thai business students’ writing strategies with …...ทยณบยณฉศนฒธยบณ...

69วารสารมนุษยศาสตร์ มหาวิทยาลัยนเรศวร ปีที ่16 ฉบบัที ่1 ประจ�าเดือนมกราคม - เมษายน 2562

Thai Business Students’ Writing Strategies with Emphasizing on Writing

Proficiency and Field of Study

กลวิธีการเขียนของผู้เรียนไทยที่เรียนทางด้านธุรกิจ โดยพิจารณาจาก

ความสามารถทางการเขียนและสาขาวิชา

Pattanon Phonhan1

พัฐนนท์ พลหาญ2

Abstract In the field of second language writing, writing strategy investigation has been paid attention

by many researchers for more than three past decades. The aim of this study was to investigate the

frequent use of writing strategies by Thai business students at tertiary level according to the difference

on writing proficiency and field of study. The participants of the study were 87 third and fourth year

students including 26 marketing students, 29 management students and 32 accounting students. The

research instruments were collected by English writing composition test for measuring students’ writing

proficiency and the writing strategies inventory questionnaires, which adopted from Petric & Czarl (2003).

The statistics of means, standard deviation and one–way ANOVA were computed for data analysis. The

major findings of this study indicated that while-writing strategies were the most frequently used, followed

by pre-writing strategies and revising strategies respectively. On the whole picture of significant variation

in the frequency of students’ use of writing strategies, no significant differences were found in either

writing strategy categories between the high writing proficiency and low writing proficiency students,

among the groups of students across three majors in business field. In conclusion, writing proficiency

and field of study are not played vital role in affecting the frequency of writing strategies employed by

Thai business students who have skilled at logical and mathematical intelligence.

Keywords: Second Language Writing, Writing Strategy, Writing Proficiency, Field of Study

บทคัดย่อ ในสาขาการเขียนภาษาท่ีสอง การศึกษาเก่ียวกับกลวิธีการเขียนเป็นอีกหนึ่งประเด็นที่ได้รับความสนใจ

จากนกัวิชาการมาเป็นเวลาเกือบสามทศวรรษแล้ว การวิจยัในครัง้นีม้วีตัถุประสงค์เพ่ือศกึษาความถ่ีของการใช้กลวธีิ

การเขียนของผู้เรียนไทยท่ีเรียนทางด้านธุรกิจในระดับอุดมศึกษา ซึ่งมีระดับความสามารถทางการเขียนและสาขา

วิชาที่แตกต่างกัน กลุ่มตัวอย่างได้แก่นักศึกษาชั้นปีที่ 3 และ 4 จ�านวน 87 คน โดยจ�าแนกออกเป็นกลุ่มสาขาการ

ตลาด จ�านวน 26 คน, สาขาการจัดการ จ�านวน 29 คน และสาขาการบัญชี จ�านวน 32 คน เครื่องมือที่ใช้ในการวิจัย

ประกอบไปด้วยแบบทดสอบความสามารถทางการเขียนภาษาอังกฤษ และแบบสอบถามการใช้กลวิธีการเขียน ซึ่ง

1 Lecturer Department of English for International Communication, Rajamangala University of Technology Isan, Khon Kaen Campus2 อาจารย์ สาขาวิชาภาษาอังกฤษเพื่อการสื่อสารสากล มหาวิทยาลัยเทคโนโลยีราชมงคลอีสาน วิทยาเขตขอนแก่น

70 Journal of Humanities, Naresuan University Year 16 Volumn 1, January - April 2019

ผู้วิจัยประยุกต์มาจาก Petric&Czarl (2003) สถิติที่ใช้ในการวิเคราะห์ข้อมูลได้แก่ ค่าเฉลี่ย, ส่วนเบี่ยงเบนมาตรฐาน

และการวิเคราะห์ความแปรปรวนทางเดียว ผลการวิจัยที่ส�าคัญพบว่า กลวิธีระหว่างการเขียนเป็นกลวิธีที่นักศึกษา

ใช้มากที่สุด รองลงมาคือกลวิธีก่อนการเขียน และกลวิธีการแก้ไขงานเขียน ตามล�าดับ นอกจากนี้จากการศึกษายัง

พบอีกว่าโดยภาพรวมแล้วกลวิธีการเขียนของนักศึกษาที่มีความแตกต่างทางด้านความสามารถทางการเขียนและ

สาขาวิชานัน้มคีวามแตกต่างกันอย่างไม่มนียัส�าคญัแต่อย่างใด กล่าวโดยสรปุแล้วปัจจยัทางด้านความสามารถและ

สาขาวิชาไม่ได้มอีทิธิพลส�าคญักับความถ่ีของการใช้กลวิธีการเขยีนของนักศกึษาไทยทีเ่รยีนทางด้านธุรกิจซึง่มคีวาม

