This study examined the effects of topic choice on ESL essay writing by answering the following research question: What are the differences between the mean scores of 98 adult university-level nonnative English speakers on each of five subscores of two writing tasks when those differences are controlled for the students' overall language proficiency by using their scores on the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL)? / The subjects were selected by availability from the Center for Intensive English Studies at Florida State University and from the university at large and were randomly assigned into one of two treatment groups. Group 1 was administered an assigned topic on the writing test. This topic ("Discuss a recent event and its effect on your country") was the normal test topic used at CIES and had been used before with reliable results. Group 2 wrote on the open topic ("Choose any topic you like and write a composition on it"). After the tests, the compositions were scored according to the ESL Composition Profile. Finally, the subjects took the TOEFL in order to determine their overall language proficiency. / Pearson product-moment correlations were run first between all variables, with no relationship shown between the topics and subscores of the writing test. In order to test the null hypothesis (H(,O): (mu)(,T) = (mu)(,NT) for the total scores and for each subscore), a factorial design using a one-way Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) with two treatment levels was planned, with the effects of overall language proficiency partialled out as a covariate. However, the ANCOVA was not carried out, as the null hypothesis had been confirmed. There were, however, unusually high correlations shown between all other variables (e.g., TOEFL subscores and totals and ESL Composition Profile subscores and total scores.) / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 46-10, Section: A, page: 2951. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1985.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_75670 |
| Contributors | LEONHARDT, NANCY LYNN., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 65 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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