The Key to Second Language Writing Performance： The Relationship Between Lexical Competence and Writing

Vocabulary knowledge is an important component of the writing skill and it has many dimensions, such as size, depth, and productive, in interaction with writing skill. To evaluate this relation and determine which dimension is the most effective for second language writing quality, the present study was conducted. Turkish EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners’ lexical competence and writing abilities were examined through their vocabulary profiles and academic essays. The results of each vocabulary measure indicated that the participants had a limited vocabulary size, containing words mostly from 2,000 to 3,000 frequency bands and thus, the productive vocabulary knowledge of the participants mostly consisted of 1k + 2k words and the use of academic words in their essays was very low. The results of the study revealed that the lexical competence covering the main components of vocabulary knowledge was a good predictor of the students’ quality of writing performance.