The Impact of Topical Knowledge on Students’ Writing Performance

Abstract

The present study investigated the effects of topical knowledge on first year master students’ writing performance at Mohammed Seddik Ben Yahia University. The hypothesis on which this study was based was that topical knowledge would affect the students’ written language performance in terms of complexity, accuracy, and fluency measures. The data were gathered through the use of two tests which were administrated to forty four (44) first year master students. The first test was a topical knowledge test which was used to evaluate the students’ knowledge about a given topic. The scores of this test were classified in three performance classes (good, average and poor performance classes). The second test was a writing ability test; in which students were asked to write an essay about the given topic which required specific topic knowledge. Students’ essays were examined through fluency, accuracy and complexity measures. The results revealed that there was a statistically significant relationship between topical knowledge test scores and students writing performance in terms of accuracy measures. More specifically, the higher students’ topical knowledge test scores, the more they produced accurate words and sentences in the writing productions. Accordingly, there is some kind of relationship between the topical knowledge and student’s writing performance.