International Journal of Research Studies in Language Learning
CollabWritive Special Issue
2024 Volume 10 Issue 1
Available Online: 15 April 2024
Author/s:
Fu, Bo*
Graduate School, Lyceum of the Philippines University – Batangas, Philippines (742921124@qq.com)
Caiga, Beverly T.
Graduate School, Lyceum of the Philippines University – Batangas, Philippines
Abstract:
Effective writing is a crucial skill for college students, vital for personal growth, academic research, and career success. Study evaluated the writing proficiency of non-English majors in Chinese universities, specifically focusing on topic familiarity, syntactic maturity, and lexical competence. The research utilized a descriptive methodology with questionnaires, surveying 392 participants from five universities in China. All data analyses were conducted using SPSS 26.0. The study results indicate that all participants acknowledged the importance of topic familiarity in both receptive and productive writing tasks. This confirms that topic familiarity plays a significant role in the writing abilities of Chinese EFL learners. Additionally, enhancing students’ syntactic maturity can effectively improve their writing quality. While the respondents demonstrated a strong depth of lexical knowledge, the breadth of lexical knowledge and overall vocabulary use were not as strong. There was a highly significant correlation between these three variables, indicating that better performance in topic familiarity leads to more proficiency in syntactic maturity, leading to greater competence in lexical aspects. Based on these findings, an enhancement program has been proposed to improve the EFL writing proficiency of Chinese college students. By implementing this program, students can intentionally increase their topic knowledge, improve the syntactic maturity of English, and successfully reinforce their lexical competence, all of which will improve their writing abilities.
Keywords: topic familiarity, syntactic maturity, lexical competence
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5861/ijrsll.2024.008
Cite this article:
Fu, B., & Caiga, B. T. (2024). Topic familiarity, syntactic maturity, and lexical competence of Chinese college non-English majors in EFL writing. International Journal of Research Studies in Language Learning, 10(1), 83-91. https://doi.org/10.5861/ijrsll.2024.008
* Corresponding Author