Writing strategies and learner autonomy for English major students in a Vietnamese University

<p dir="ltr">This thesis investigates writing strategy use in an undergraduate English major program in Vietnam. Students enrolled in this program use English as a Foreign Language (EFL) and often struggle with their English writing proficiency. Research suggests that language proficiency is closely related to learner autonomy, and specifically, a student’s knowledge of and ability to employ writing strategies. Thus, the present study set out to investigate how writing strategies are perceived and employed in a Vietnamese EFL undergraduate context. Specifically, 22 Vietnamese EFL teachers and 390 Vietnamese EFL students representing each of the four years of enrolment in the undergraduate program were surveyed about their perceptions towards writing strategy use. Four instructors and 16 students further engaged in semi-structured interviews and classroom observations to elaborate on these perceptions and practices.</p><p dir="ltr">Drawing on Griffith’s (2016) 20-strategy inventory, the teacher questionnaire focused on instructors’ assessments of the value and importance of different writing strategies whereas the student questionnaire focused on the frequency with which the students drew upon these strategies. Quantitative data were collected via questionnaires and qualitative data was collected via an initial semi-structured interview, classroom observations, and a follow-up semi-structured interview. The two data sources were statistically and thematically analysed and compared following the Convergent Parallel Mix-method design.</p><p dir="ltr">The findings revealed that Vietnamese EFL teachers value the important role writing strategies play in their students’ writing skills development and would frequently integrate the strategies they most valued into their writing lessons. When assessing which strategies the teachers valued most and the students most frequently employed, the findings revealed that both teachers and students focused on strategies specific to a given task (i.e., “in-task” strategies) more than “beyond-task” strategies. Notably, the teachers were found to rely more heavily on process-oriented writing strategies whereas the students more frequently reported using language-oriented writing strategies. The data further revealed how students’ use of strategies and their teachers’ integration of writing strategies in their lessons changed according to the students’ level of proficiency. Lower-level students relied on a smaller range of strategies and their teachers emphasised the need to more explicitly teach writing strategies. In contrast, the teachers of the higher-level students were less explicit about teaching writing strategies but instead expected students to demonstrate greater autonomy. The higher-level students were found to meet those expectations and reported using a much wider range of writing strategies.</p><p dir="ltr">These findings contribute to our understanding of writing strategy use in the Vietnamese undergraduate EFL context and provide insights that may inform the EFL writing curriculum in Vietnam, providing students and instructors a more nuanced understanding of the strategies that best support students’ development of writing proficiency. It is hoped that these findings will also enable language teachers in other EFL contexts to more deeply understand their students’ writing strategy use so that they too will be able to effectively apply strategy instruction in their classes, according to their students’ level of English proficiency.</p>