The use of cohesive devices in english writing

Table 1: Summary of Conjunctive Relations 26 Table 2: The students’ attitudes to English writing 44 Table 3: Focuses, difficulties and methods used in learning writing 45 Table 4: The us

THE NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HOCHIMINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES

GRADUATE STUDY PROGRAM

THE USE OF COHESIVE DEVICES

IN ENGLISH WRITING

SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS

FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF TESOL

Supervisor: NGUYEN HOANG TUAN (Ph.D) Stusent: Tran Thi Bich Hong

HOCHIMINH CITY April 2006

CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY

I certify my authorship of thesis submitted today entitled:

THE USE OF COHESIVE DEVICES

RETENTION AND USE OF THESIS

I hereby state that I, Tran Thi Bich Hong, being a candidate for the degree

of Master of TESOL accept the requirements of the University relating to the retention and use of Master’s Theses deposited in the library

In terms of these conditions, I agree that the original of my Study Report deposited in the library should be accessible for purposes of study and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the librarian for the care, loan and reproduction for theses

Signature:

Date:

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like, first of all, to express a profound debt to my supervisor, Mr Nguyen Hoang Tuan, Lecturer of TESOL, Faculty of English, The National University Ho Chi Minh City, for his precious guidance, assistance, and encouragement throughout my M.A thesis

My special thanks go to the teachers and students who help me in answering the questionnaires and interviews, without them, the thesis couldn’t have been possible

Last, like many other acknowledgements, mine end with references to my family I am greatly indebted to my mother, who, as always, have been wholehearted support and encouragement for the past eight months so that her daughter could devote her time to the writing of the thesis

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW

2.5.2 Independent writing scoring rubric 29

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CHAPTER FOUR: FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS

5.4 SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH 72

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LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: Summary of Conjunctive Relations 26 Table 2: The students’ attitudes to English writing 44 Table 3: Focuses, difficulties and methods used in learning writing 45 Table 4: The use of cohesive devices in the students’ writing 47 Table 5: The information of teaching English writing … 50 Table 6: Length of the students’ compositions 54 Table 7: The scores of the students’ compositions (pre-tests) 55 Table 8: Data collection from the group A’s pre-tests 56 Table 9: Data collection from the group B’s pre-tests 57 Table 10: The scores of the students’ compositions (post tests) 59 Table 11: Data collection from the group A’s post-tests 60 Table 12: Data collection from the group B’s post-tests 61 Table 13: Density of conjunctions in the students’ compositions 62

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CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background to the study

Since 1970, when language teaching methodology released itself from the shackles of 'oral approaches', some corners of foreign language process began to

be noticed in the light of new trends 'Writing', neglected as a skill 'by-product' in the oral approaches is now considered as an ultimate goal by an enormous number of foreign language learners More and more people need to learn to write in English for occupational or academic purposes Therefore, in terms of student needs, writing occupies an equally important role with the other language skills

Notwithstanding the fact that a sizable portion of the syllabus is allocated

to writing courses, a desirable result has not often been obtained Many class hours are spent on teaching sentence structures and combinations Yet, when asked to write a short paragraph, the learners often find it terribly painstaking Most students' writing especially students’ in-service training program tends to lack clear structures and cohesion Thornbury (1997) has said "As readers, we assume that the organization of the text is not arbitrary, but that it serves to convey the writer's intention- that it makes the writer's intention coherent" (p.140) This brings us to the question of the target reader As many students need English for their work, it is important to recognize the target reader and what knowledge those readers share with the writer and how much of that knowledge is exclusive to only the writer

Among the four skills, the writing skill is perceived as the most difficult language skill since it requires a higher level of productive language control than

the other skills Additionally, writing requires careful plan and revision which worry students Donn Byrne (1988) indicated that “We do not write just one

sentence or even a number of unrelated sentences We produce a sequence of

sentences arranged in a particular order and linked together in certain ways…

They form a coherent whole text… Writing involves the encoding of a message of

some kind: we translate our thoughts into language Reading involves the decoding or interpretation of this message.” (p.1)

A good writing must be effective and coherent so that readers can move smoothly from sentence to sentence without becoming confused or losing the writer’s train of thought Coherence is achieved by arranging the writer’s ideas in

a logical order and by providing signals that help the reader understand the relationships between the ideas in the paragraph If the points are taken up in a disordered sequence, the reader will find it difficult to follow the writer’s train of thought; if there are no guideposts along the way to indicate relationships between the ideas, the reader may become totally lost To achieve coherence is vital However, a paragraph may be unified and well developed but still not be coherent The appropriate parts may be there, but they may not fit together well enough for the paragraph’s overall message to be fully understandable to the reader The writers who order or organize their ideas logically and naturally, who use cohesive devices where necessary, and who combine closely related thoughts

in clearly developed sentences, usually construct coherent paragraphs

English learners’ problems with writing and discourse

Fact-finding about English writing of the English-majored sophomore service training program in the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, it shows that most of the students often find it difficult to carry out writing This partly results from learners’ difficulties in making their writing cohesive and

in-coherent They are taking up writing three program, so they learn how to write a paragraph, a story, a diary, a letter, a report,… Often they know where to begin, but they don’t not know how to develop a piece of writing The problem is not with ‘rhetorical functions’ in writing since they have been taught about types of paragraph effectively through explanation and examples The main trouble lies in the intervening sections

