Assessing Discourse Features in EFL-students' Writing: A Case of Al-Neelain University 4th-year Students

Abstract

Abstract This study is an attempt to investigate the Sudanese university students' writing performance at discourse level. The errors made by the subjects are approached and analyzed from discourse analysis perspectives. Therefore, the theories of Discourse Analysis (text analysis) are provided in Chapter Two. The materials of the study are 100 written compositions (50 argumentative+ 50 narrative essays).The compositions are originally final examination answer sheets done by 4th year students majoring in English language, randomly chosen from the Department of English-Faculty of Arts- Al-Neelain University in the academic year 2006-2007. The results have revealed that the subjects have real difficulties dealing with written discourse features. This is evident from the syntax, cohesion and coherence relations' errors they made in the compositions. The errors in turn denote the subjects' unawareness' of English written discourse properties at both sentence and discourse levels. More importantly, the sequence of correlation matrix presented in Table 51 (Chapter Four) has shown the errors' correlation with the students' overall writing quality. Hence, attributes together with pedagogical implications and recommendations for further studies are provided in the last Chapter Five.