a model of grammatical competence in writing eap research articles: a meta-synthesis approach

The knowledge of lexico-grammatical factors seems to be an essential element of research article writing competence for learners’ successful handling of scholarly writing tasks during english for academic purposes (eap) programs. this study mainly intended to present a reductionist model of grammatical competence (gc) in writing eap research articles. in so doing, the two stages of ‘qualitative meta-synthesis’ (walsh & downe, 2005) approach were followed to examine the currently available literature on multiple aspects of gc. one hundred and twenty-four relevant abstracts and 78 full papers were screened and 33 studies were appraised for final inclusion. afterward, a reciprocal translation was conducted to synthesize the appraised studies and extract the latent themes and concepts in the target model of ra writing grammatical competence. as a result of meta-synthesis, three categories emerged from the combination of six concepts and 259 codes. the categories and concepts were inductively derived through constant comparison of included studies and then refined by moving back and forth between the findings. accordingly, drawing upon the findings of meta-synthesis, a reductive yet inclusive account of eap research article writing grammatical competence was yielded, including the significant components of grammatical competence in producing scholarly research papers. the taxonomy included three dimensions: morpho-syntactic competence with three subthemes, namely syntax, inflection and derivation, and parts of speech, lexical competence incorporating verbal competence and phraseological competence, and orthographic competence with no subtheme. the new model, as a coherent and systematic frame of reference, can yield awareness to the eap practitioners and researchers as regards the underpinning components of gc in developing academic research papers and raising the possibility to publish in highly prestigious journals.