Evaluating the performance of Iraqi EFL undergraduates in Writing Reading Comprehension Précis

Abstract

The study aims at evaluating the performance of the grammatical and lexical abilities of Iraqi EFL undergraduates in writing précis for reading comprehension passages . (64) male and female second- year students from English Dep. College of Education-of Babylon University were chosen as the sample of the study during the academic year (2012-2013). A written test form was constructed to be the tool for the research study. The test form consisted of an unseen passage followed by a question to write a précis for the presented passage. The testees were provided with instructions to determine the starting and the end points of the précis. The testees were required to mention the steps to be followed to write their précis including the key words of the ideas to be included in their précis, their grammatical devices used in formulating their précis and their own vocabulary used the précis. The respodents showed low frequency use of the grammatical devices for reduction which indicates that the testees were not adequately trained to utlize their grammatical knowledge in such a productive peice of writing whereby garmmar is utilized to compress sentences for reduction. The respondents also showed low succeeeded scores in using cohesive devices to join the sentences of the required precis due to The inability of the testees to utilze their grammatical knowledge to choose the correct conjunction to join sentences and misunderstanding the ideas in the presented passage which causes the inability to discover the shared meaning among them when joining is done accordingly. Above all, the respondents showed very low succeeded results in utlizing their vocabulary store to achieve word economy which clearly indicates that the testees have poor vocabulary store that makes them less felixable to express the ideas of the presented passage in their own words.