An investigation into EFL pre-service teachers’ academic writing strategies

Recent research has shown writing strategies to have a substantial impact on language learners' writing performance but little is known about what strategies EFL learners use and how they use them in writing academic texts such as reports, final assignments, and project papers. The study reported in this paper extends this line of research by investigating the strategies Vietnamese EFL pre-service teachers use in academic writing. Data included document analysis of 17 pre-service teachers' final assignment papers (one paper per teacher) and individual semi-structured interviews with ten teachers. The study adopted a content-based approach to qualitative data analysis with reference to a comprehensive research-based taxonomy for L2 academic writing strategies, including rhetorical, metacognitive, cognitive, and social affective strategies. The results show that rhetorical, metacognitive, and cognitive strategies were most frequently used by the teacher participants. The results further show that self-efficacy and self-regulation determined the teachers' use of strategies during the writing process. Implications for the L2 writing classroom focused on academic writing strategies to enhance pre-service teachers’ writing quality will be discussed.