The Relationship Between Use of Writing Strategies and English Proficiency in Singapore Primary Schools

This article reports on a questionnaire-based investigation of writing strategies used by Singapore primary school pupils. A sample of 1,618 pupils from two local primary schools participated in the study. A number of one-way ANOVA analyses were run to measure the relationship between the participants’ use of writing strategies and their English language proficiency. The findings show that Singapore upper primary school pupils used a wide range of writing strategies at a medium frequency. Planning, text-generating, revising, monitoring and evaluating, and resourcing strategies were found to be significantly correlated with the participants’ English language results. However, local variations were also detected. Methodological limitations and recommendations for future research are then discussed.

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