ถนัดทางด้านตรรกศาสตร์และคณิตศาสตร์

ค�าส�าคัญ : การเขียนภาษาที่สอง กลวิธีการเขียน ความสามารถทางการเขียน สาขาวิชา

Introduction

In the case of Thai university system which four language skills have been taught and

provided for all English courses, writing is considered as both elective and compulsory subject

for undergraduate students when they entered into tertiary education (Watcharapunyawong &

Usaha, 2013). However, it is evident that writing found to be the most complex and difficult skill

for Thai learners who are required to study English as foreign language context (Pawapat

charaudom, 2007; Bennui, 2008; Chuenchaichon, 2015). Furthermore, Thai students’ writing

proficiency still have problem based on unsatisfactory level as well (Prapphal & Opanon-Amata,

2003; Punthumasen, 2007). As same as Thai students studying in the field of business, writing

skill can be applied to communicate in various written texts such as business letter, paragraph

writing, short message writing and writing resumes for occupational purposes. From the preliminary

observation, it is found that most students have inexperienced with the lack of writing ability and

techniques about how to express their idea and generate text organizations when they have

encountered with writing in authentic situation.

According to the problem mentioned above, in order to develop and motivate students

to be the proficient writers, it is necessary to find out appropriate teaching method or tactics that

can improve writing ability of students who are not skilled in linguistic ability. Since the research

paradigm of second language writing has shifted from the product-oriented approach to process-

oriented approach over the threedecades, writing strategies are accepted to be one of the

important factors to reach the writing objective (Silva, 1990; Angelova, 1999; Fujieda, 2006).

This trend refers to individual techniques of writer used to organize and regulates their ideas,

planning, composing and revising. (Flower & Hayes, 1981; Grabe& Kaplan, 1996; Torrance at al,

1994, 2000; Kieft et al, 2006, 2007 ; Yuksel, 2014). Because writing strategies can be essential

tool and help the learner to transform knowledge and support them when they faced with writing

barriers in order to accomplish goal in both L1 and L2 writing (Cohen & Brooks – Carson, 2001;

Petric & Czarl, 2003). One of the well known studies of this area have claimed by many scholars


that writing strategies seem to be the significance key influencing students’ writing process since

they separate successful writers from less successful writers (Zamel , 1983 ; Arndt, 1987 ; Victori,

1995 ; Beare, 2000 ; Mu , 2005).

However, despite the empirical numerous studied has been conducted on writing

strategies and emphasized by many researchers in the field of second language writing since

1970, these are few gaps that this paper purposed to fill out. The researcher reviewed related

literature and discovered that it is very few studies in this issue in Thailand context especially at

tertiary level. Interestingly, the majority of Thai previous samples of these investigations in terms

of writing strategies were students majoring in English who have linguistic intelligence (Nuchsong,

1997; Pawabunsiriwong, 2004; Jarunthawatchai, 2005; Saraiwang, 2006; Boonpattanaporn, 2007,

Kulamai et al, 2016; Pothitha, 2016).Whereas students who are generally believed to have

numerical aptitude such as science or business had never been occurred. Focusing on a field

of study, there were no any researches identifying the use of writing strategies employed by

students with in the same field but different majors. For this reasons, the researcher aims at filling

gap by investigating the use of writing strategies employed by business students who are proficient

at mathematic intelligence or numerical aptitude.

Consequently, this current study intended to discover the relationship between the major

differences and strategies use by comparing the writing strategies employed by students studying

in three fields of business at undergraduate level in Thailand, as well as to examine how these

writing strategies are affected by business students’ writing proficiency. With outcomes gained

from this study, this will beneficial to writing teachers and language practitioners to aware

the significance of writing strategies for the development of teaching writing methods, teaching

materials by applying the appropriate strategies in language classroom.

Methodology

1. The Participants

There were 87 business students from the Faculty of Business Administration and Information

Technology at Rajamangala University of Technology Isan, Khon Kaen Campus participating in

the study including 26 marketing students, 29 management students and 32 accounting students.

They are third and fourth year students who enrolled in English Writing for Daily Life course in the

first semester of the Academic Year 2017. The reason for choosing the third and fourth year

business majors was that they passed in four English courses which are compulsory subjects for

students majoring in business. These courses consist of English for Study Skills Development,

English for Communication, English Conversation in Daily Life, and English for Presentation.


In addition, they have some Basic English writing skills from related course: English for Business

Communication in the last semester. Hence, they could give insight information for this study.

For business students as main studied in this investigation, they are studying for these

three academic majors: accounting, marketing, and management, which are in the field of business.

Despite, there are many universities in Thailand where business education is provided and various

disciplines are found differently among those universities, those three majors mentioned are most

often occurred almost everywhere both government universities and private universities. The sample

of students were classified and placed into two groups, high writing proficiency students and low

writing proficiency students, according to their scores on writing test. 33 students who ranging

scored over than 50 (out of 100) were placed in high writing proficiency group. Whereas 54 students

who ranging scored lower than 50 (out of 100) were placed in low writing proficiency group.

