The Effect of background knowledge on the global writing proficiency of EFL students

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study investigates whether there is a relationship between the quality of the compositions produced and the selection of a topic which allows or does not allow the use of the subjects' background knowledge. In addition to that, it investigates the relationship between background knowledge and the level of writing proficiency as they affect the quality of the compositions. The study was conducted at Anadolu University. The students at two intermediate classes were chosen as subjects and three sets of data were collected for the study. Firstly, at the beginning of the study base line writing samples were collected for all of the subjects. Secondly, since the effect of background knowledge of the subjects on their writing proficiency was the focus of the study, subjects' background knowledge about possible final writing topics was measured via a word association test at the beginning also. Finally the last step of data collection was the collection of final writing samples on the topic determined by the word association test. The writing samples produced by the subjects were scored hol istical ly by two scorers by using the ESL Composition Profile to determine the effect of background knowledge on the subjects writing proficiency. The collected data were analyzed from different aspects. In order to test the first hypothesis, the effect of background knowledge on writingproficiency the initial writing scores of the subjects were compared with the final writing scores by background knowledge level. Two analysis were done, one dividing the subjects into low, medium and high background knowledge levels and one dividing into high and low background knowledge levels. In neither the results were significant. The second hypothesis which stated that there would be a relationship between the level of writing proficiency and level of background knowledge was tested by comparing the final test scores of subjects with low and high writing proficiency. Also, their distribution by background knowledge levels was analyzed. In order to see the effect of background knowledge on the subcomponents of the holistic rating scale initial and final test scores of subjects with different background knowledge levels were compared. Finally, a matched-pairs t-test was run to compare the gain scores of high background knowledge subjects with the low background knowledge subjects. The statistical results indicate that the independent variable had no effect on the dependent variable: selecting topics about which subjects have background knowledge had no significant effect on increasing their writing proficiency.