The Use of Writing Strategies of University Students in Italy

Abstract

The current dissertation presents the results of an investigation into the use of language writing strategies in a sample of subjects studying various foreign languages in different universities in Italy. The research investigated three categories of writing strategies used by the respondents (metacognitive, affective and social), with the aim to discover which categories are the most frequently adopted and to investigate the students’ perceptions of their usefulness. Subjects completed an online questionnaire: an adaptation of Raofi et al’s (2017) scale integrated with additional questions. Variables such as gender, year of study, native language, region in which the participants attend university were taken into account in order to discover their influence on the use of specific categories of writing strategies. Findings indicate that metacognitive writing strategies are the most preponderantly relied on category and social strategies the least relied on. Metacognitive writing strategies are also those that students consider the most useful while affective strategies are considered to be the least useful. Implications of the study are presented and discussed.