The Effects Of Topic Familiarity And L2Proficiency On Writing Test Performance

Direct writing has been widely used in tests home and abroad, such as, IELTS,CET, TEM, etc. Previous studies found that various factors (rater or evaluator and testtakers’ backgrounds, etc.) affected candidates’ writing performances. However, thereare few studies dealing with the effects of topic familiarity and L2proficiency on testtakers’ writing performance. Based on the schema theory, the current study will add tothe limited number of studies concerning topic familiarity.The study involved45senior college students majoring in business Englishfrom Guangzhou Vocational College of Technology and Business. First, there were15participants who took part in the pilot study to determine the most familiar andunfamiliar topic by giving points to20writing topics. Second, in the following twoweeks, the candidates responded to the two chosen writing topics under thesupervision of their English teacher. After the second writing, the semi-structuredinterview was carried out by the author of the present study with the guidance of somequestions prepared before the interview. Students’ writings were assessed with thehelp of the analytic rating scale for IELTS. At last, repeated measures of apaired-samples t test and a series of repeated measures of3×2ANOVAs wereconducted to analyze the quantitative data and the themes of semi-structured interviewprotocol were also identified.Results of paired t test which aimed to answer the first research questionshowed that the overall scores obtained when responding to two writing prompts weresignificantly different. The descriptive data for the components demonstrated that interms of overall scores, candidates generally scored higher when writing on thefamiliar topic than they did in a second writing performance. It was clear that topiceffect was very significant in the two writing tests.3×2ANOVAs were undertaken only to find out that the effect of topic familiarityand L2proficiency was statistically significant, but their interaction effect on writingtest performance was not significant in terms of the overall writing scores andcomponents scores. It can also be inferred students’ writing performances weredetermined by two factors: language proficiency and topic familiarity and that thesecond writing prompt could be more effective in discriminating the students ofdifferent levels. When coming to a familiar topic, although low level candidates were lack of high language proficiency, they were still able to produce essays with richcontents because there were schemata stored in their minds. While, they did notperform well when responding to an unfamiliar topic for lack of both high languageproficiency and schemata related to the writing topic. Speaking of high levelcandidates, they could not write perfect essays either when responding to anunfamiliar writing topic for the scarcity of essential schemata of the writing topic.The majority of participants interviewed believed that the second writing topicwas difficult to deal with for lack of convincing examples to support their ideas andenough practice in daily life, requirement of more thinking and planning, anddeficiency of knowledge and words concerning law.