Abstract:
This research investigates the impact of the grammatical accuracy and
discoursal features on the quality of EFL M.A. students' written performance at
Sudan University of Science and Technology.
As the main objective is to observe this impact, the researcher distributed
an essay test to the second batch of M.A students of English at Sudan
University of Science & Technology in 2013 in order to measure their abilities
in these grammatical and discoursal features. 50 students were asked to write
an essay entitled " The Challenges Facing Education in Sudan". To support the
obtained data, 30 copies of a questionnaire were administered to 30 university
teachers, particularly, those who teach at the graduate level. The data collected
through both tools have been statistically analyzed by using the SPSS.
After applying the descriptive analytical method for both research tools ,
the researcher has come up with some conclusions that M.A students are very
poor in grammar and the discoursal features of cohesion, coherence,
thematization & contextualization with percentage 73.5. This poor use of
grammatical aspects and discoursal features, according to the overall results
has minimized the quality of their written essays.
Therefore, the researcher recommends exposing students to intensive
grammar and writing skill courses that adopt Systemic Functional Linguistics
theory; as it covers all aspects of discourse which are essential to texts' writing
so that students can understand and practise them, otherwise writing skill will
remain a problem.
