Investigating the Grammatical and Lexical Coherence in Essay Writing by Iraqi EFL College Students

الملخص

As the system of Arabic language is totally different from English, writing in English is considered a problematic issue for the Arab students including the Iraqi students as well. However, this problem can extend to university levels. Writing essays include not only writing correct sentences, but entail coherence in writing related to lexis, grammar and joining ideas in a coherent way. So, this article investigates the use of the grammar and lexical coherence in writing essays by Iraqi students at university level. This study is a primary data analysis of the responses obtained by two questionnaires set for the students and teachers. The study involves fifty students selected randomly from the third grade of Department of English at the College of Arts of University of Thi-Qar in Iraq. The students' answers and writing in essays are analyzed thoroughly to give the main findings. The analysis of the other questionnaire given to twenty teachers of the Departments of English of University of Thi-Qar comes in accordance with the results of the first questionnaire which set for the students and confirms the findings of the paper. The study reveals that Iraqi students have a good theoretical knowledge about types of essays and essay writings as well as conjunctions and coherence devices, yet they are weak in applying these devices in writing.