An Investigation into the Use of Strategies and EFL Students Writing Achievement

Abstract

Writing is considered as a crucial skill and an essential element of the teaching/learning process. The present descriptive study purports to investigate the relationship between writing strategy use and first year licence English as a foreign language (EFL) students’ writing achievement. More precisely, the aim of this study is to determine which writing strategies are used by skilled writers and less-skilled writers in their writing tasks. The study is directed by the hypothesis that first year licence EFL students with high levels of achievement in writing are aware of the different writing strategies and use them when writing more than students with low levels of achievement in writing. With relevance to the present descriptive study aims, and in order to answer the research questions, two data gathering tools were used: a writing test and a questionnaire designed and addressed to 60 out of 241 first year licence students at the department of English, Mohammed Seddik Ben Yahia University, Jijel. The findings revealed that most students used writing strategies, but with differences in type and frequency