Some of the students, when asked to write a composition, could theoretically approach the task by simply drafting some sentences, instead of selecting only those ideas that could be considered relevant for the general structure of their composition If this happens, they often face lack of coherence Their texts can be well written from grammatical perspective, with clearly-cut independent sentences In the students’ compositions, an idea is very often left out without being fully developed and there is a sudden leap from this paragraph

to another paragraph This problem can be attributed to the students’ excessive preoccupation with correct structures, which overwhelms their reasoning capacity They are so absorbed in the forms that the outlining of their ideas is neglected Through concentrating on the logical expansion, the student should be informed

of the primacy of thought over linguistic expressions

One of the problems in the students’ written work is the lack of or misuse

of discourse markers Many linkers are abstract and opaque and not fixed As Crewe (1990) has said “there is a communication breakdown on the grounds of

‘illogicallity’” (p.316)

The use of conjunctions contributes to cohesion and teachers often focus on these devices in writing and grammar lessons, but students may misuse and overuse these cohesive devices One major source of coherence derives from the relationship of ideas

Another problem the students have with is that discourse markers often confuse them It doesn’t help when they are taught lists of conjunctions in classroom as in their attempts to use a variety of discourse markers they are often unwitting to the whole structure of the argument Equally, gap fill exercises, Crewe (1990) said, become meaningless when it is realized that “the same lexical item may have a range of semantic values” (p.319), which does not address the issue of the fact that alternative lexical items “might represent different or illogical progressions of the argument” Dubin and Olshtain (in Zamel, 1984) said

“the most important characteristic of cohesion is the fact that it does not constitute

a class of items but rather a set of relations” (p.112) Often, the students rely on too much on connectives, so they are apparently imposing logicality on their writing where actually there is no logicality Thus the cohesion and coherence may be unstable

The other problems the students have with are the punctuation and some with the syntactic features that discourse markers require Since the traditional textbooks and way of teaching these discourse markers do not take these important nuances into account but simply provide lists of discourse markers, the students may not become aware of some of the syntactic and semantic features of these discourse markers It is not sufficient to try to make ones’ writing cohesive

by simply using a ‘sprinkling’ of discourse markers In fact, the students sometimes overuse discourse markers in an attempt to make their writing seem more ‘professional’

Teachers tend to view the resulting texts as final products to evaluate, which conveys to the students the message that the function of writing is to produce texts for teachers to evaluate, not to communicate meaningfully with another person

1.2 Rationale

In language, cohesive devices are one of the important parts of grammar The use of cohesive devices in writing haven’t been paid attention properly before On teaching writing, many teachers often only focus on structures of sentence even encourage students to write short simple sentences because it is more difficult for students to write long complex sentences with which they are easy to make errors Therefore, the use of cohesive devices in writing need considering both in theory and practice

In addition, the use of cohesive devices is also very important to their connective function in a text Cohesive devices are considered as links to connect sentences and chains of sentences together in order to create a highly coherent text and to decrease repetition, which can help readers and listeners to understand texts or utterances clearly and quickly

Moreover, identifying and using cohesive devices is one of ten Essential Academic Skills for success in important international examinations such as TOEFL iBT, TOEIC, TOEIC Bridge, …

1.3 Statement of purpose:

The objectives of this study are to investigate:

(1) Teaching and learning the writing skill at English classes in-service training program at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Ho Chi Minh city;

(2) The way the students use both cohesion and coherence in order to fulfill

a written assignment;

(3) Whether or not they use cohesive devices effectively in writing and (4) How useful the use of cohesive devices is in the English writing

The investigation of these issues was based on (1) Questionnaire on the attitude to learning and teaching the writing skill, methods and forms to learn and teach writing and the use of cohesive devices in writing; (2) interviews with the those teachers who teach writing at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities and other universities in Ho Chi Minh city (3) pretests and post tests

to investigate how useful the use of cohesive devices is in English writing

1.4 Research questions:

One question guides this study:

Is the use of cohesive devices useful in the writing skill? And how to teach cohesive devices effectively?

Two sub-questions are also addressed:

(1) What problems do the students face in writing?

(2) How do the students use cohesive devices in writing?

