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This study examined lexical and syntactic characteristics of EFL composition by universitystudents at lower levels of English proficiency. Thirty five students in an English program in alocal university of Korea wrote an English essay in their assessment of writing proficiency. These students were also assessed on their levels of English grammar awareness and grammarcompetence using a questionnaire and two versions of grammar tests following Ferris andRoberts (2001). The study shows that a general match is found between students’ levels ofgrammar awareness and their grammar competence, yet their texts generally lack both accuracyand fluency. The number of words per text (M=71) has the strongest correlation with the meanof words per sentence (M=9.5), but this length of a text is not the predictor of their writingproficiency. Rather, it is the number of error-free sentences which virtually determines thequality of students’ writing. Errors are more salient in untreatable (wrong word and sentencestructure) than in treatable categories (e.g., verb form and noun plural); the analysis of the twoversions of grammar tests also confirms that word choice and sentence structure are the hardestcomponents in English composition for this population. The relationships between levels of L2proficiency and students’ writing abilities are discussed.