Instrumentation

1. English Writing Composition test

The English writing composition test was constructed specifically to employ in the present

study in order to categorize the subjects into their different proficiency groups. It was also aimed

to measure students’ writing proficiency. The subjects both pilot study and target group were

assigned to write a paragraph between 150 and 200 words on the topic “The story of my life”.

Three raters including the researcher and two lectures, who have experienced in teaching writing,

have to join in order to assess writing proficiency. The main criteria used for scoring was the

Analytic Scoring method by Jacobs et al (1981). A score based on a total of 100 was given

covering with content (30 points), organization (20 points), vocabulary (20 points), language use

(25 points) and mechanics (5 points) respectively. The inter-rater reliability was calculated by

using Pearson’s Correlation reliability coefficient among the three raters.

2. Writing Strategy Questionnaire

The quantitative data for this investigation was collected through the writing strategy

questionnaire which was developed by Petric & Czarl (2003). The aim of this instrument was to

examine the frequency of strategy use in writing skill. The questionnaire was composed with two

important parts: personal background information and 38 writing strategy items to rate

the frequencies of strategy use with five Likert-scales ranging from 1-5 (1= never use, 2 = usually

not true, 3 = sometime what true, 4 = usually true, 5 = always true) (Petric & Czarl, 2003). For

determining the frequency of writing strategy use, three levels of strategy use, which adopted

from Oxford & Burry-Stock (1995), were demonstrated for assessing the level of writing strategy

usage. The mean frequency of strategy use of items valued from 1.00 to 1.99 was considered as

‘low use’, from 2.00 to 2.99 ‘moderate use’, and 3.00 or higher ‘high use’.


The questionnaire contained three categories, including 38 writing strategies i.e 8 individual

strategies in category 1: Pre-writing; 14 individual strategies in category 2: While writing ; and 16

individual strategies in category 3 : Revising writing. Before actual use, the writing strategies

questionnaire was translated into Thai language version and proofread by three experts. In order

to ensure that questionnaire was reliable, it was tried out with 24 business students in the pilot

study group. Then, the returned questionnaires were analyzed the statistic outcomes to find out

the reliability according to the Cronbach’s alpha.

3. Think –aloud protocol

The think aloud protocol was gathered with only the subjects in target group. It was used

in this study in order to discover what students were thought while they were solving their writing

problems. The subjects were requested to join in think aloud protocol. Then, they asked to talk

and share about what they were thinking or doing as they were discussing the writing test.

4. Semi – Structured Interview

Semi-structured interview was the final instrument for this study after writing. It was

administered with only the target group in order to give the subjects’ understanding to express

thoughts, opinions, ideas and attitudes in their own words about writing strategies use.

Data Collection

Before the beginning of the main study, a pilot study was carried out in order to allow

the researcher to examine and improve the effectiveness of both writing test and writing strategies

questionnaire. 24 students from three majors business, who had same characteristics with the

target group, were required to participate in the pilot study group. They were given two hours and

thirty minutes for writing test and another fifteen minutes for answering the writing strategies

questionnaire. After that, the preliminary questionnaires were assessed and calculated for the

reliability through Cronbach’s alpha reliability coefficient. The results of Cronbach’s alpha coefficient

for the writing strategies use was .90. Considering with the reliability between first and second

raters was .85, that between second and third raters was .89, and that between first and third

raters was .87, which all considered as acceptable level (Jackson, 2006). Finally, both writing test

and writing strategies questionnaire were revised and scrutinized for some items and content

parts before they became as the final edited instruments for the subjects in the main study.

In collecting data for the target study, the revised writing composition test and writing

strategies questionnaire were conducted as the main instrument in sample group students. In

this phase, the semi - structured interview and think - aloud protocol techniques were also

administered as an additional part of data collection regarding qualitative information in order

that the subjects were able to share their opinions or attitudes about how they employ writing


strategies and how they solve with writing problems while writing text. Before taking the writing

test and completing the questionnaire, the subjects were informed of the goals and details of

gathering data which not affect course grades, and there were no right or wrong answer for them.

All of subjects were assigned to take the writing test, and then respond to the writing strategies

questionnaire respectively. After finishing the test, they were given two hours and thirty minutes

for the test, and another fifteen minutes for filling out the questionnaire as same as the pilot study

group. Afterwards, the writing tests were calculated in categorizing the subjects’ test scores in

order to identify their level of writing achievement.

After the writing test calculation, 6 high proficiency level students and 6 low proficiency

level students from each major in the field of business were randomly selected by means of simple

random sampling method. All of them were requested to interview on how they really employed

the writing strategies in their actual situation both within the writing class and the written text.