The study will include a discussion of how cohesive devices are used effectively

1.5 Significance of the study

It is hoped that this thesis will help students or linguistics researchers to solve some problems about cohesive devices because there are some disagreements that cohesive devices are useful in English writing

This thesis can supplement and complete the theory of linking system generally and cohesive devices in English textual grammar in particular

The achievement in this thesis can be applied in practice of teaching and learning English cohesive devices With the knowledge of connection of cohesive devices, learners can understand the text more easily as well as reinforce the capacity of more coherent writing

In the developing society today, the need of searching and opening people’s knowledge through texts is more and more With the rapid pulse of modern society, the connective role of cohesive devices will have highly practical meaning because they can help those people working with texts to master the contents easily and quickly

This study will have an important role in changing students’ attitude to the writing skill, with which they must consider the target reader of any written work that they produce to encourage 'good' writing habits and helping students to overcome difficulties in creating a cohesive writing so that they can fulfill their English competence as Nunan (1991) said that skilled writers will revise their writing at all levels of lexis, sentence and discourse so writing classes should not just be concerned with the "mechanics of grammar, spelling, punctuation and vocabulary" (p.90)

Moreover, it would also be interesting to explore that the students’ ability

to read and interpret texts will be reinforced if they are taught the way to use cohesive devices effectively to achieve coherence in their writing and that the students' ability to communicate in writing will be better if they are given instruction in using cohesive devices (bottom-up processing) and schematic background (top-down processing) while reading This line of investigation would help to give insights into the interactions between cohesion and coherence in writing

serve most frequently as cohesive devices, for example, and, but, because,

suddenly, in the first place, however, They permit logical sequencing; they

establish time-frames for actions and events; they create structures of meaning by establishing principal and supporting language units.”

Therefore, the other cohesive devices such as reference, ellipsis, substitution and lexical cohesion are not to be discussed in this study

1.7 Delimitation

Due to the nature of this study and the research methods of data collection, generalizations and recommendations will be limited to the second-year students in-service training program of the University of Social Sciences and Humanities The particular compositions of the sample of intermediate Vietnamese students participating in the study may also limit the generalizability of the results The recommendations from this study for the effective use of cohesive devices in the writing skill for the second year students in-service training program of the University of Social Science and Humanities may be beneficial to other intermediate students (students of ESP, Official section,…)

1.8 Organization of the study

The thesis consists of five chapters Chapter one introduces the background

to the study, rationale, statement of purpose, research questions, significance, limitations, and delimination of the study Chapter two presents a review of literature including review of previous studies and theoretical review (including the feature of cohesion; cohesion and coherence in writing; cohesive ties; cohesive devices defined in this study; how to measure cohesion) Chapter three provides methodology of this study (including subjects, data collection tools, data

collection procedures) Chapter four describes findings and analysis of the study And chapter five gives conclusion and implication

Summary

This chapter describes the situation of learning and teaching writing and the use of cohesive devices in writing The problems with writing and discourse are also presented in this chapter, which is also the reason leading the study The study is limited by statement purpose as well as research questions This chapter gives the significance of study that contributes partly into changing attitudes, methods, and objects of teaching and learning English writing and the use of cohesive devices in the writing skill From that, teachers as well as students can improve the ways to teach and to learn the writing skill to fulfill their competence

of teaching and learning a foreign language Moreover, it also confines fields of the study Cohesive devices in the study are limited with conjunctions, transitions and adverbs

CHAPTER TWO

LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter reviews the previous studies as well as theories relevant to cohesive devices and their use

2.1 REVIEW OF PREVIOUS STUDIES

Studies on cohesion in reading texts show that cohesion makes a substantial contribution to readability It is clear that cohesion plays a central role

in reading comprehension and if the writers increase the number of cohesive ties, readers will understand a text more fully and easily Studies on cohesion by scholars interested in writing are less clear on its virtues Writing research on cohesion is still in a fairly basic stage despite a huge number of studies which have appeared since Stephen Witte and Lester Faigley’s early research in this area Larson’s recent summary indicates disagreements over terminology and disparities in the findings of researchers For example, Neuner (1987) found, like Stephen Witte and Lester Faigley (1981), cohesive ties do not define good writing; but when he examined cohesive chains (sets of ties semantically related

to one another), he found that a good student in writing uses longer chains, more diverse vocabulary, and more mature word choices Haswell (1987) complained that writing research on cohesion is “a mess” even though he intuitively supports the idea that cohesion is important to good writing (p.314) Hoang Ngoc Hung (1999) studied cohesive devices but only in the field of comparison of cohesive devices between Vietnamese and English Diverse studies from different points

of view will eventually illustrate the ways writers use cohesion as a tool to help readers process texts According to Cox Shanahan and Suizby (1990), those students who grasp all the fine nuances implied by a text would be able to use

cohesive devices more accurately when writing a composition and the students were able to read the texts more accurately when they were aware of those cohesive devices This is the reason why cohesion study especially cohesive devices in communicative writing are of great importance

