Cohesion errors in essays committed by third year english majored students at thu dau mot university

BINH DUONG PROVINCIAL PEOPLE’S COMMITTEETHU DAU MOT UNIVERSITY HUYNH TAN VIET COHESION ERRORS IN ESSAYS COMMITTED BY THIRD-YEAR ENGLISH-MAJORED STUDENTS AT THU DAU MOT UNIVERSITY MAJOR:

BINH DUONG PROVINCIAL PEOPLE’S COMMITTEE

THU DAU MOT UNIVERSITY

HUYNH TAN VIET

COHESION ERRORS IN ESSAYS COMMITTED

BY THIRD-YEAR ENGLISH-MAJORED STUDENTS

AT THU DAU MOT UNIVERSITY

MAJOR: ENGLISH LANGUAGE STUDIES

MAJOR CODE: 8 22 02 01

MASTER THESIS IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE STUDIES

BINH DUONG PROVINCE, AUGUST 2023

BINH DUONG PROVINCIAL PEOPLE’S COMMITTEE

THU DAU MOT UNIVERSITY

HUYNH TAN VIET

COHESION ERRORS IN ESSAYS COMMITTED

BY THIRD-YEAR ENGLISH-MAJORED STUDENTS

AT THU DAU MOT UNIVERSITY

MAJOR: ENGLISH LANGUAGE STUDIES

MAJOR CODE: 8 22 02 01

MASTER THESIS IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE STUDIES

SUPERVISED BY Assoc Prof HO THI KIEU OANH

BINH DUONG PROVINCE, AUGUST 2023

STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY

I certify that the intellectual content of the thesis "Cohesion errors in essayscommitted by third-year English-majored students at Thu Dau Mot University " is myown work, and it does not contain materials written or published by other people orother people's ideas, except for the information from the references This thesis has notbeen submitted to any other tertiary institution for the award of a degree or diploma

Binh Duong Province, 2023

HUYNH TAN VIET

First of all, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Assoc.Prof Ho Thi Kieu Oanh, who gave me insightful comments and devoted her valuabletime to reading my thesis with great care Especially, I am wholeheartedly grateful toher for her unchanging sympathy and unceasing encouragement, which she has given

me so far

I wish to express my sincere and appreciation to the manager of the EnglishLanguage Program Tran Thanh Du, Ph.D, who has inspired me to conduct this thesiswith his warmly encouragement, enthusiastic guidance and interesting lectures

My special thanks go to my lecturers at Thu Dau Mot University, who gave mehelpful advice Besides, they also accompanied me during my most challenging time.Furthermore, I am truly grateful to my colleagues at Nguyen Dinh Chieu High Schoolbecause they took on much of my work, and I had more time to finish this thesis.Finally, I also want to thank my friends who have supported me

I am greatly indebted to my extended family, who have always been supportiveand sympathizing, so that I could devote all my time to finishing my thesis

Writing skills, particularly essay writing skills, are critical for students majoring inEnglish Cohesion and coherence are two extremely important factors in producing agood essay Therefore, mastering linking devices to connect ideas in an essay wouldassist students in avoiding errors of cohesive devices The researcher of the currentstudy discovers that students struggle with using connected devices in their writing.Furthermore, there have not been many studies on cohesive devices As a result, theresearcher employs Halliday and Hasan's theory to identify errors in cohesive devices,classify them, and investigate the causes of these errors to make recommendations forlearning and teaching essay writing The study's data consists of 60 essays written bythe third-year English-majored students (TYEMS)at Thu Dau Mot University (TDMU)

in Binh Duong Province The data on cohesion are quoted, described, and analyzedusing qualitative and quantitative approach The current researcher attempts todiscover and categorize them into two broad categories: cohesive lexical andgrammatical errors The current study's findings indicate that TYEMS' cohesive errors

at TDMU are primarily caused by the learners' inability to make use of the targetlanguage's grammatical and lexical rules, as well as by the learners' negativetransference of their mother tongue's rules Based on these findings, this study offerssome recommendations to lecturers, curriculum designers, and students at TDMU toreduce cohesive errors during the teaching and learning process

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

TYEMS Third-year English-majored students

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1.1: CTĐT 2022/TT17··· page 2

Table 2.1: Halliday and Hasan’s Cohesion Taxonomy (1976)··· 21

Table 2.2: Halliday and Hasan’s Cohesion Taxonomy (1976)··· 22

Table 4.1: Students’ thought about the importance of the writing skill at the University···38

Table 4.2: Students’ thought about how hard the writing skill at the University is····39

Table 4.3: Students’ frequency of writing essays at home··· 39

Table 4.4: Students’ thought about how the teacher taught them the essay writing lesson··· 40

Table 4.5: Students’ frequency of their writing essays at home··· 40

Table 4.6: Students’ suggestions to the lecturers and the university to improve their essay writing skill··· 40

Table 4.7: Students’ understanding about cohesive devices··· 41

Table 4.8: Students’ frequency of using cohesive devices in their essays··· 42

Table 4.9: Students’ types of errors they usually commit in their essays··· 42

Table 4.10: Students’ types of errors they usually use incorrectly in their essays··· 43

