Addis Ababa University Students’ Strategy Use in a Reading-to-Writing Task

Abstract

Provision of all the necessary learning materials and support systems may not create the required learning process. Even though learners have all similar supports they definitely learn in different ways. Learning begins in the learners. Thus, this study attempts to investigate the reading-to-writing strategies employed by graduating students in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature at Addis Ababa University.  The necessary data was collected from: (1) a questionnaire administered to 20 students, (2) think-aloud recording of 20 students, (3) interview with three students and, (4) writings of 19 students. Analysis of the data from the sources revealed that while doing reading-to-writing task, students use strategies in the following order: cognitive, social affective and metacognitive strategies. It was also found that students use less demanding strategies such as repetition, asking for clarification and self-monitoring more frequently than demanding strategies such as planning, elaboration, transfer and inference. It was also observed that students with less competent writing less frequently use metacognitive strategies. What is more, a difference within strategy uses among students who have produced competent, average and less competent writing was observed. The study indicates that there is a need to provide training and practice on uses of different strategies and tasks in order to make students able to direct their own learning. The need to train teachers and include learner training components into teacher training course and language learning materials are the overall recommendation of the study.