Writing strategies used by Malaysian ESL undergraduates / Lee Lai Fong … [et al.]

Writing strategies are deemed important to enable learners to write well
in academic contexts in higher education. This study examined the writing
strategies of English as Second Language (ESL) undergraduates in higher
education to look into the type of writing strategies they use. The five
categories of writing strategies focused on were rhetorical strategies,
metacognitive strategies, cognitive strategies, communicative strategies,
and social/affective strategies. The sample of this study comprised 40
students from the social science disciplines in a local public university.
The instrument used to collect data was questionnaire. The results showed
that the students used all five categories of writing strategies. However,
metacognitive strategies, cognitive strategies as well as social/affective
strategies were used slightly more compared to communicative strategies
and rhetorical strategies. This study has implications for ESL student
writers and instructors on writing strategies that can be used to facilitate
academic writing