2.2 THEORETICAL REVIEW

2.2.1 The feature of cohesion

According to Halliday and Hassan (1976), ‘the concept of cohesion is semantic one; it refers to relations of meaning that exist within the text and that define it as

a text’ (p.4).’A text is a unit of language in use A text is not something that is like

a sentence, only bigger; it is something that differs from a sentence in kind’ (p.2) They then continue, however, to state that ‘Cohesion occurs where the interpretation of some elements in the above, there is reference to both text-external coherence (‘semantic and pragmatic coherence in the real-world context’) which must also include consistency with the intended goals of communication i.e pragmatic coherence and internal or linguistic cohesion A part of the text-external coherence is however also “linguistic” in that it involves the selection and the effective use of those linguistic means which will further the communicative purpose Text-internal cohesion is given by a number of relational structures and connective devices Although grammatical devices are deployed to give both (external) coherence and (internal) cohesion to a text, the text itself is semantic /pragmatic unit, not a grammatical one Again, according to Halliday and Hassan (1976), the text is a communicative unit which is implemented through sentences and for purposes of grammatical explication and analysis Therefore, “cohesion is a semantic relation between an element in the text and some other elements that is crucial to the interpretation of it Cohesion refers to the range of possibilities that exist for linking something with what has gone

before and this linking is achieved through relations in MEANING” (Halliday and Hasan, 1976, p.10)

2.2.2 Coherence and cohesion

It may be important to point out all of the important features implied by such concept as coherence and cohesion

The term coherence has been defined by many scholars from different

perspectives As Bamberg (1983) stated, the first analysis on coherence was carried out in the nineteenth century by Alexander Bain, who worked on

paragraph structure, stating in his first rule that “The meaning of each sentence

upon what precedes shall be explicit and unmistakable”(p.417) Halliday and

Hasan (1976) defined the term as “the property of signaling that the interpretation

of the passage in question depends on something else” (p.13) On the other hand,

Bander (1983) only focuses on how the main ideas of a text are structured,

without paying any attention to other aspects implied by coherence, saying that “a

paragraph is coherent when its ideas are clearly related to each other in orderly sequence” (p.6) We also find incomplete definition given by Lauer et al (1985),

who said that “coherence is a matter of putting the selected material in the right

order with the right connectives” (p.94)

Brown and Yule (1983) observed that the concept coherence was based on the receiver’s comprehension of the message, assuming that it would be easily understandable This is the initial step towards the comprehension of the original

text

If we finally come to terms with the overall sense of coherence as a textual device enhancing the comprehensibility of a text, the main differences between coherence and cohesion should now be pointed out and the way cohesion is used

to increase the overall coherence of a piece of discourse is to be observed

According to the Dictionary of Language Teaching & Applied Linguistics

(Richards, Platt J and Platt H., 1992), cohesion is the grammatical and/or lexical

relationships between the different elements of a text This may be the relationship between different sentences and between different parts of a sentence Cohesion is an overt feature of the text, providing surface evidence for the text’s unity and connectedness Cohesion is the way that “internal coherence” appears in the text, through out diverse linguistic devices Cohesion is realized linguistically by devices and ties that are elements or units of language used to form a larger text (Murcia MC and Olshtain E, 2000, p.125)

The general meaning of cohesion is embodied in the concept of a text By its role in providing ‘texture’, cohesion helps to create a text Cohesion is a necessary condition for the creation of a text What creates a text is the textual, or text-forming, component of a linguistic system, of which cohesion is a part The textual component as a whole is the set of resources in a language whose semantic function is that of expressing relationship to the environment

Bamberg (1983) is more precise when she stated that cohesion “describes a

linguistic system that extends through the text and binds together larger chunks of discourse in addition to forming smaller discourse units” (p.418), though she does

not pay any attention to lexical cohesion Carrell (1982) stated ”cohesive studies cannot be completely helpful if they are not accompanied by further interactive processes on reading and writing” (p.486-7)

Carrell criticized the cohesive view of textual coherence, arguing that cohesion theory operates on the surface structure of a text when establishing cohesive ties Carrell made clear that differences between both terms coherence and cohesion should be pointed out in order to understand why some texts not showing explicit cohesive ties can be coherent, or how some texts with many cohesive ties cannot be clearly defined as coherent pieces of discourse

Other studies on the differences between coherence and cohesion can be found in Tierney and Mosenthal (1981), Freebody and Anderson (1981) and McCulley (1985) They all agreed that cohesion simply refers to some overt links

on the textual surface According to Beaugrande and Dressler’s (1981) basic

definition, they could say that cohesion “concerns the ways in which the

components of the surface text, i.e the actual words we hear or see, are mutually connected within a sequence.”(p.3) Therefore, cohesion can help texts to be

by itself (Hasan, 1985, p.94) Cohesion does not concern what the text means; it concerns how the text is constructed as a semantic edifice So, Halliday and Hasan (1976) distinguish between “cohesion” and “coherence”, whereby

“cohesion” is a property of the text and “coherence” is a property of meaning or interpretation As Widdowson (1978) realized that some texts, though not showing overt cohesion, are still coherent This is an example:

A: That’s the telephone

B: I’m in the bath

writer, the written text and the reader The notion of coherence thus incorporates ways and means by which ideas and propositions in a text are presented conceptually It is the result of the writer’s plan and relates to the discourse world

of the written texts, to pragmatic features, and to content area; it usually fits a conventionally and culturally acceptable rhetorical organization, sequence and structure (Murcia MC and Olshtain E., 2000, p.125)

