identifying linguistic and self-efficacy problems of iraqi efl learners in writing graduation papers
This study aims to: 1) Investigate and identify issues in the senior EFL learners’ linguistic and self-assessed ability to master different aspects of writing a graduation paper. 2) Compare the writing performance of the learners from three departments. 3) Third explore the association between students’ self-efficacy beliefs and their writing achievement. Data were collected via Situated Academic Writing Self-Efficacy Scale (SAWSE) to see if our students are confident and to identify the most engaged writers, from departments of English in three different colleges in University of Mosul. A detailed linguistic analysis of a sample of written graduation papers by senior students was also conducted to unveil the issues in those students’ academic writing. The results of the One-Way ANOVA test revealed a statistically significant difference in the writing performance among learners from the three colleges. The findings of the Spearman Correlation test indicated a small but not significant relationship between learners’ self-efficacy beliefs and their writing performance, while the linguistic analysis conducted on a sample of written papers produced by the learners showed that although each cohort has certain committed linguistic mistakes, most of them were weak in text organization, syntax, and using appropriate academic vocabulary. (Published abstract)