An Investigation into the Use of Socio-Cultural Strategies in L2 Writing among Chinese English Majors

Abstract

This paper reports on the results of a quantitative study that was aimed to measure the use of socio-cultural strategies in learning English writing among a group of 155 Chinese university English major students. This quantitative survey was informed by the socio-cultural theory that holds that L2 learning is a mediational process in which a couple of socio-cultural factors tend to mediate the learning of the second/foreign language. The use of writing strategies was thus conceptualized by an array of mediational factors and measured by a self-designed questionnaire. Descriptive techniques were applied to analyze the collected data. The results revealed that the surveyed participants endorsed a medium to high level of socio-cultural writing strategies. They reported to most frequently use role-mediated strategies in their English writing learning, followed by sign-mediated strategies, rule-mediated strategies, community-mediated strategies, and tool-mediated strategies respectively. The results are implicative for L2 writing learning and instruction.