The Correlation between Syntactic Awareness of EFL University Teachers and Students' Writing Performance

Abstract

The current study is aimed at finding out the correlation between syntactic awareness level of EFL university teachers and students' writing performance. The problem of this study is most of teachers as language teachers do not recognize the importance of syntax in teaching their students . Accordingly, students' problems in writing lie in their lack of understanding the nature , process, and requirements of academic writing . The problems of the current study are best identified by answering the following research question : To what extent can an efficient writing of college students be affected by the level of syntactic awareness of EFL university teachers? The sample of the study consists of (30) teachers from different specializations , and (100) students from fourth year at University of Tikrit , College of Education for Women , English Department. The current study includes three instruments after being validated and approved by a jury of experts. These are: 1) a questionnaire and a diagnostic test are applied to measure teachers' syntactic awareness , and 2) a diagnostic test is used to measure the performance of students in writing. The obtained results have shown that there is a positive correlation between teachers' syntactic awareness and the performance of students in writing . In the light of the obtained results , some conclusions are drawn .