A Study Of Non-english Majors’ Individual Differences In Writing Proficiency In Private Colleges

Based on the theory of individual differences, this study is designed to investigate theinfluence of gender and learners’ L2proficiency on non-English majors’ writing proficiency.Specifically, the study is designed to find out whether there are statistically significant genderdifferences in writing proficiency among non-English majors and whether there are differencesin writing proficiency between high and low L2proficiency groups. Meanwhile, the causes ofthesedifferencesareexploredin thisstudy.The subjects of the study are130non-English major sophomores from NingboDahongying College. According to their previous CET4scores, these subjects are divided intotwo groups--high L2proficiency group and low L2proficiency group and65students in eachgroup. A timed writing test is carried out among130participants. After the collection of thewriting samples, randomly select30valid samples of female and male respectively from eachgroup. All valid samples are subjectively rated, lexical and syntactic errors are calculatedrespectively. Afterwards, with assistance of SPSS19.0, the following questions are discussed:Are there significant differences of writing score among four groups. How these differences aredisplayed in terms of lexical accuracy and syntactic accuracy? Lexical accuracy is furthermeasured by collocation, spelling, use of article and part of speech etc., and syntactic accuracyisapproachedinrespects ofagreement,useofpredicateverbsanddependentclauseetc.The major findings of the study are as follows: First, female students excel male studentsin writing proficiency which is reflected by lexical and syntactic accuracy. To be specific,female students do much better in the following aspects in terms of lexical accuracy:Collocation and part of speech; as to syntactic accuracy, females outdo males in agreement.Second, high L2proficiency group outperforms low L2proficiency group in writingproficiency. Specifically, high L2proficiency group does much better in the following specificaspects in terms of lexical accuracy: Spelling, use of articles and collocation. As to syntacticaccuracy, high L2proficiency group does much better in agreement and use of predicate verbs.Third, the causes of these differences mainly lie in the following two categories: Interlingaultransfer and intralingual transfer. The negative transfer of L1and intralingual transfer are morelikelytooccurinlowL2proficiencygroup andmalegroup.The findings of the study are expected to present some pedagogical implications for ESLwritingteaching.