Journal of Tikrit University for Humanities

This study looks at how well students continue to write and connect their thoughts throughout the narrative text. It aims at identifying the effect of using Labov’s model as an instructional model for teaching narrative writing on EFL university students’ textual aspects of writing that include cohesion, coherence, as well as meaning i.e. ideational and textual. Moreover, it seeks to find out which aspect of writing: cohesion, coherence and meaning has been affected more than the other and it prepared to find out the effect of the instructional model on EFL university students’ textual aspects of writing at the recognition and production levels, and if it affects on gender as well. The sample chosen for this study includes selecting two samples (32 controlling group and 32 experimental group), getting full information about their names, years of failure or delay if available, ages by months, gender, parents’ achievement, the marks of the previous year at the same subject, doing up a pretest to equalize both samples, preparing a lesson plan according to Labov’s narrative model and adopting it in teaching the experimental group.The results show that Labov’s model has an effective impact in improving students’ writing generally, as well as on development of the textual aspects of writing in recognition and production.

Reading is useful for language acquisition. It provides that students have to comprehend what they read.Comprehending a reading text involves constructing and extracting meaning. Thus reading comprehension (henceforth, RC) depends on several cognitive processes.
Critical thinking (henceforth, CT) is a higher order thinking skill which includes a purposeful, self-regulatory judgment which ends in interpretation, analysis and evaluation. Critical thinking may help university students to improve their RC.
The present study aims at finding:
1. The average level of the students' CT.
2. The average level of the students' achievement in RC.
3. Whether there is any significant difference between the students’ achievement at the recognition level and that at the production level of RC.
4. The possible correlation between students’ level of CT, on one hand and their achievement in RC, on the other hand.
In order to achieve the aims of this study, the following questions are raised:
1. Is the average level of the EFL students within the theoretical mean scores of CT?
2. Is the average level of the EFL students’ achievement is within the theoretical mean scores of achievement, in RC?
3. Is there any significant difference between students’ achievement at the recognition and production levels of RC?
4.Is there any significant correlation between students ‘level at CT and their level of achievement in RC ?
A sample of a hundred EFL second year students has been selected from the College of Education for Humanities, University of Tikrit and involved in the current study . The involved sample represents 42.19% of its original population .The study is conducted during the first semester of the academic year 2022-2023. The data gathered by using a questionnaire and a diagnostic test to assess students‘ CT and RC .

Textual competence is important for an efficient writer because it concerned with coherence and rhetorical organization. The present research aims to identify, Iraqi University students' textual competence in writing an essay at Tikrit university ; Iraqi University students' knowledge about cohesion and rhetorical organization in writing an essay at Tikrit university and finally the difficulty in using textual competence among Iraq university students according to gender variable at Tikrit university.
The sample consists of 160 Iraqi university students at forth stage in the department of English, College of Education for humanities at Tikrit University during the academic year 2023-2024. An achievement test is used to gather the data about students' textual competence in writing an essay. Results show that university students have high level textual competence than the theoretical mean score , also university students have a higher level in cohesion than the rhetorical organization finally, male students is better than female in their abilities in writing an essay.