Investigatng The Relationship Between Lexical Knowledge And The Quality Of Efl Writing Among Non-english Major Students In China

The current status of vocabulary in teaching EFL writing in college of China haslong been in a dilemma. On the one hand, teachers and students have realized theimportance of vocabulary and focus much energy on vocabulary instruction andlearning. On the other hand, college students still have difficulty getting rid ofimproper word choices when they are required to perform a writing task. Moreover,existing empirical studies have mostly focused upon relationship between roles ofvocabulary in EFL listening/reading, with EFL writing receiving less attention.The present study aims to systematically investigate the relationship betweenlexical knowledge and the quality of EFL writing among non-English majors in China.64sophomores from2classes of a university in Nanjing participate in the study. Byusing methods such as correlation study, contrast study between groups ofhigh-achievers and low-achievers in EFL writing as well as case study, the presentstudy investigates the relationship between breadth and depth of lexical knowledgeand the quality of EFL writing; also, it examines the differences of lexicalperformance between high-achievers and low-achievers in EFL writing.Major results of the study show that:(1) among the indices of breadth ofvocabulary, or vocabulary size, independently measured vocabulary size (VLT)(p=.795>.05) and percentage of sophisticated words (p=.626>.05) have no directimpact on the quality of EFL writing; while text length seems to have a positiveimpact on quality of EFL writing (p=.035<.05);(2) among the indices of depth ofvocabulary, independently measured depth of lexical knowledge (DVK) has no directimpact on the quality of EFL writing (p=.546>.05); while lexical errors have anegative impact on EFL writing (p=.027<.05);(3) compared with high-achievers inEFL writing, low-achievers tend to have lower scores in VLT and DVK, use moresophisticated words and make more lexical errors. This study provides potentialimplications for both teaching and learning of EFL writing and vocabulary.