the task successful.
However, they were told that they had freedom to record other
things that would be of interest to them, on the adjoining page
using a different colour pen. The students were told that they
could write in the diaries in their mother tongue and/or in
English if they wish to do so.
Do learners use different strategies when they are at
different stages of writing?
The study used a mixed method research design. The
sample consisted of 36 tertiary level science students studying
English for Academic Purposes (EAP) at a university in Sri
Lanka and they underwent a writing strategy instruction
programme. In order to answer the above research questions, a
writing strategy checklist, learner diaries and retrospective
interviews were used as instruments for data collection.
A. Writing Strategy Checklist
The study used a writing strategy checklist for studying the
respondents’ writing strategy use for different types of tasks.
The checklist which was initially designed had 28 items.
These items were selected using the researcher’s experience as
a teacher in the same context, the initial focus group
discussions with a similar sample and a combination of
sources including Cohen(1998), Harris (2003), Macaro (2001,
2003) and Oxford (1990). It was then fine-tuned using
comments from two experts in the field of learner strategies
and was administered to a small sample for pilot testing. The
final version of the checklist had 30 items and the respondents
were asked to tick the appropriate box under the two columns,
‘Did not use’ and ‘Used for this task’ after attempting the tasks
assigned by the researcher. The strategies in the checklist
included most of the strategies introduced in the strategy
instruction programme.
C. Retrospective Interviews
Retrospective interviews were held after the completion of
the tasks and were transcribed and analysed. Those were useful
in clarifying further why the participants had chosen particular
strategies for a particular task at a particular stage of writing.
IV.
DATA ANALYSIS
In order to answer the Research Questions, the Writing
Strategy Checklist data were analysed quantitatively. The
Writing Strategy Checklist designed by the researcher had 30
strategy items and the informants were asked to tick one of the
two columns which said “Used for this task” and “Did Not
Use for this Task” against each item, after they completed the
given task. The responses for three tasks, namely, Description
of a Graph, Writing a Lab Report, and an Argumentative
Essay were used in the data analysis to find the answer to the
Research Question 1: Do students use different strategies
when attempting different types of tasks? The checklist data
were also used to investigate the strategy use of the
experimental group after strategy training as the items
included in the checklist were mostly the strategies they were
exposed to in the strategy instruction programme. The items in
the checklist were grouped under three stages of writing,
namely, Before, While and After and the items under each
stage were grouped into several sub-categories. This was
useful in finding answers to Research Question 2. The Before
Writing stage had three sub-categories: Task Analysis, Pretask Planning and Resourcing. The While Writing stage had
five sub-categories: Formulating, Resourcing, Within Task
Planning, Self-monitoring, and Revision. The After writing
stage had three sub-categories: Resourcing for revision,
Evaluation, and Rewriting. Out of the 36 students in the
sample, only 29 students returned the checklist. The two
options in the checklist ‘Used for this task’ and ‘Did not use
for this task’ were coded ‘1’ and ‘0’ respectively. The total
number of strategies used for each task (Lab Report, Graph,
and Essay) was calculated. The total number of strategies used
during each stage of writing (Before, While, After) was also
calculated separately for the three tasks. The totals for each
sub-category under each stage were also calculated for the
three tasks. Descriptive statistics were calculated on the total
for all three tasks and on totals for each sub-category.
In the present study, a common checklist was used for all the
tasks. The researcher thought it was more important to find
which strategies were used and how useful those strategies
were for a particular task than finding the frequency of use.
The checklist was used throughout the study as an instrument
to collect data on students’ strategy use on a regular basis,
with a range of tasks that was used for strategy instruction.
The students were advised to make entries about their strategy
use when attempting these tasks in their diaries. Out of these
tasks, three tasks were selected which represented three
different genre (i.e. Lab Report, Graph, Essay) and the writing
strategy checklist data for these three tasks were analyzed in
order to find answers to Research Questions.
B. Learner Diaries
Learner diaries were used as an additional source of data in
this study. The diary entries contain self-reported data which
could be highly subjective as what is written are personal
observations about their own learning experiences (Chamot,
2005). Another drawback in using diaries is ‘the volume of
data produced and the potentially random nature of the entries’
Cohen (1998, p. 41). There is a threat to validity as there is the
doubt that whether the diary entries are genuine thought
processes or experiences of the writer or invented pieces of
writing to please the teacher/researcher. However, Graham
(1997) argues about the possibility of encouraging subjects to
express themselves ‘honestly and unreservedly’ and she
stresses the importance of establishing ‘an element of trust’ in
students (p. 47).
