Abstract:
The research addresses three research objectives: (1) to identify learning strategies of writing
skill used by senior high school students in Indonesia, (2) to measure the extent of use of the
strategy categories, and (3) to study the differences in the use of the strategies by successful and
less successful learners. The subjects of the study were 766 second year senior high school
students in East Java, Indonesia. They were asked to complete a questionnaire of strategies of
learning writing skill and a self-assessment. The results of the data analysis using Principal
Component Analysis yielded twelve components with an initial eigenvalue greater than 1,
explaining a cumulative variance of strategies 57.68%. The component matrix was rotated using
Varimax with Keiser Normalisation Method and the resulting factors were then treated as
posteriori strategy categories and named self-monitoring, language-focusing, planning,
metacognitive affective, cognitive compensation, self-evaluating, social process-focusing,
authentic practicing, meaning-focusing, vocabulary developing, metacognitive commencement,
and mental processing strategies. All of these strategies were used at the moderate frequency
level. Finally, successful learners reported using the strategies more frequently than less
successful learners did.
