Abstract:

The aim of the study is to investigate the relationship between EFL learners’ writing performance and their use of writing strategies in the context of voluntary-based English Preparatory School. To do this, Writing Strategy Inventory developed by Özbay (2008), semi-structured interviews and students’ writing grades of their 3rd midterm exam were used. Writing Strategy Inventory was delivered to 166 students; however, only 152 students took the midterm exam. Following the quantitative data collection procedure, semi-structured interviews were carried out with 15 students chosen via extreme case sampling method based on the students’ scores on the Writing Strategy Inventory. The results show that there is a significant but a low correlation between students’ writing strategy use and their midterm results. However, during the interviews, students state that they can’t use the writing strategies during the exams because of limited time for the writing part or just because the strategies such as searching the topic on the internet and looking up dictionaries they generally use are not appropriate for the exams. Furthermore, the use of writing strategies does not differ according to gender; on the other hand, students with higher self-proficiency level use more writing strategies.

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