Lexical and Syntactic Features of Underachieving EFL University Students’ English Composition

Lexical and Syntactic Features of Underachieving EFL University Students’ English Composition

This study examined lexical and syntactic characteristics of EFL composition by university students at lower levels of English proficiency. Thirty five students in an English program in a local university of Korea wrote an English essay in their assessment of writing proficiency. These students were also assessed on their levels of English grammar awareness and grammar competence using a questionnaire and two versions of grammar tests following Ferris and Roberts (2001). The study shows that a general match is found between students’ levels of grammar awareness and their grammar competence, yet their texts generally lack both accuracy and fluency. The number of words per text (M=71) has the strongest correlation with the mean of words per sentence (M=9.5), but this length of a text is not the predictor of their writing proficiency. Rather, it is the number of error-free sentences which virtually determines the quality of students’ writing. Errors are more salient in untreatable (wrong word and sentence structure) than in treatable categories (e.g., verb form and noun plural); the analysis of the two versions of grammar tests also confirms that word choice and sentence structure are the hardest components in English composition for this population. The relationships between levels of L2 proficiency and students’ writing abilities are discussed.