Furthermore, the think- aloud protocol techniques was rechecked what the participants actually

thought about taking writing test and to make sure how they solved with such problems during

writing the text.

Data Analysis

All data gathered through the writing composition tests and writing strategy questionnaires

were analyzed through the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). Descriptive statistics

including frequencies, means and Standard Deviations (S.D) were calculated to examine Thai

business students’ use of writing strategies. Additionally, an Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and

Scheffe’s pos hoc test were used to demonstrate whether significant differences among the

writing strategies employed by Thai business students from each majors at different writing

proficiency levels.

Result and Discussion

The demographic data collected from the writing strategy questionnaires were summarized

in the statistics and discussed according to research objectives. Whereas the qualitative data

was analyzed and interpreted according to the semi-structured interview transcripts and

the think-aloud protocol transcripts.


Table 1 Thai business students’ overall writing strategy use

As indicated in Table 1, it demonstrates that the overall use of writing strategies in

the three main categories was at the moderate level. Moreover, it is clear from the table that the

highest strategy use among Thai business students is while-writing strategies (2.83), followed by

pre-writing strategies (2.60), while the lowest strategy employed by the subjects is revising strat-

egies (2.56). This is definitely consistent with the writing used by Chinese non-English major

students in the Chen’s (2011) study he found that while-writing strategies are considered to be

the most frequently used and revising strategies are the least of often used. It is also agree with

Maarot & Murat (2013), which asserted that ESL upper secondary school students employed

strategies in the while-writing group as the highest ranking order. While revision strategies are

tended to be the least often used. On the contrary, this result is inconsistent with previous studies

by Al-Sawalha & Chow (2012) and Abdul - Rahman (2013), they claimed that revising strategies

were the most often used.

Table 2 Thai business students’ writing strategy use according to writing proficiency

According to Table 2, it shows the frequency of writing strategies used by business

students in terms of writing proficiency. As can seen from the table, the high writing proficiency

students rarely use all writing strategy groups more often than the low writing proficiency students.

Besides, when it comes to the highest strategy employed by the students with high writing

Result and Discussion The demographic data collected from the writing strategy questionnaires were summarized in the statistics and discussed according to research objectives. Whereas the qualitative data was analyzed and interpreted according to the semi-structured interview transcripts and the think-aloud protocol transcripts. Table: 1: Thai business students’ overall writing strategy use

Strategy Categories x S.D Frequency use level Pre-writing 2.60 .59 Moderate

While-writing 2.83 .70 Moderate Revising 2.56 .51 Moderate

As indicated in Table 1, it demonstrates that the overall use of writing strategies in the three main categories was at the moderate level. Moreover, it is clear from the table that the highest strategy use among Thai business students is while-writing strategies (2.83), followed by pre-writing strategies (2.60), while the lowest strategy employed by the subjects is revising strategies (2.56). This is definitely consistent with the writing used by Chinese non-English major students in the Chen’s (2011) study he found that while-writing strategies are considered to be the most frequently used and revising strategies are the least of often used. It is also agree with Maarot & Murat (2013), which asserted that ESL upper secondary school students employed strategies in the while-writing group as the highest ranking order. While revision strategies are tended to be the least often used. On the contrary, this result is inconsistent with previous studies by Al-Sawalha & Chow (2012) and Abdul - Rahman (2013), they claimed that revising strategies were the most often used.

Table 2: Thai business students’ writing strategy use according to writing proficiency

Strategy Categories High Low Significances

Level

Variation x S.D x S.D

Pre-writing 2.84 .67 2.49 .47 .674 No

significant

While –writing 2.64 .54 2.80 .74 .754 No

significant

Revising 2.60 .63 2.37 .94 .844 No

significant

According to Table 2, it shows the frequency of writing strategies used by business students in terms of writing proficiency. As can seen from the table, the high writing proficiency students rarely use all writing strategy groups more often than the low writing proficiency students. Besides, when it comes to the highest strategy employed by the students with high writing proficiency is pre-writing strategy group and the lowest one is revising strategies. As regard to the low writing proficiency students, the most preferred strategy used is while-writing strategies and the least one is revising strategies. Moreover, when two groups of students were compared, the results revealed that there was no significant difference between the high writing proficiency and low writing proficiency students at confidence level of .05 (P> .05).

This finding comes in accordance with the result of Baker & Boonkit (2004), which reported that there was no significant difference in the frequency of writing strategies used among high, intermediate and low students. That is to say, the high writing proficiency students employed more writing strategies from all three categories; pre-writing, while-writing and revising stage than the students with a low writing proficiency level. This finding come in line with the many empirical tenor of previous studies in writing strategy use and proficiency level showed


proficiency is pre-writing strategy group and the lowest one is revising strategies. As regard to

the low writing proficiency students, the most preferred strategy used is while-writing strategies

and the least one is revising strategies. Moreover, when two groups of students were compared,

the results revealed that there was no significant difference between the high writing proficiency

and low writing proficiency students at confidence level of .05 (P> .05).