In the present study, diaries were used as a means to collect
additional data on strategies used by the informants. In the
present study, to avoid the problem of producing irrelevant
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GSTF International Journal of Law and Social Sciences (JLSS) Vol.2 No.1, December 2012
In order to decide on the analyses to be carried out, tests of
normality were conducted on the Writing Strategy Checklist
data. Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Shapiro-Wilk tests were
conducted on total strategy use for the three tasks separately
(Lab Report, Graph, Essay).
three tasks and also on the use of different strategy groups
(pre-task planning, formulating, etc.) within those stages. The
results are given below.
TABLE II.
Since the data were collected from the same sample for three
different tasks, and the tests of normality showed non-normal
distribution for most of the data, a Friedman test was used to
explore any differences in means in strategy use across the
three tasks. The Friedman test is a distribution-free test and is
usually used to compare means of more than two related
samples (Haslam & McGarty, 2003). The dependent variables
were the total strategy use for each task, total strategy use for
each stage (before, while and writing) for each task, and total
strategy use for each sub-category for each task.
Follow-up pair-wise comparisons (post-hoc tests) were
performed on those variables which showed significant
difference in strategy use (While Writing group and the subcategories Task analysis and Pre-task planning) using the
Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test. A Bonferroni adjustment was
made in order to avoid obtaining significant results by chance
because of multiple comparisons. Since three comparisons
were made, the alpha level (.05) was divided by three and the
adjusted alpha level was .017.
The informants completed a writing strategy checklist for three
different tasks after they received strategy training. A
Friedman test was conducted on the Writing Strategy
Checklist data in order to compare students’ total strategy use
for the three tasks, namely, the Lab Report, the Description of
the Graph, and the Argumentative Essay. The analysis showed
the highest mean rank for the description of the graph, next
highest for the essay, and the lowest for the lab report. There
were no significant differences (p >.05) in total strategy use
for the three tasks.
N
Mean Rank
Lab Report
Total
Graph Total
Essay Total
29
1.76
Graph
(Mean
Rank)
Essay
(Mean
Rank)
Sig.
Before
Writing
While
Writing
After
Writing
29
1.84
1.91
2.24
0.244
29
1.67
2.43
1.90
0.007
29
1.88
2.09
2.03
0.629
3)
Sig.
Analysis of the use of Strategy Groups
Friedman tests were carried out to compare the use of Strategy
Groups within the broad categories.
0.205
29
29
Lab
Report
(Mean
Rank)
A Friedman test on Writing Strategy Checklist data for the
After Writing stage showed the highest mean rank of 2.09 for
the description of Graph task and the Essay task had a mean
rank of 2.03. The lowest strategy use in the after writing stage
was for the Lab Report. There was no statistically significant
difference among strategy use in the after writing stage for the
three tasks.
COMPARISON OF THE TOTAL STRATEGY USE FOR THE THREE
TASKS
Task
N
During the While Writing stage, the mean rank for strategy use
was highest for the description of the Graph, second highest
for the Essay and the lowest for the Lab Report. There was
statistically significant difference (p= .007, X2(2) = 10.02) in
strategy use between the three tasks. Post-hoc tests with
Wilcoxon Signed Ranks tests were used to follow up this
finding. A Bonferroni correction was applied and the results
are reported at a 0.017 level of significance. A significant
difference (p < .017) was found in writing strategy use
between the Graph and the Lab Report tasks while writing (Z
= 3.237, p= .001).
Analysis of Total Strategy Use for Tasks
TABLE I.
Stage
As shown in Table III, during the before writing stage, the
highest mean rank for strategy use was reported for the essay
writing task. The graph had less strategy use than the essay
before writing and the lab report had the lowest mean rank for
strategy use before writing. There was no significant
difference (p >.05) among the three tasks in strategy use
before writing.
The informants’ strategy use for the three tasks was compared
using Friedman’s test. The total strategy use and strategy use
for different strategy groups (categories) for the three tasks
were compared. Their strategy use at three different stages of
writing (i.e. before, while, and after) was also compared.
1)
2.19
2.05
TABLE III.
2)
COMPARISON OF STRATEGY USE DURING THE THREE STAGES
OF WRITING FOR THE THREE TASKS
COMPARISON OF STRATEGY USE IN DIFFERENT STRATEGY
GROUPS FOR THE THREE TASKS
Analysis of Strategy Use during the Stages of Writing
Friedman tests were also conducted on strategy use during
different stages of writing (before, while, and after) for the
260
Strategy
Group
N
Lab
Report
(Mean
Rank)
Graph
(Mean
Rank)
Essay
(Mean
Rank)
Sig.
