چکیده : 

The present study aims to continue in a vein of research which

examines the effects of essay prompts on examinees’ writing performance

by closely investigating 40 student essays produced from

a university-wide reading-to-write test. Quantitative and qualitative

results of this study show that native and non-native writers

at different proficiency levels exhibit variety in their selection of

lexical items and propositional material from the background reading.

Among other things, it is found that the higher-rated native

group outperformed the other groups in their ability to identify

topical information and in a better sense of what details from the

source text to include. The two non-native groups, although able

to locate superordinate propositions of the source text, lack native

writers’ ability to readjust their selection of material according to

the author’s epistemological stance. The lower-rated native writers

paid little attention to the source text and merely used the substance

of the text as a “springboard” to elicit their own opinions in

response to the topic. Possible explanations for these results and

their implications for writing pedagogy and assessment are also

discussed.