This finding comes in accordance with the result of Baker & Boonkit (2004), which

reported that there was no significant difference in the frequency of writing strategies used among

high, intermediate and low students. That is to say, the high writing proficiency students employed

more writing strategies from all three categories; pre-writing, while-writing and revising stage than

the students with a low writing proficiency level. This finding come in line with the many empirical

tenor of previous studies in writing strategy use and proficiency level showed that the high proficient

students used using general writing strategies more often and effective than the low proficient

students (Flower & Hayes, 1981; Cumming, 1989; El-Mortaji, 2001; Sasaki, 2000). Moreover, it is

also correspond with the results in this area on Thai context, they supported that the high achievers

tended to use more writing strategies than did the low achievers ones (Nuchsong, 1997; Chotirat,

1998; Jarunthawatchai, 2001).

Table 3 Thai business students’ writing strategy use according to majors in business field

Table 3 illustrates the frequency of writing strategies employed by the business students

according to different majors; management, marketing and accounting. It indicated that the

marketing students seem to use the while-writing strategy group as the highest rank, followed by

Strategy

Categories

Management Marketing Accounting Significances

Level

Variation

x S.D x S.D x S.D

Pre- writing 2.94 .75 2.56 .42 2.64 .54 .930No

significant

While -writing 2.53 .67 2.66 .64 2.86 .70 .603No

significant

Revising 2.63 .70 2.48 .54 2.58 .43 .328No

significant


pre-writing strategies, whereas strategies in the revising group turn out to be the lowest used.

Likewise, the accounting students can be ordered from the most often used to the least used as

follows; while- writing , pre-writing and revising strategies as same as the marketing students.

On the other hand, the management students use strategies in the pre-writing group the most

frequently, followed by revising strategies, meanwhile while-writing strategy group is found to be

the least often used.

To sum up, the comparison of writing strategies use among three majors in the field of

business; management, marketing and accounting similarly employ strategies for writing.

Nonetheless, the management students prefer to use strategies in a slightly different way. This

might be possible that the business students participating in this study have different learning

styles depending on the nature of their disciplines. Concordance with the results of Kotarputh

(2011) and Phonhan (2016), they concluded that strategies used among students majoring

different in the same faculty were occurred both likely to contradict and resemble in some issues

depending on the characteristic of students’ discipline.

Based on the results of Scheffe’s pos hoc test, there was no statistically significant

difference among three majors; management, marketing and accounting on the frequency of

writing strategies use because there was not any strategy groups perceived the significant value

less than .05. Consistent to Zhao (2014), this study found no significant difference in the frequency

of writing strategy use among non-English major students from different fields including International

business, electronic information science & technology and process equipment & control

engineering. The reason for no statistical significance might be due to their insufficient lack of

systematic training about writing strategies. However, this is inconsistent with Sanpanich (2010)

and Anuyahong’s (2014) investigations on writing strategies employed by undergraduate students

at Thai university; they claimed that there were statistically significant difference among those

students with different academic majors in each aspects.

Findings from Semi-Structured Interview and Think-aloud Protocol

At the prewriting stage, the results from interview and think-aloud technique found that

the high writing proficiency students used making outline to plan about their writing content in

this stage. Hence, it is quite clear that these groups focused on planning before writing a draft.

This is consistent with Paengsri (2013) interviewed that both good and poor Thai high school

students in her study planned their ideas through making outlines as a visual presentation before

writing paragraph. According to the writing process of ESL and EFL students previous studies

by Arndt (1987), Victori (1995), Riazi (1997), and Sasaki (2000), which of all were confirmed that


planning was the strategy writers used to control their writing. Besides, this tactic has been found

to be important key to skilled student writers (Mu & Carrington, 2007; Ridhuan and Adullah, 2009).

Whereas note -taking in writing class was the technique also reported to be used by the high

writing proficiency students as well. As same as Boch & Piolat (2005) stated that note-taking could

help learners to remember and converge on what they have learnt and understood the piece of

information.

Moreover, it is interesting to see that most of the high writing proficiency students were

more focused on their readers. So, they spent more time thinking about how to introduce their

ideas to the readers and what might interest the reader. This result conformed to Krashen’s (1984),

Matsumoto’s (1995) studies, found that the proficient writers were more aware of the audience or

reader because their plans were tentative which contributed them to adjust the original plan while

the composing process. On the other hand, the low writing proficiency students selected

information for the paragraph writing by searching sources from the internet as an additional

model. That is, the role of technology has become the supplementary material for writing classroom.

This result contrasted with the research finding by Lynch (1998) who found that high ability

students were consulted books, materials and media sources as conducing to writing knowledge.

This technique is not only use for high proficient students, but anyone who is influenced by second

language writing should efficiency apply the suitable writing strategies in appropriate task.

