شبكة المعلومات العربية التربوية

Recent research in English language is descriptive, evaluative and analytical. It is quantitative and qualitative in nature, which aims at investigating theme development methods/techniques employed by Palestinian tertiary level EFL learners in performing written discourse. The study is an attempt to analyze the written product of 120 Palestinian EFL tertiary level learners majoring in English language and selected purposively from three different national universities in Gaza Strip; namely, Al-Quds Open University, Al-Azhar University-Gaza and the Islamic University of Gaza. The instrument used to collect the data for the present study is a writing test in which the students were asked to write a three- paragraph topic on a current issue, which is familiar to all members of the sample of study. And frequencies, percentages, T-test and Pearson correlation were the major statistical tests used in the present study. The results were also presented in graphic forms. The major results this study reached were; Palestinian English foreign language tertiary level majors are not competent in using different theme development methods in their expository writing. They almost used one or two of those methods. The results also show that the most frequently used two methods are cause/ effect and comparison/ contrast whereas the least frequent methods are question/ answer and definition. Regarding the demographic variables, it was found that gender has a partial impact on using these methods. Similarly, university variable has an impact on this area in terms of preferring using some methods by a particular group than others.(As Provided)