Task
29
1.84
2.21
1.95
0.046
© 2012 GSTF
Analysis
Pre-Task
Planning
Within
Task
Planning
Formulating
Resourcing
Pre
Resourcing
while
Resourcing
after
Self
Monitoring
Revision
Evaluation
Rewriting
GSTF International Journal of Law and Social Sciences (JLSS) Vol.2 No.1, December 2012
29
1.88
1.76
2.36
0.032
29
1.84
2.16
2.00
0.105
29
29
1.84
1.78
2.22
2.28
1.93
1.95
0.228
0.085
29
2.03
2.14
1.83
0.296
29
1.97
2.02
2.02
0.936
29
2.09
1.98
1.93
0.247
29
29
29
1.47
1.90
1.91
2.24
2.12
1.97
2.29
1.98
2.12
0.000
0.564
0.486
In the ‘Before Writing’ stage, the highest Resourcing strategy
use was reported for the Graph and the lowest was reported for
the Lab Report. There were no significant differences in
Resourcing strategy use before writing between the three
tasks. During the ‘While writing’ stage the highest resourcing
strategy use was reported for the Graph and the lowest was for
the Essay. No significant difference was found in Resourcing
While Writing strategy use between the three tasks. During the
‘After Writing’ stage, Resourcing strategy use was equal for
the Graph and the Essay and it was lower for the Lab Report.
There was no significant difference in Resourcing After
Writing strategy use between the three tasks.
d) Analysis of the Self-Monitoring Strategy Group
The highest use of Self-Monitoring strategy was reported for
the Lab Report, the next highest for the Graph and the lowest
was reported for the Essay. There was no significant difference
in Self-Monitoring strategy use between the three tasks.
e)
A Friedman test for Task Analysis Strategy group showed the
highest mean rank for the Graph, next highest for the Essay
and the lowest mean rank for the Lab Report. There was
statistically significant difference (p< .05) among the three
tasks for the Task Analysis group. Post-hoc tests with a
Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test followed by a Bonferroni
correction for Task Analysis group did not show any
statistically significant difference (p> .017) between the tasks.
a)
Analysis of the Revision Strategy Group
The highest Revision strategy use was for the Essay while the
lowest was for the Lab Report. There was statistically
significant difference (p < .0001, X2 (2) = 18.77) between the
three tasks.
Post-hoc tests using a Wilcoxon Signed Rank test followed by
a Bonferroni correction showed a significant difference in
Revision strategy use between the Graph and the Lab Report
(Z = 3.71, p = .000). A significant difference was also found
between the Essay and the Lab Report (Z = 3.53, p =.000).
Analysis of the Planning Strategy Group
The Writing Strategy Checklist consisted of two strategy
groups in the planning category, Pre-Task Planning (PTP)
group and Within Task planning (WTP) group. A Friedman
test for the PTP group showed the highest mean rank for the
essay writing task and lowest for the Graph. There was
significant difference (p <0.05) between the three tasks in the
PTP strategy use. A Wilcoxon Signed Rank test for the three
tasks followed by a Bonferroni correction showed no
statistically significant difference (p> 0.017) between the pairs
of tasks. However, the difference between PTP for Essay and
the Graph approached significance (Z= 2.342, p= 0.019).
f)
Analysis of the Evaluation Strategy Group
Evaluation strategy use was highest for the Graph and lowest
for the Essay and there was no significant difference in the
evaluation strategy use between the three tasks.
g)
In the WTP group the highest mean rank was reported for the
Graph and the lowest was reported for the lab report. No
significant difference was found in the Within Task Planning
strategy use between the three tasks.
Analysis of the Rewriting Strategy Group
In the Rewriting strategy group, the highest mean rank was for
the Essay. The next highest was for the Graph and the lowest
mean rank was for the Lab Report. There was no significant
difference in Rewriting strategy use between the three tasks.
b) Analysis of the Formulating Strategy Group
V.
In the Formulating strategy group, the highest mean rank for
strategy use was reported for the Graph and the lowest for the
Lab Report. There was no significant difference (p>.05)
between the three tasks in Formulating strategy use.
c)
DISCUSSION
To find answers to the above Research question, the
Writing Strategy Checklist data, diary entries and retrospective
interview data were used. The data for the three tasks, namely,
the Lab Report, Description of a Graph, and the Argumentative
Essay were analyzed for the use of strategies. A quantitative
analysis of the Writing Strategy Checklist data showed the
highest Total Strategy Use for the Graph, the next highest for
the Essay and the lowest for the Lab Report. Out of the strategy
groups within the three stages of writing: Before, While, and
After, strategy use at Before writing stage was the highest for
the Essay. The highest strategy use at While and After writing
stages were found to be for the Graph. The lowest total strategy
Analysis of Resourcing Strategy Group
In the Writing Strategy Checklist, all three stages (before,
while, and after) of writing had strategies of the Resourcing
category. These were analyzed separately as Resourcing
Before, Resourcing While, and Resourcing After writing.