In addition, the data from interview and think-aloud techniques also reflected that the

low writing proficiency students are considered reader’s knowledge as less significant factor.

This might be their lecturer would be only reader of their paragraph writing because their tasks

were only course assignments. These finding showed that they are less concerned with readers’

objective as mentioned by Krashen (1984) that the poor writers preferred to focus on the topic

and spent less their time thinking about the readers whereas the good took more time for planning

content ,organization and much conscious of the audiences’ goal before writing. Interestingly,

this investigation also found the same things between two groups of participants that they all used

their background knowledge to brainstorm their ideas and utilize discussing with others generating

their ideas before writing. According to Chai (2006) recommended that generating idea before

writing composition was useful for writers. This was relevant to Thai previous study on writing

strategies by Ponukkha (2010) which observed that Thai secondary school students were

generated ideas for communication to link them to sentences or phrases in writing tasks.

At the during writing or drafting stage, the qualitative data pointed out that both the high

writing proficiency and low writing proficiency students were wrote at least one draft. This was

probably because the written topic in this study was considered to be the familiar topic which


related with the participants’ background knowledge. Thus, they do not spend a great amount of

time for drafting paragraph. According to Hyland (2003) suggested that experience and prior

knowledge was the most important factors which affected process writing. When drafting the

paragraph, it is noticeable that the high writing proficiency students were practiced through using

their own word in English language, considering the purpose of writing topic and also linking the

supporting sentence and main idea in their writing. This might be this group realized the importance

of paragraph writing and the whole picture of organization including ideational and textual

purposes. Hence, they can automatically think and write their outline knowledge in L2 with sufficient

skill when drafting. These results corresponded with Jones & Tetroe (1987) investigated on

composing process in a second language, they proposed that good L2 learners did not heavily

use their L1 to transfer the writing process, while poor L2 learners have to try more heavily on their

mother tongue for finishing in writing process. Therefore, the result shows that the high writing

proficiency students tend to find a variety ways to reach the writing task.

Considering with the low writing proficiency students’ drafting, most of them were

employed translation strategy to transfer their thoughts from Thai language into the English language

before their ideas were completely written down. This might be possible that Thai students were

more familiar with grammar-translation method than other teaching methods. That is to say, these

student groups are focus on planning and composing paragraph in Thai and translate into English.

As Brown (1980) criticized that translation has been found as one of the crucial obstacles in

learning language because there might be first language intervention on which caused mistake

in the target language. This result also concurred with Baker & Boonkit (2004) who discovered

that the less proficient writers reported most use of this strategy. In addition, Wang (2003) also

supported the same position in his study that the low achiever students translated words and

phrases from English to Chinese in order to copy their ideas directly in writing tasks.

However, an interesting issue is that the high writing proficiency students most frequently

paused and thought after each sentence covering their ideas to help them continue writing,

whereas the low writing proficiency often stopped for translating their native language to foreign

language. The data obtained from interview script and think-aloud reported that most of them

were worried about how to organize written text and how to present their idea and supporting

sentence in the composing stage. This result phenomenon is affirmed by Rungruangthum’s study

(2011) that Thai post graduate students were often used stopping writing when they faced with

writing apprehension in English research writing. Similarly, Krashen (1984) also supported in his

study that those samples stopped to plan what to write next and rescanned to see when the plan

limited and then paused again during writing paragraph.


According to revising stage, in-depth interview and think-aloud found that most of the

high writing proficiency students were revised longer and spent more time in this stage in order

to proofread and review about their ideas, language content and organization form of paragraph,

whereas the low writing proficiency students were revised and needed more time for checking

about language structures such as grammar, vocabulary, punctuation and capital letter. That is,

the high writing proficiency students are considered writing to be whole picture and make global

for changing with language expression and content level. Meanwhile, the low writing proficiency

students viewed writing as a surface theme and revised only limited changes which focus on

sentence structure. This probably because the high writing proficiency students in this study have

a good fundamental English skills and they also like to read and search for additional information.

These can lead to great creativity and expressing idea in order to utilize in their written task.

Therefore, all of them have not many writing problem for revising when compared with the low

writing proficiency students. Regarding the low writing proficiency students’ opinion, they were

lack of confidence and anxious to revise their written task in English because they scare to make

mistake or error which will be impacted their writing. Consequently, the main goal of them is shed

light on grammatical structure rather than the high writing proficiency group. This findings go in

line with many previous empirical studies by Sommers (1980); Zamel (1983); Krashen (1984) and

Cumming (1989), they agreed that the high proficient writers were revised more often than the

less proficient writers did because they emphasized on revising content and global organization

writing, whereas the poor writers paid attention to surface forms of writing such as vocabulary

and grammatical rules.

