This study aims to examine the effect of strategic planning training on cohesion in English as a foreign language (EFL) learners' writing. We recruited 62 Chinese learners of English and divided them evenly into experimental and control groups. We trained the experimental group in 4 sessions to master strategic planning. Then we selected 4 participants from the experimental group to undergo semistructured interviews to track change in their attentional focus throughout the training. We measured cohesion in essays before and after training using Coh-Metrix and analyzed it using the least significant difference in analysis of variance. The findings showed that strategic planning training had a limited effect on cohesion in EFL writing, which could be explained by EFL learners' improved awareness of cohesion and limited English proficiency. This study suggests that (a) EFL learners should improve their linguistic proficiency to channel their attentional focus on cohesion and (b) writing instruction should help these learners to balance their focus.