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GSTF International Journal of Law and Social Sciences (JLSS) Vol.2 No.1, December 2012
use and the lowest use of most of the strategy groups were
reported for the Lab Report. Pre-Task Planning, Evaluating,
Resourcing after writing and Revision strategies were used
most for the Essay while Task Analysis, Within Task Planning,
Formulating, Resourcing before and while writing were used
most for the Description of a Graph. Self-Monitoring strategies
were used most for the Lab Report. The use of Resourcing
strategies while writing and after writing were also high for the
Lab Report. The students’ Diary entries also supported the
above findings.
sentence structure and verb forms. They used Pre-Task
Planning strategies to help them with the organization of the
report. This supports Cumming’s (1989) findings. In his study,
Cumming (1989) found that the writers who planned their
writing in advance had a background in technical writing while
those who planned while writing (emergent planners) had a
background in literary writing. The use of Resourcing strategies
was also seen when writing Lab Reports.
In Essay writing, the problems students faced included
finding content and appropriate vocabulary, and organization of
points. Pre-Task planning and Resourcing strategies were used
most to solve the problems. Within Task Planning and
Formulating strategies were also used. Revision strategies were
also adopted and rewriting the essay using the comments was
done by most of the students.
The Diary entries and the interviews with the students after
they attempted the tasks were useful in interpreting the above
findings. The students reported that the Description of a Graph
was more demanding than the other two tasks. They sometimes
found it hard to understand what the graph depicted and also
did not possess the vocabulary to describe the trends. As a
result, they used Task Analysis and Within Task Planning to
help them with the description. They seemed to be using
Resourcing strategies like referring to resource sheets and
model descriptions to find necessary vocabulary and structures.
Leki (1995) also reported that her students looked for models
when writing. Looking for similar words in dictionaries and
resource sheets to avoid repetition of words and phrases in the
descriptions was also seen. Some students claimed that they
avoided describing complex parts of the graph as they wanted
to preserve the quality of the description. The difficulty in
describing the graph could be attributed to working memory
restrictions as the input was non-verbal (Chenoweth & Hayes,
2003). Even though Vähäpässi (1982, as cited in Weigle, 2002)
classified description of graphs to be easier and cognitively less
demanding than argumentative essay writing, the informants of
the present study found the description of the graph to be more
demanding than the essay. However, when their scripts were
studied the essays they had written were found to be more of
descriptive type rather than argumentative. They may have
found the essay as less demanding since they were able to
express their views on the topic freely. Some students claimed
that they did not need to describe graphs often in their course
work and what they got to describe were not as complex as
what they did in the language course. Oxford et al. (2004)
argue that ‘[f]amiliarity makes a big difference in terms of
whether a particular student considers the input for a certain
task to be difficult or complex. … input that is truly
linguistically complex might or might not be considered
difficult, depending on how familiar the learner is with the
particular type of material’ (p. 11). The students may have
found the graph difficult since they were less familiar with it
than the lab report and the essay.
O’Malley and Chamot (1990) found that the students had
favoured strategies for different types of language tasks
(vocabulary, listening, cloze, and writing) but there were some
common strategies they used across the tasks. In the present
study, the learners used some strategy categories more than the
others for a particular type of task but their strategy use for the
three tasks were not significantly different for many of the
strategy categories i.e. Formulating, Resourcing, Selfmonitoring.
The differences in strategy use for the three different tasks
(e.g., in the use of Task Analysis, Pre-Task Planning, Revision)
could be due to writers’ perception of genre demands
(Cumming, 1989; Manchón, Roca de Larios, & Murphy, 2000).
The above findings also support the view that writing strategies
may differ not only according to writer internal variables but
also according to writer external variables such as task type
(Manchón, et al, 2007). Studies on the transferability of
strategies to other types of tasks and the success of these in
other situations may be of interest to future researchers.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The author wishes to thank Professor Brian Richards and
Professor Suzanne Graham of University of Reading, UK for
their support in conducting this research.
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Dr. Radhika De Silva is a senior lecturer in the Department of
Language Studies at the Open University of Sri Lanka. She
obtained her PhD from University of Reading, UK. Her
research interests include language learner strategy
instruction, second language writing, language teacher
education, language testing and open and distance learning.
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