The Relationship between Iranian EFL Learners’ Proficiency Levels and their Revising Practices

Abstract

The present study aimed at examining if Iranian EFL learners' levels of writing proficiency affected their revising practices feeling that this might contribute to deeper understanding of what is going on in L2 writing contexts. The study was carried out with 70 EFL learners studying in Foreign Language Institutes in Ardabil, Iran. The participants had a language learning experience of at least two years. The instruments used in the study were ESL Composition Profile proposed by Jacobs et al. (1981) and writing samples of the participants. A Chi-square test was run on the collected data and the conclusion reached was that the learners' writing ability and their revising practices were related. Cross tabulation of the data also revealed that none of the low-level students engaged in higher-order revision and only 11.1% of them made lower-order revision. But, 40% of high-level students made higher-order and 7.1% of them made lower-order revisions. This study has pedagogical implications for writing courses.