Effective English Speaking and Writing Strategies of Chinese Working Staff

Abstract

The purposes of this study were to 1) investigate the effective English speaking and writing strategies of Chinese working staff, and 2) compare the effective strategies of participants with different genders, and ages. The participants were 92 working staff at Dongming Administrative Service Management Center, Dongming county, Shandong province, China. Other 4 persons, 2 males and 2 females, were interviewees. The researcher employed questionnaires and a semi-structure interview to collect the data from those officers. The findings revealed that the 15 speaking strategies and 15 writing strategies were their moderate effective strategies. Their top 3 speaking strategies were 1) telling the interlocutor to speak slowly, 2) practicing questioning and answering, and 3) expressing not understanding; while their top 3 writing strategies were 1) learning writing with correct grammar from teachers, 2) writing after models, and 3) memorizing sentence structures. When comparing those strategies by sex and age, the researcher found that the participants with different genders and ages rated those strategies moderate effective. However, their top three speaking and writing strategies were different.