The Role of Social Factors in EFL Writing with Year 6 Students

Well-developed writing performance in students’ first and additional languages is the key to their future professional success, but due to its complexity, it is difficult to achieve. In the period from 2021 to 2025, approximately half of Year 6 students, as the upper-age of young learners consistently showed low results in EFL writing proficiency in the EFL national Sandars assessment tests in Slovenia. To predict the relationship between the social factors selected and the students’ EFL writing performance, a quantitative study has been conducted with a representative sample of 790 students. The students completed a contextual questionnaire and two standardized productive writing tasks. The data were analysed by multiple regression. The main finding confirms that more exposure to EFL leads to better writing performance. Practical recommendations for teachers include raising students’ exposure to EFL, critical judgement of EFL productive writing tasks, offering the learning of more language, and maintaining good practices.

Data collection · Judgement · Language proficiency · Writing assessment · Digital Communication and Language · Linguistics, Language Diversity, and Identity · Writing and Handwriting Education