Emphasizing on the aspect of field of study, the qualitative data from semi-structured

interview and think-aloud protocol analysis demonstrated that among Thai business students from

three majors: management, accounting, and marketing had different and similar thought about

how to use writing strategies in their writing processes as follows ;

In regards to pre- writing stage, management students always made a plan before

beginning to write taking notes. They indicated that planning was the important tactic for them in

driving their assigned writing tasks. Similar with accounting students, they had a plan for their

writing; however they might change it whenever they got new ideas or information which might

be beneficial for their writing. Thus, these students pointed out that a planning strategy is not so

clear because of their changing to new ideas. In addition, they also did brainstorming ideas as

mind mapping on their primarily drafts before writing. Unlike, marketing students asserted that it

was unnecessary for them to take notes or brainstorm ideas they did not have any plan for their

writing because they wrote as they thought at that moment without any drafting for planning.


Moreover, the results from semi-structured interview and think-aloud protocol discovered

that both marketing and accounting students were encountered the same problem for generating

ideas. Accounting students found that they normally met problems on generating their ideas

because they could not associate ideas and texts together. They thought that it was difficult for

them to select choice of vocabularies to completed sentences. While marketing students had

a similar way of thinking to accounting students that they often did not know how to link words

into sentences suitably. On the other side, management students presented their ideas in the

dissimilar way as the two previous major students that they could write with their current thinking

without any modeling text. As well as Ardnt (1987) who claimed that L2 writers lacked vocabulary

knowledge and their revision in word-choices so that they generally faced with barrier when they

want to integrate their ideas together.

In case of during writing stage, the findings from semi-structured interview and think-aloud

protocol displayed the similarities characteristic among the business students from different

majors that they employed many sources to be supplement them to achieve their writing during

composing process. Interestingly, they usually used both Thai-English and English-Thai dictionaries

to check spelling and meaning for some words they were not understood. Management applied

English-Thai dictionaries to check the corrective spelling. They also asked the teacher about some

words or phrases they were unsure of. Focusing on marketing and accounting students, they

used the same strategy as management students. They always used dictionaries both in English-Thai

and Thai-English including searching online dictionary in order to acquire knowledge of some

words they were not understood of their meaning and looked up about synonym and antonym of

each word they did know the direct meaning. Moreover, they also used opening English textbook

in writing courses as their assistant information for their writing. However, they did not consult or

ask teacher or classmate to be their reference. According to Tono (1991) declared that dictionaries

are used more capable by the most linguistic proficient writers.

Additionally, all the business students from different majors agreed the same thing that

it was necessary for them to re-read in order to check what they had written and to scrutinize to

see if something was incorrect or mismatched in their writing such as punctuations, sentence

structures. Besides, it can be seen that all business students used correcting liquid or pencil to

edit in their composition and emendedsome words or sentences they thought did cut off from

their writing. From this outcome, it revealed that among business students raised awareness of

metacognitive knowledge which focused on monitoring and evaluating while writing their written

tasks. In the same vein with Wenden (1991) and Riazi (1997), who suggested that L2 writers have

metacognitive strategies: evaluating and monitoring to check and determine problems including

reconsidering the written text and objective they have intended to master.


Unfortunately, the outcomes gained from semi-structured interview and think-aloud

protocol indicated that most of Thai business students from three majors were less concerned

about awareness of reader and audience because they did not show enough details for expressing

their ideas. This possible explanation might be their written documents were focused only

descriptive writing stories. Most of students expressed readers their personal detail regarding

their family, friends, and university with short descriptions in their written papers. For this reason,

they did not much show the sense of readers in their related components of their writing such as

the objective, introduction, body, and conclusion. As Ede & Lunsford (1984) stated that audience

awareness or sense of readers are considered to be an important feature in making any difference

between expert and inexpert writer.

Looking at the revising stage, the qualitative results exhibited that among participants

from three majors in business field were similarly revised their written tasks many times, although

management students had few different ideas from accounting and marketing students in terms

of purpose of revision. Management students manifested that they often changed not only words

in especially sentences but they also changed the context and content in which they had written

as well. Meanwhile, accounting students were usually focused on both the correctness of

grammatical structures and re-wrote to the new spelling swords that they thought were right.

Marketing students were only concerned with the most suitable word-choices during completing

sentences for their writing. The reason why the business students not revised the overall organization

of paragraph is that they are non-English major students so that they only did their descriptive

writing to describe and explain the general content which related field of English for business

purposes. This means that revising something they have thought that it might be incorrect or

mismatch for some words, sentences, and contexts which need to be stressed on.

Surprisingly, the findings obtained from semi-structured interview and think-aloud protocol

explored some evidence that most of business students were paid close attention to the use of

L1 applied in both before writing and during writing stages. They quite agreed that the use of L1

was necessary for them to use in Thai in order to transform their English writing for generating

ideas before writing. They also usually employed their L1 (Thai) in their think-aloud technique and

then switched it into L2 (English) while they were drafting. This consistent with many studies have

shown that L2 learners used their L1 and L2 interactively for various strategic purposes while

composing in L2 (Raimes, 1987; Cumming, 1990; Uzawa, 1996; Bosher, 1998; Wang & Wen, 2002).


