A Proposal for a Taxonomy of ESL Writing Strategies

Writing strategies are usually considered to separate successful from less successful writers (Arndt, 1987; Beare, 2000; Raimes, 1985; Victori, 1995; Zamel, 1982). However, the recognition and classification of English as Second Language (ESL) writing strategies are found to be vague and confusing in the field of ESL writing research. Invoking the theories of contrastive rhetoric, cognitive development, communication and social constructionism, this paper proposes five categories used to code extensive ESL writing strategies. A taxonomy of ESL writing strategies is established based on synthesizing the previous studies on ESL writing strategies. The significance and limitations of the taxonomy have been discussed in the paper