omplicated skills which are tough for teachers to teach. It requires the learner to master bothgrammatical rules and conceptual components. However, from the discussion of the definitionof writing, it is clear to make such a conclusion that the writing skill contains far more than oneelement.Heaton (2000, pp.105-135) concludes the writing skill from the following five areas: thefirst is language use, which refers to the skill to make sentence correctly. The second ismechanical skills, which mainly refers to the skill to appropriately apply the languageconventions in writing. The third is the skill to treat content appropriately which is thecompetenceto develop ideas without any information which is unrelated to the topic. The fourthis stylistic skills, namely, the competence to write the essay in an appropriate style. The lastaspectistheability toorganizeandorderrelevant elements.
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2.2Individual Learner Differences in SLA
It is essential to make a clear idea of SLA before the discussion of individual learnerdifferences. SLA refers to the process of learning language in addition to the native language. Itis widely acknowledged that there is a close relationship between second language and nativelanguage. SLA should be distinguished from foreign language learning that is mainly learntonlyinschools. The languagewhich islearned in SLAisdefined as L2 ortarget language.The term “Individual Differences”, which is originated from psychology, refers to therelatively stable and different physiological and psychological features of human beings in theprocess of a series of mental activities such as recognition, emotion and will, etc. (Zhu, 1989)3.While in SLA, the term “individual learner differences” mainly means the differences in theprocess of the learner learning an L2, such as differences in how they learn it, and howsuccessful they are. Since the 1950s, the functions of individual learner differences have beenappealed to various scholars (Ellis, 1989, 1994; Larsen-Freeman & Long, 1991; Skehan, 1989).They have done the research in this field and made the great achievement. The research onindividuallearnerdifferenceshasbeen oneoftheresearch focuses inSLA.
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ChapterThree Methodology..........11
3.1 Purpose........11
3.2 Design........11
3.3 ResearchQuestions........11
3.4 Subjects........12
3.5 Instrument........12
3.6 Scoring and DataAnalysis........13
ChapterFour Resultsand Discussion ........15
4.1Differences of Writing Proficiencyamong Non-English Majors........15
4.2 Differences in Lexical Accuracy........18
4.3 Differences in Syntactic Accuracy........23
4.4 CausesoftheDifferences........27
4.5 Summary........15
Chapter Five Conclusion........ 31
5.1 MajorFindings........ 31
5.2 Implications of the Study ........32
5.3 Limitations of the Study and Suggestions for Further Studies........ 34
Chapter Four Results and Discussion
4.1DifferencesofWritingProficiencyamongNon-EnglishMajors
The first research question is that: Whether there are some differences of writingproficiency among non-English majors by the influence of the two individual factors: Genderand L2 proficiency? Aiming to answer the first question, the following two sub-questions willbe answered respectively: First, whether there are differences of writing proficiency betweenhigh and low L2 proficiency students? Second, whether there are differences of writingproficiency between male and female students? Now we are going to disc