Cohesion is only one component of coherence In addition to cohesion, at least another factor must be present for a text to have coherence; that factor is organization Other factors like situational consistency add coherence to a text Cohesion exists within a text and adds to the coherence of a text Coherence is both a text-related and a reader-related phenomenon A coherent text “makes sense”, when its parts work together and produce an effect on the reader To be coherent, a text must be cohesive, but this is not enough alone The following example is cohesive (may be unified and well developed) but not coherent:

The current population explosion could yield devastating problems in the future Famine is already a serious problem in many countries If present trends continue, famine will spread The world population rapidly outgrowing limited food supply Famine could someday engulf most of the planet Millions of people would die daily In such situation, full-scale wars would erupt Countries would struggle to expand their borders They would also try to take over new areas Food crops would be closely guarded and rationed

This paragraph is unified: all the sentences back up the controlling idea or, more specially, all the details containing within the sentences direct or indirect

support to the assertion that the population explosion could yield devastating

problems in the future And the paragraph is adequately developed: the writer has

selected a method of development, cause and effect, and has followed it throughout

But the paragraph is not coherent Specially, three essential elements of coherence are missing First, the paragraph lacks any sense of order, or organization The writer has used ideas that together adequately support his

controlling idea and has chosen to develop his topic by showing how a cause – overpopulation – may lead to several effects- famine, war,… But he has not

arranged his supporting information according to a logical plan Second, the

paragraph lacks conjunctions, transitions – that is, signals that serve as a link

between one sentence and the next A paragraph is made up of a number of separate sentences, of course, but the ideas in one sentence aren’t showed to

relate to those in the next Third, the paragraph lacks any sentence combining It

contains a number of short sentences If the ideas in short sentences are closely related, they may be better understood when they are combined into one longer sentence that makes the relationship clear This technique also makes a paragraph less choppy and therefore more pleasing to read

In introduction to Text Linguistics, Beaugrande & Dressler (1981) defined

texts as vehicles of purposefull interaction and present seven standards of textuality, two of which are cohesion and coherence:

(a) Cohesion: Surface structure of a text has some grammatical dependencies Cohesion is about these relations It is like a framework for textual communication (p.3)

(b) Coherence: Deep structure of a text has some conceptual and propositional dependencies Coherence is the result of these relations It is like the spirit

of a text A text without coherence can be cohesive but not alive (p.3)

Halliday and Hasan (1976) defined reference as ‘a semantic relation that

ensures the continuity of meaning in a text.’ (p.31) It pertains to items that cannot

be semantically interpreted in their own right, but which make reference to an element from another utterance for their interpretation, for example:

This morning, I met my friend at the supermarket She helped me to buy some new shoes and I like them very much

The underlined words are examples of reference The items she in the second sentence is interpretable only by reference to my friend in the first, and the item them by reference back to some new shoes

Reference in general may be of two kinds:

Exophoric: Where the interpretation of references lies outside the text and

is in the given context of the situation The relationship between the text and its references is said to be exophoric – the references play no direct part in textual

cohesion (Brown G and Yule G., 1983, p.192) For example, if someone says they

need repairing and points to some old shoes, then they is exophoric reference

Endophoric: Where the interpretation of references lies within the text, the relationship between them is called endophoric – the references do form cohesive ties within the text (Brown G and Yule G., 1983, p.192) For example,

Yesterday, my friend came to my house She brought me some flowers

She is endophoric reference to my friend

Halliday and Hasan (1976) draw a distinction between two kinds of endophoric relations: anaphoric and cataphoric

Anaphoric: those which are interpreted by referring back to something that

has been previously established linguistically, as in:

Look at the sun It’s going down quickly

(It refers back to the sun)

Cataphoric: Those which are interpreted by referring forwards to a later portion of text, as in:

Before she went home, my mum bought me some shoes

(she refers forwards to my mum)

Cataphoric reference is the reverse of anaphoric reference and is relatively straightforward, but language learners may lack awareness or confidence to put it into use in constructing texts There are, too, the dangers of its overuse or its use

in unnatural contexts As always, it is a question of training the learner to observe features of language above sentence level

According to Halliday and Hasan, only endophoric reference is cohesive, and in the majority of cases it is anaphoric Cohesive reference is achieved through the use of (a) personal/possessive pronouns and demonstrative pronouns/adjectives, (b) demonstrative adverbs, (c) adverbs and adjectives of comparison

Personal reference is by means of personal pronouns, possessive pronouns and possessive adjectives The first and second pronouns are usually typically

exophoric (non-cohesive) and may refer anaphorically (cohesive) in quoted speech The third person pronouns are nearly always cohesive (Halliday and

Hasan, 1976, p.49-51) Sometimes a pronoun, especially it, will refer back not to a

noun or a noun phrase, but to a longer stretch, for example:

Curtsey while you’re thinking what to say It saves time Alice wondered a little at this, but she was too much in awe of the Queen to disbelieve it

Here the first it refers to the whole of the first sentence and the second it to

the whole of the two sentences, i.e that curtseying while you’re thinking what to say saves time

