The Relationship among Grammatical Knowledge, Writing Apprehension, and Writing Performance among Intermediate EFL Students

Writing plays a significant part in any academic field, especially in TEFL. This study aimed to illuminate and investigate one psychological and crucial factor influencing writing performance: Writing Apprehension (WA). Furthermore, the purpose of the current research was to assess the impact of Grammatical Knowledge (GK) on intermediate EFL learners’ writing tasks. a TOEFL PBT structure section by NTC were administered to the 40 intermediate students. Having administered the tests, the researcher asked the subjects to compose an essay on a general and controversial topic: the effects of TV on people’s lives. Based on the tests, the subjects were divided into four groups: 1) High WA, High GK, 2) High WA, Low GK, 3) Low WA, High GK, and 4) Low WA, Low GK. Results indicated that there were statistically significant differences between the two groups of High GK, Low WA and the other three groups. This group outperformed the other groups. The Low GK, High WA group received the lowest scores in writing. This proved the belief that those benefiting from a high mastery of grammatical knowledge and lacking writing apprehension while writing could attain the best records among all. The outcomes of this study can have benefits for both foreign language teachers and learners. They both can attain better results by focusing more on the psychological factor of WA in their roles. The findings of the present study demonstrated that more concentration ought to be placed on enhancing GK and lowering WA in order to augment students’ writing performances.

Keywords:

Grammatical knowledge , Writing Apprehension , Writing Performance , Intermediate EFL Students