A CONFIRMATORY FACTOR ANALYSIS OF THE REVISION STRATEGIES QUESTIONNAIRE IN MALAYSIAN ESL WRITERS’ CONTEXT

Abstract

A review of literature has indicated that the possible reasons for Malaysian students’ lack of English proficiency are primarily on extraneous variables such as students’ perception and attitude, social environment and linguistic factors. It appears that these extraneous variables are hindrances to Malaysian students mastering the language and eventually this affects their performance in a language test, in this case MUET. The present study used a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) on a data set of 527 participants. We propose a theoretical model of the relationship between (1) writing behaviour, (2) writing difficulties, and (3) writing strategies. These three factors were tested for the reliability and validity of the constructs, including item loading, construct reliability, and average variance extracted. The CFA revealed that the standardised loading items are beyond 0.70 on their anticipated factor, representing the construct validity is adequate. The analysis revealed that the standardized loadings for each items were above 0.70, Cronbach’s Alpha and composite reliability exceeds 0.70, and AVE values beneath 0.50 (Hair et al., 2010). Hence, the factors are reliable, and have a good convergent validity and reasonable to be used for the further analysis, that is structural model. On the basis of these current data it appears that the students’ English writing behaviour, attitude and difficulties could influenced their writing abilities.