Demonstrative reference involves the demonstratives (this, that), the definite articles and adverbs (here, there, now, then) All these indicate proximity

in a text In the case of the demonstratives, there is a tendency to use this to refer

to something the speaker has said and that to what the other person has said This and that may also be used like it to refer to extended text In the previous paragraph, this can be replaced for it in the third sentence

Comparative reference expresses the identity, similarity, or difference

between things, or expresses a qualitative or quantitative comparison; e.g

‘I see nobody on the road,’ said Alice

‘I only wish I had such eyes,’ the king remarked

Substitution refers to the replacement of one item by another It is defined

as ‘a grammatical relation, where one linguistic item substitutes for a longer one.’ The substitute item is therefore interpretable only by reference to the original longer item The three types of substitution are nominal, verbal, and clausal (Halliday and Hasan, 1976, p.89)

Nominal substitution involves the substitution of a noun as head of a noun

phrase by one or ones, or the substitution of a whole noun phrase by the same; e.g

My knife is too blunt I must get a sharper one Give me six currant buns I’ll have the same

With one and ones there is always an element of contrast, and there is no referential identity What is involved is different instances of an item e.g

These biscuits are stale Get some fresh ones

Verbal substitution is by means of do (to be distinguished from the auxiliary do) This operates as Head of a verbal group It substitutes for the

lexical verb and its position is always final in the group (Halliday and Hasan,

1976, p.112)

Did you see Jim last week?

I did on Thursday / I might have done

Clausal substitution is by means of so, for a positive clause and not, for a

negative one Here an entire clause is presupposed; e.g

‘Is there going to be a snow fall?’ – ‘They say so / not’;

‘Are you going to the conference? If so, we could travel together.’

Ellipsis is similar to substitution, and is sometimes referred to as

‘substitution by zero’ It means ‘leaving out’ certain words so that they are understood by the reader but not expressed in the text Ellipsis produces an economical and compact text When ellipsis is used, an obvious structural gap occurs and can only be filled by reference to a previous sentence As with substitution, ellipsis may be (a) nominal or (b) verbal or clausal

Nominal ellipsis involves the omission of the head of a noun phrase, sometimes together with some modifiers; e.g

‘Which hat will you wear?’ – ‘This is the nicest (one).’

Verbal ellipsis involves the omission of the lexical verb from a verb phrase, and possibly an auxiliary or two, recoverable from a previous verb phrase

For example, if one was to hear to the snippet of conversation, It may or it may

not, one would know that it was elliptical, since there is no lexical verb That

would be recoverable from a previous utterance such as, ‘Is it going to rain today?’ Another kind of verbal ellipsis omits everything except the lexical verb;

e.g ‘Has she been crying?’ – ‘No, laughing’

Unlike clausal substitution, clausal ellipsis is not concerned with the ellipsis of whole clauses but with the ellipsis of large parts of clauses, whole phrases and upwards; e.g

‘Who was playing the piano? – Peter was’

The whole verb phrase is not often left out in ellipsis across sentence boundaries, but it may be within sentences e.g

Joan bought some roses, and Bill some carnations

And it may be in conversation e.g

‘Where has Jim planted the roses?’ – ‘In the front border’

Halliday and Hasan (1976) have asserted “conjunctive elements are cohesive not in themselves but indirectly, by virtue of their specific meanings”

(p.226) Conjunction is the type of cohesion that expresses the logical

connections between propositions in discourse and occurs when “a clause or clause complex, or some longer stretch of text “is “related to what follows it by one or other of a specific set of semantic relations” (Halliday, 1985, p.289)

He was very uncomfortable Nevertheless he fell fast asleep

Halliday and Husan categorized conjunctions into four classifications: additive, adversative, causal and temporal

Additive conjunctions simply add to a sentence as if it were additional

information or an afterthought e.g and, or, furthermore, besides, similarity, in

addition, incidentally, for instance, etc

Adversative conjunctions draw a contrast between the sentence they introduce or are contained in and the preceding sentence with which they form a

cohesive relationship e.g but, yet, however, nevertheless, on the other hand, on

the contrary, in any case, etc

Causal conjunctions make a causal link between two sentences e.g

because, hence, therefore, consequently, as a result, that being so, otherwise, in this respect, etc

Temporal conjunctions make a time link, usually of a sequential nature,

between one sentence and another e.g when, while, during, after, then, after that,

previously, thereupon, meanwhile, finally, from now on, up to now, etc

Another classification mentioned here is derived from the Martin system According to Martin (1985), a text is devided into conjunctively related units that are into “clauses which have or could have had an explicit conjunction between them” (p.90) He attempts to sub-classify conjunctions into external or internal conjunctions, i.e according to whether it “relates speech acts to each other, making connections in what might be termed the rhetorical world of discourse” respectively (Martin, 1985, p.90) The distinction, however, is not always clear-cut in a number of cases Similar to Halliday, Martin devided the conjunction network into four groups of logical semantic relationships: Additive (which includes addition and alternation), Comparative (which includes contrast and similarity), Temporal (which includes simultaneous and successive), and Consequential (which includes manner, consequence, condition, and purpose with concession crossclassifying these four)

