Grammatical and Lexical Performance of Third-Year EFL Students at the University of Benghazi: Evidence from an Archived FCE Use of English Paper

Abstract

This study examined the grammatical and lexical abilities of 40 third-year EFL students at the University of Benghazi using an archived version of Cambridge FCE Paper 3: Use of English. A total of 65 items were included in the test, and the raw marks for the test were 75 due to the 10 items of word transformation in the test worth two marks each. The students achieved an average raw score of 15.45 out of 75 (SD = 12.06). The lowest score for any section of the paper was that of error correction, with an average score of 1.63 out of 15 (SD = 1.41). The most common errors for the students included lexical and grammatical errors, formation of words, and unnecessary use of words. Although these results indicate the difficulties that these students experience with controlled grammatical and lexical tasks, they are not a measure of the student’s FCE grade or their overall proficiency in the English language.