English Teaching & Culture, Vol. 5, 42-53, 2009 STUDENTS’ PERCEPTIONS OF SELF-REGULATED STRATEGY USE ON EFL WRITING PERFORMANCE Feng-Min Chen, I-Shou University Hui-Fang Shang, I-Shou University ABSTRACT Recently English writing has become a compelling need in the educational field due to successfully passing the national entrance exam. Therefore, using appropriate strategies is of great importance to enhance students’ writing proficiency. According to previous studies, using self- regulated strategy, one of the metacognitive strategies, is effective to help students enhance their word production in writing, but it is not useful for passive students. Since the effect of self- regulated strategy use on writing performance is still a controversial issue, the purpose of this study was to explore 25 senior students’ perceptions toward self-regulated strategy use by employing a semi-standardized interview technique. The major finding of this study indicates that self-regulated strategy is an effective method for students to enhance their writing proficiency because using this strategy not only makes students know how and when to plan and write, but also makes students maintain their writing to be more cohesive and organized. From the exploration of students’ perceptions, it is expected that the small-scale research results can provide EFL writing teachers with pedagogical implications about how to design an EFL writing curriculum with the appropriate training of self-regulated strategy use, in order to enhance students’ overall writing performance. Keywords: Self-regulated strategy; metacognitive strategy; semi-standardized interview technique; EFL writing performance I. Introduction Learning English has become a trend for students, so every parent hopes that their kid will become a bilingual person in the future or have more opportunities to find a good job after learning English. In present education, an essential assessment to evaluate students’ English ability mostly depends on writing, so that learning how to write well becomes a compelling need for students (Burke, Chalk, & Hagan-Burke, 2005). In addition, Graham, et al. (2003) proposed that writing is a sophisticated process because the writer not only needs to consider the rules and skills while writing, but also keeps a focus on some aspects of writing including organization, purpose and goals, ‐ 42 ‐