2.2.3.2 Lexical cohesion

Lexical cohesion refers to the use of the same, similar, or related words in successive sentences, so that later occurrences of such words refer back to and

link up with previous occurrences Two basic kinds of lexical cohesion are reiteration and collocation

Reiteration may be of four kinds Firstly, the same word may be repeated

in successive, though not necessarily contiguous sentences The repetition of the word signals to the reader’s mind that a train of thought is being continued With such a signal, the reader is able to progress smoothly with his reading If no signal

is present, he stumbles or is made to pause uselessly

There was a large mushroom growing near her … She stretched herself up

on tiptoe, and peeped over the edge of the mushroom

Secondly, a synonym or near-synonym of a word may appear in a following sentence; e.g

I turned to the ascent of the peak The climb is perfectly easy

Here the word climb in the second sentence is synonymous with the word

ascent in the first sentence

Thirdly, a word may be replaced in the following sentence by another which is semantically superordinate to it; e.g

Henry’s bought himself a new Jaguar He practically lives in the car

Here Jaguar is a term that is included in the term car, that is to say, car is a superordinate term to Jaguar

Fourthly, a word may be replaced in a following sentence by a ‘general word’ which describes a general class of objects e.g

There’s a boy climbing the old elm

That old thing isn’t very safe

Collocation is also considered by Halliday and Hasan as the “cohesive

effect” of pairs of words such as bee … honey, ill … doctor, boat … row, and king …

crown, which “depends not so much on any systematic semantic relationship as on

their tendency to share the same lexical environment, to occur in collocation with

one another” (Halliday and Hasan, 1976, p.286) However, ‘collocational cohesion’, as it is used by Halliday and Hasan, is simply “a cover term” for textual cohesion, a kind of “semantic interlace that provides texts with their texture – their non-structural cohesion or lexical form” (Addison, 1983, p.3), and leaves the “specific kinds of co-occurrence which are variable and complex” to

be dealt with by “a general semantic description of the English language” (Halliday & Hasan, 1976, p.287-288) Halliday and Hasan’s definition serves the task of textual analysis, but it is restricted in lexically predictable collocational chains that extend beyond the boundaries of a sentence

2.3 COHESIVE DEVICES DEFINED IN THIS STUDY

Cohesive devices are defined in this study as words and phrases that link ideas such as conjunctions and conjunctive adverbs They permit logical sequence; they establish time-frame for actions and events; and they create structures of meaning by establishing principal and supporting language units There are four categories: additive, adversative, causal and temporal They are summarized as follows:

2.4 HOW TO MEASURE COHESION IN THIS STUDY

Essays were segmented into T-units T-unit (Minimal terminal unit) is defined as the shortest unit According to Hunt (1970), T-unit is “one main clause plus any subordinate clause or non-clausal structure that is attached or embedded

in it” (p.4) The T-unit has been the subject of extensive research in written composition The following rules were used for dividing each essay into T-units:

- Non-finite clauses were not counted

- Direct quotations such as, “He said, ’I want to go,” were considered one unit

T Subordinate clauses were not counted unless they could logically be placed with a separate independent clause

- If there was more than one unintelligible word per T-unit, the entire utterance was discounted

The raw counts of cohesive devices were normalized to arrive at comparable frequencies Each number of occurrences was transformed to frequency of occurrence in a ten-T-unit text and then the mean was calculated by adding up the frequency of occurrence and dividing by the number of texts (the density of cohesive ties) The density of cohesive ties is mentioned to see whether or not they remain constant or vary, and if there is variation, does it influence to coherence and quality of writing?

2.5 CRITERIA OF A WELL-WRITTEN ESSAY

2.5.1 How essays are scored

Raters will judge the quality of a piece of writing by considering how well students develop their ideas, how well they organize their essays, and how well they use the language to express their ideas

Development is the amount and kinds of support (examples, details,

reasons) for students’ ideas that they present in their essays To get a top score, their essays should be, according to the rater guidelines, “well developed, and using clearly appropriate explanations, exemplifications, and/or details.” The raters will judge whether they have addressed the topic and how well their details, examples, and reasons support their ideas

Organization is really something that the raters notice – When students

fail to organize If an essay is organized, a reader will be able to read it from beginning to end without becoming confused Writing in paragraphs and marking transitions from one idea to another in various ways usually helps the reader to follow the writer’s ideas The essay should be unified and coherent To earn a top score, you need to avoid redundancy (repetition of ideas), digression (point that are not related to the main point, that take away from the “unity” of the ideas), and unclear connections (places where it is hard for the reader to understand how two ideas or parts of the writing are related)

Language use is the third criterion on which the essay will be judged To

get a top score, an essay must display “consistent facility in the use of language.” There should be a variety of sentence structures, and word choice should be appropriate

(Hill M.G, 2006, p.259-260)

