An Investigation of Writing Strategies Used by the Students on the Perspective Language Proficiency and Gender

Abstract

This study was aimed at describing the types of writing strategy used by students on the perspective language proficiency and gender, and the factors underlying the choice of writing strategies of the students at English department in one of university in Indonesia. This research was a qualitative study. The subject of the study was fourth students at English department on the undergraduate program which grouped into male, female, poor writing, and good writing. The methods of collecting data were observation, interview, and questionnaire. Based on the research finding, the type of writing strategies used by the students on the perspective language proficiency and gender covered the six strategies proposed by Oxford, namely: memory, cognitive, compensation, metacognitive, affective, and social strategy. The dominant writing strategy used by male students was memory strategy, whereas the female students was metacognitive strategy. And the dominant writing strategy used by the students having poor writing production was compensation strategy, whereas the students having good writing production was metacognitive strategy. Moreover, the factors underlying the choice of writing strategies used by male students were purpose of learning language, motivation, degree of awareness, learning style, and belief, whereas the factors underlying the choice of writing strategies used by female students were purpose of learning language, motivation, degree of awareness, learning style, belief, and learning environment. And the factors underlying the choice of writing strategies used by the students having poor writing were degree of awareness, belief, and proficiency, whereas the factors underlying the choice of writing strategies used by students having good writing were purpose of learning language, motivation, degree of awareness, and learning style.

Gender Differences in Language Learning Strategies

“…Some of them tried to find problems that existed in differences in the learning outcomes of men and women viewed from various fields of science and from various perspectives. The results of the study prove that the relevance of gender with learning outcomes in a particular field is very meaningful where the value of the success of male learners outperforms the value of female students (Maharani et al, 2018;Tang et al, 2014),. However, some studies on gender differences do not provide significant results for the linkages of this problem.…”

“…Those studies includes learners' level of language proficiency, motivation, learning style, cultural backgrounds, gender, nationality and context of language learning since in the middle of 19 th century then grew until the 20 century (Chamot, 2005;Aharony, 2006;Zhang, 2008;Mahalingam, M & Yunus, M,M, 2016). Also, the fact that high use of social strategies somehow contradicted with the findings (Gerami, et al 2011;Salashour et al, 2012;Tang, et al, 2014;Maharani et al, 2018 that reported learners tended to use more rote learning and language rules and less communicative strategies.…”

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“…Additionally, good writers who excel at writing can use writing strategies in their writing process compared to less-skilled writers. Maharani, Fauziati, and Supriyadi (2018) in their study found that good writers used writing strategies often compared to less-skilled writers. Writers who apply strategies are said to perform better than those who write without any guideline as the strategies will closely guide them until the end of the writing process.…”

“…to Maharani et al (2018) female writers used more strategies in the writing process compared to male writers.…”

Metacognitive Writing Strategies Model Used by ESL Writers in the Writing Process: A Study Across Gender

“…In a recent study on the use of writing strategies on the perspective language proficiency and gender by Maharani et al (2018) they found the types of writing strategies used by the students covered the six strategies proposed by Oxford namely memory, cognitive, compensation, metacognitive affective and social strategy. Among these six strategies, the researchers found that the dominant writing strategy used by the male student was memory strategy, whereas the female students were prone to use metacognitive strategies.…”