Résumé:
The present study aims at predicting students‟ grammatical accuracy in writing on the basis of
their syntactic categorization competence. It has been hypothesized that if students are able
identify syntactic categories correctly, then they are more likely to write error-free essays. To test
this hypothesis a multi-layer analysis has been conducted on 50 second year licence students‟
tests and exam essays in the department of English at Mohammed Seddik Ben Yahia University.
The multiple-choice test asked students to identify the syntactic structures of different sentences
parts. The same syntactic categories were analysed in written language samples to trace out the
most common pattern or the series of syntactic errors committed by students. The results
obtained from both research instruments showed that students‟ accurate grammatical production
is detected based on their successful syntactic categorization. Most students failed at categorizing
and producing prepositions, and encountered some problematic areas in trying to identify
possessive determiners, cardinal numbers, noun phrases, dependent clauses, sentence types, and
compound-complex sentences in particular. Thus, students who faced difficulties in the
categorization process were also trapped in the of production process. So, it is highly remarkable
that students‟ grammatical accuracy is based on their correct identification of each item in a
given sentence separately