Conclusion and Pedagogical Implication

This research aimed to examine the frequent use of writing strategies by Thai business

students in terms of different writing proficiency and majors. The findings appeared that the

participants in this study employed while-writing strategies most often than the other strategies,

whereas revising strategies were found to be the least frequently used among these students.

The statistic results revealed that no significant differences in the writing strategies used between

the high writing proficiency and the low writing proficiency students. There were also reflected

that no significant differences in the writing strategies employed among Thai business students

from three majors; accounting, marketing and management. Moreover, there is no significant

difference in overall writing strategies used among those three groups of business students at

significances level of .05. That is to say, the factors of writingproficiency and discipline have no

effect on the frequency of writing strategies use by Thai business students at tertiary level.

Based on the wide range of qualitative data gained from this study, it is found that the

high writing proficiency and the low writing proficiency students differed in their choices of writing

strategies used in three stages of process writing. This result is consistent with many previous

empirical research works on writing strategies use that the proficient writers and less proficient

writers were exhibited different on behaviors and utilized separate strategies in their writing process

(e.g. Perl, 1978; Flower & Hayes, 1980, 1981; Krashen, 1984; Cumming, 1989; Raimes, 1985,

1987). Furthermore, writing strategies used by the accounting and marketing students were

probably to similar each other, but the management students employed writing strategies in

a slightly different way. One explanation is this might be possible that Thai business students who

participated in this study were contained distinctive characteristics and style of learning depending

on the features of their disciplines. Parallel with Kotaputh (2011) interpreted the difference traits

among business students who came from different majors that Thai accounting and marketing

students were tended to think about antithetically information while management students

appeared to be more critical-minded than two previous ones so that they solved problem

systematically according to the nature of their major content.

From the overview pictures mentioned above, although the factor of proficiency and field

of study have not influenced on the choice of writing strategies use for Thai business students,

it cannot universalized from the outcomes and concluded that these factors not always effect and

different on the use of writing strategies in all viewpoints because these depend on the related

variables of sample contexts such as cultural background, learning environment, learning belief,

personality and motivation. That is, the subjects in this study have distinctive characteristic and

style of writing. Besides, it can be seen that frequently use of writing strategies in each categories


were found in the moderate level. This can be assumed that most of Thai business students do

not employ writing strategies much often in written tasks. This might be possible that some of

these strategies would be new and unfamiliar to some of students. Thus, it should be the significant

matter for writing teachers consider to provide and apply which writing strategies may be more

suitable for their students in writing classes. Additionally, teaching writing strategies should be

consolidated in writing course or syllabus and also integrated into all stages of writing process

including pre-writing, drafting, revising, editing and publishing.

Based on the results obtained from this investigation, while-writing strategies are

considered to be the most frequently strategies used for writing by Thai business students.

In order to be good dynamical writer, the students should not need to concentrate on structural

accuracy or formal of the draft, but rather on the fluency of content and organization. In addition,

one dimension of good writer of this stage is the writers’ knowledge and ideas to conceptualize

on reader because the awareness of readers’ sense can control a certain style to be used. Moreover,

the students should bear in mind a central of main idea that they want to express to the reader in

order to give direction for their writing. Considering with the pre-writing strategies, this objective

highlights on stimulating students’ creativity their thoughts before writing a draft of detail. To

implement this stage effectively, there are various kinds of activities based on pre-writing strategies,

for example, brainstorming, clustering, graphic organizing, outlining, note-taking, analyzing text

structure (Cooper, 2000). However, the participants in this study reported that they used revising

strategies the least often. Teacher feedback and peer feedback are one of those activities

promoting students’ revising strategy. As Jun (2008) claimed that these written feedbacks could

assist writing instructors to know well their learners have comprehended in the writing tasks.

Besides, learners also understand how better they have accomplished in their writing assignments

and what they should improve or revise in their future writing as well. Moreover, oral conference

between teacher and student also encourage them become interactive role for revising together.

All in all, the writing teachers’ role should be more as facilitators, guides or consultants

in order to support students for practicing writing strategies through process writing efficiently

rather than carrying out the majority character of rater looking into rightness and exactitude of

written contents. Hence, good strategic training course of how to use and apply writing strategy

productively should be obviously taught and provided as well. On the other side, students should

not always use writing strategies that provided by teachers, but also select appropriate strategies

which considered as the beneficial technique for applying in their writing classes by themselves.

By the same token, as Oxford (1990) advised about making a successful strategy training that

the instructors should have learners practice and utilize strategies, not only learn strategy in terms

of theories.


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