Want to improve your writing skills? This book offers you a fantastic approacheasy to learn and to useand with it, you can improve your writing dramatically. This approach derives from sociocultural theories, substantial first-hand data about EFL learners writing strategy use, and detailed and systematic analysis; it consists of four interrelated categories, namely artifact-mediated, community-mediated, rule-mediated, and role-mediated strategies, and numerous subcategories. These categories and subcategories, though by no means exhaustive, highlight the dialectic relationship between context and cognitive and the importance of mediating resources in writing strategy use. Examples of how learners of different writing abilities use these strategies in their writing activities are analyzed and discussed, providing the reader with insights into efficient ways of using writing strategies and enhancing writing abilities.

Xiao LEI is now an associate professor at the School of Foreign Languages at South China University of Technology. She did her PhD studies at the University of Hong Kong, and her research interests include ESL writing, SLA, and ESP. She has a full-length article published in the Journal of Second Language Writing.