2.5.2 Independent writing score rubric:

The importance of cohesive devices is showed in scoring the writing task Level of discourse is one of important standards to decide score of the writing because it reflects the degree of linguistic sophistication used to communicate ideas (not what is said, but how it is said) The writing task is rated on a score scale of 0 to 5

Each rating for this domain has particular characteristics:

1 point – List of discrete sentences, some repetitive; few cohesive devices

Sentences consist basically of the same simple pattern There are no or almost no cohesive devices

2 points – Variety of discrete sentences, some cohesive devices

Some sentences may be longer There are a few cohesive devices (about 4 different ones)

3 points – Emerging paragraph-length discourse, variety of cohesive devices

Many sentences are connected and there is emerging evidence of paragraph-length discourse There are some cohesive devices (about 6 different ones)

4 points, 5 points – Paragraph-length discourse, variety of cohesive devices

Sentences have a wide variety of verbs and possibly of subject pronouns There is evidence of paragraph-length discourse Sentences and clauses are linked by a variety of cohesive devices

(Hill M.G, 2006,p.259-260)

Summary

This chapter reviews the previous studies of cohesive devices, theories relevant

to them, their use in the writing skill, how to measure cohesion and criteria of well-written essay However, cohesive devices in the study are limited with conjunctions and conjunctive adverbs

CHAPTER THREE

METHODOLOGY

This chapter describes subjects, data collection tools, and data collection procedures for this study This is a descriptive and exploratory study consisting basically of qualitative methods such as interviews, observation, along with an attitudinal questionnaire The quantitative techniques employed in this study are aimed at full analysis of descriptive data related to the use of cohesive devices in English writing

3.1 SUBJECTS

3.1.1 Students’ profile

In order to develop the research, I chose at random sixty students among one hundred and three students of the two different classes including ten males and fifty females taking part in this experiment because these students usually attended the class especially pretest, post test and the class chosen to teach conjunctions while the remaining occasionally went to school They all were full time sophomore college students majoring in English at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Ho Chi Minh City They were at the age from 19 to 39 and studied at the same writing materials Their abilities of speaking and writing were the intermediate because they have successfully passed their English entrance examination before the study was carried out They all were the Vietnamese students who were from other provinces or in Ho Chi Minh City The students doing tests were divided in two groups (A and B) in two different classes From the sixty students finally considered, thirty-four belonged to group A, whereas the other twenty-six were members of group B

In addition, for the questionnaires, one hundred students (including eighteen males and eighty two females) were English-majored sophomores in-service training program at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities

They belonged to three different classes Among them, seventy students belonged

to two my classes The other thirty students belonged to another teacher’s class

3.1.2 Teachers’ profile

I chose four groups of teachers following their teaching experience: group 1: 1 - 3 years, group 2: 4 – 5 years, group 3: 6 – 7 years, and group 4: 8 – 9 or more than 10 years There were three teachers interviewed for each group Therefore, the teachers interviewed were twelve English teachers experienced in teaching writing at University of Social Sciences and Humanities and other universities in Ho Chi Minh City including six males and six females They all were Vietnamese at the age from twenty-five to fifty-five Among them, seven teachers have already obtained the degree of Master of TESOL and the remaining got the degree of Bachelor (Appendix D)

in order to impove the students’ learning the writing skill

The questionnaire was in Vietnamese with the purpose of collecting exact data It included fifteen questions grouped into three sections Section one with the questions 1 – 4 presented the importance of learning writing, students’ attitudes as well as diligence in learning the writing skill Section two with the questions 5 – 7 presented the way to learn and teach the writing skill, and forms used to teach writing They also showed difficulties that students faced in learning and practising the writing skill Section three with the questions 8 – 15 presented

the students’ knowledge of the use of cohesive devices and methods used to teach and learn cohesive devices in the writing skill

In order to concentrate on finding out about the students’ learning the writing skill as well as the use of conjunctions in the writing skill and to avoid digressing from the subject, it was thought that the three sections with fifteen questions could provide sufficient information for the study (Appendix A)

3.2.2 Interviews

The purpose of interviews is to observe teachers’ methods or forms used to teach writing as well as cohesive devices in writing and the focuses that teachers paid attention to when they taught the writing skill It was important to have proper methods of teaching writing to impove the students’ the writing skill

The questions used in the interviews were written in a questionnaire They were only the guide for the interviewees in the interviews so that they could give their opinions more accurately and go into the focus of the study and that it didn’t take too much the interviewees’ time The questionnaire included nine questions: questions 1 – 3 presented the teachers’ focuses when they teach writing; question

4 presented methods and forms they used to teach wring; question 5 presented teachers’ ideas of difficulties students often faced in writing; questions 6 – 9 presented their attitudes to the use of cohesive devices in writing as well as methods they used to teach cohesive devices in writing (Appendix A)

Moreover, in order to avoid being incovenient to the interviewees, the time and places for the interviews depended on the interviewees, so the interviews were carried out at different places and time, which helped to get more accurate, honest and objective opinions from the interviewees because there wasn’t any arrangement or preparation before (Appendix A)