A Proposal for a Taxonomy of ESL Writing Strategies

This article reviews four theories related to ESL writing instruction approaches so as to provide a theoretical format for the classification of ESL writing strategies. Considering the theories of contrastive rhetoric, cognitive development, communication and social constructionism, this study proposes five categories used to ESL writing strageties. A taxonomy of ESL writing strageties is then established based on synnthesizing studies on ESL writing strageties. The five writing stategies are: communicative, rhetorical, metacognitive, cognitive and social/affective. Almost all of the categories of writing strategies in the studies are used to categorise the writing process.

As an ESL teacher, I consider that the development of writing is very complicated and influenced by many factors. However, the social constructionism theory and social/affective writing strategy called my attention because I am a constuctionism teacher. We assume that "writing is primarily a social act". Social/affective strategies are defined as strategies that writers use to interact with the target discourse community for the support and to regulate their emotions, motivation, and attitude in the writing (Carson & Longhini, 2002). Once again, it is in our hands to motivate students to write by guiding, supporting and providing them the opportunities to write. Keep in mind that the motivation to learn to write effectively comes through you!