The present research aimed to examine the relationship between topics and transitivity process. Among the major processes, only two, material and mental, were chosen. For this purpose, 50 female EFL students, aged between 18 to 25 years, from 3 branches of one of the private language institutes in Mashhad were selected and divided randomly to 2 Upper Intermediate groups. Each of these groups received a topic (group A with material related topic, and group B with mental related topic) to write a 150 word essay. After evaluating the EFL’s writing based on Halliday’s (2008) framework to measure the number of material and mental verbs, results showed that the number of material verbs in group A was higher, while the number of mental verbs were dominant in group B. Therefore, the results shed light on the fact that topic would affect the verb selection in writing. The findings of this research might have some pedagogical implications for EFL teachers.

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