Table 4.11: Students’ comments on the essay writing material··· 44

Table 4.12: Students’ causes of cohesion errors in their essays··· 44

Table 4.13: The frequency of grammatical cohesive devices···45

Table 4.14: The distribution of grammatical cohesive errors··· 46

Table 4.15: The distribution of lexical cohesive errors··· 49

Table 4.16: Interlingual errors of grammatical cohesion··· 52

Table 4.17: Interlingual errors of lexical cohesion··· 55

Table 4.18: Intralingual errors···58

LIST OF CHARTS

Chart 4.1 Percentage of the lexical cohesive errors 49Chart 4.2 Percentage of interlingual errors of grammatical cohesion 52

TABLE OF CONTENTS

STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS iv

LIST OF TABLES v

LIST OF CHARTS vi

TABLE OF CONTENTS vii

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1

1.1.Background of the Study 1

1.1.1 The Importance of Writing Skills 1

1.1.2 The Importance of Cohesion in Writing 3

1.2 Statement of the Problem 4

1.3 Scope of the Study 5

1.4 Aims and Objectives 5

1.4.1 Aims 5

1.4.2 Objectives 5

1.5 Research Questions 5

1.6 Significance of the Study 6

1.6.1 Theoretical Significance 6

1.6.2 Practical Significance 6

1.7 Organization of the Study 6

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW 7

2.1 Previous Related Studies 7

2.1.1 Studies in Vietnam 7

2.1.2 International Studies 8

2.2 Theoretical Background 10

2.2.1 Definitions of Text 10

2.2.2 Definitions of Essay 10

2.2.3 Definitions of Cohesion in Essays 11

2.2.4 Cohesive Devices Used in Essays 14

2.2.5 Definitions of Error and Error Analysis 17

2.2.6 Studies of Error Analysis 19

2.2.7 Classification of Cohesion Errors in English Essays and Causes 20

CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY 33

3.1 Research Setting 33

3.2 Research Participants and Subjects 33

3.2.1 Research Participants 33

3.2.2 Research Subjects 35

3.3 Research Design 35

3.4 Data Collection Procedure 36

3.5 Data Analysis Procedure 37

3.6 Reliability and Validity 37

CHAPTER 4 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 38

4.1 Findings from the Questionnaire Analysis 38

4.1.1 Students’ Attitude Towards the Importance of the Writing Skill at the University 38

4.1.2 Students’ Thought on Teachers’ Teaching of Writing Essays and Students’ Frequency of Their Writing Essays at Home 40

4.1.3 Findings Related to Students’ Understanding of Cohesive Devices and their Cohesive Errors 41

4.1.4 Students’ Comments on Essay Writing Materials 43

4.1.5 Causes for Cohesive Errors 44

4.2 Results from Essay Analysis 45

4.2.1 The Use of Cohesive Devices 45

4.2.2 Grammatical Cohesive Errors 46

4.2.3 Lexical Cohesive Errors 49

4.2.4 Sources of Errors 51

CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS 65

5.1 Conclusion 65

5.2 Implications 67

5.2.1 For Teachers 67

5.2.2 For Students 69

5.2.3 For Curriculum 70

5.2.4 For Textbooks 70

5.3 Limitations of the Study and Recommendations for Further Research 70

REFERENCES 72

APPENDIX A 78

APPENDIX B 80

APPENDIX C 82

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

Writing is a necessary and difficult language skill to master When writing anytext, learners frequently make cohesive grammatical and lexical errors Especially,cohesion errors have a negative impact on writing quality because they cause readers

to misinterpret the writing message if the text contains unrelated components Thepurpose of this study is therefore to describe the most common cohesion errors inthe essays committed by the TYEMS at TDMU, identify their causes in the process

of writing English essays, and provide solutions for teaching and learning Englishessay writing to TDMU students This chapter provides an overview of the problem

In addition, the research aims, objectives, scope and research questions are presented

in detail Furthermore, it indicates the significance and organization of the study

1.1.Background of the Study

1.1.1 The Importance of Writing Skills

In recent years, the teaching and learning of English in Vietnam in general andBinh Duong Province in particular has made significant progress Teaching English

is oriented towards the development of four skills such as Listening, Speaking,Reading and Writing

In the syllabus of the experimental English textbooks for Grades 10,11,12published by the Vietnam Educational publishing house in 2013, paragraph writing

is scheduled to be taught from Grade10 and it is compulsory for students fromgrade

10 to 12 to write a paragraph as a compulsory part in the end-term test to check theirwriting skill In each test, these students are required to write a paragraph of 120 -

200 words about the topics taught in the school textbooks Students who major inEnglish continue to learn how to write longer texts such as essays or articles inuniversities.However, their university essay writing faces various challenges

According to the language training program at Thu Dau Mot University, thecurriculum was first designed in 2010 and revised every 2 years The programapplied to the 2022 course includes 120 credits, of which 95 are compulsory and 25are elective After graduating with a bachelor's degree in English, students majoring

in English can work as teachers of English, office workers, interpreters/translators

at foreign companies, joint ventures, or any companies that need English

The language training program at Thu Dau Mot University in 2022 (CTĐT 2022/TT17) also indicates the number or periods of Writing skills as followed:

Table 1.1 CTĐT 2022/TT17

Terms Course name

Number of credits Pre-prerequisites

(Pre)/

Parallel (Pa)

Required (Re)/ Elective (El) Theory Practice

1 Essential Reading

2 Reading & Writing

3 Academic Reading

4 Critical Reading and

As shown in the table 1.1 above, writing skills are usually required for themajority of students studying at university, with 31 credits distributed over four

years, and Essay Writing in English is required for all TYEMS at TDMU Prior to

that, students have been taught writing skills in five subjects: Essential Reading and Writing, Reading and Writing Strategies, Academic Reading and Writing, Critical Reading and Writing, and Reading and Writing for Business Communication Students hereby may not be fully provided with cohesive devices to use for Essay Writing in English, and cohesion errors in their essays are unavoidable Furthermore,

failing to master cohesive devices can have a negative impact on students' lateracademic articles with higher academic writing requirements As a result, theanalysis of cohesive errors in essays could be highly demanding and vital foruniversity students, and teachers in that it could help to assist students and teachers

in identifying and classifying them However, the systematic and scientific analysis

of the errors of this kind in student essays have received little attention

1.1.2 The Importance of Cohesion in Writing

Cohesion is regarded as "an essential textual component" by Ghasemi (2013, p.1615), both in the construction of ordered texts and in making the materialunderstandable to the reader Cohesion appears to be in charge of ensuring that ourwords, ideas, and paragraphs fit together It connects a string of sentences to produce

a text instead of a series of statements that are unrelated to one another

In addition, cohesion is an important aspect of academic writing because itdirectly influences our writing style A cohesive essay, according to Min (2014), isnot limited to "grammatically correct" sentences; rather, it refers to the linkage ofideas at both the sentence and paragraph levels The content of sentences in the textmust be consistent That is, they must be organized logically and in proper order.Without cohesive devices, the reader has the impression that they are reading a longlist of disconnected thoughts They may frequently have difficulty recalling whatthey have read Moreover, they have difficulty understanding the relationshipsbetween concepts, which may indicate that they cannot understand the main point ofthe essays

Many researchers have studied the relationship between the use of cohesivedevices and writing quality A text is meaningful when its components refer to oneanother and establish a logical link Grammatical and lexical cohesive devices thatcould be used to establish the relationship are reference, substitution, ellipsis, andconjunction Cohesiveness can thus be achieved through the use of lexicon andgrammar The quality of an essay is widely thought to be highly correlated with itscohesion and coherence It can be found in both writing literature (e.g., Collins,1998; DeVillez, 2003) and writing instruction textbooks (Golightly & Sanders,2000) Because the goal of a text is to communicate ideas, a good text should ensurethe cohesion As a result, text cohesion is essential because it clarifies meaning andallows readers to understand what the author intends to convey through the text.

1.2 Statement of the Problem

Like other English learners, students at Thu Dau Mot University (TDMU) inBinh Duong Province often commit a wide range of cohesive errors in their essays.From the teaching experiences and the interviews with the students at TDMU, theresearcher of the current study has found that the students have a tendency ofmaking errors of cohesion in essay writing process They could not use reference,substitution, ellipsis, conjunctions properly… in their essays Accordingly, theiressays are not fully cohesive

In fact, among errors found in essays, cohesion errors are the most common.For example, when students express a reason, they normally use the pair of

conjunctions because – so: “Because the price of the petrol is increasingly high, so

many people want to use public transport instead of going by their own private car”.

In this sentence, students have committed errors related to using causalconjunctions

Furthermore, the researcher has discovered through the teachers’ teachingprocess that the correction of cohesive errors for students' essays at TDMU is verydifferent Every teacher has a unique technique Finding and categorizing commonerrors to help students avoid repeating them in the future has received humbleattention Hence, repeated errors in essays continue to occur, and potential solutionshave not been proposed yet Therefore, the researcher assumes that a thorough

investigation into cohesive errors in essays committed by the TYEMS at TDMU isnecessary in order to solve the problem.

1.3 Scope of the Study

This study is confined to the English language students at Thu Dau MotUniversity The study focuses on the analysis of cohesive errors in essays committed

by the third - year English major TDMU students in the first semester of theacademic year 2022-2023 The essays the current researcher of this study chooses tostudy in this thesis are argumentative essays written by the TYEMS, who are fromtwo classes: D22NNAN05 and D22NNAN08 in the 2022-2023 academic year atTDMU

1.4 Aims and Objectives

1.4.1 Aims

This study is aimed to find out and analyze the common cohesive errors inessays committed by the TYEMS at TDMU, TDM city and put forward somesolutions

1.4.2 Objectives

The objectives of the study are to:

- describe the common cohesive errors in essays committed by the TYEMS atTDMU

- identify the causes of these cohesive errors committed by the TYEMS atTDMUin the process of their English essay writing

- provide solutions for teaching and learning English essay writing to TDMUstudents

1.6 Significance of the Study

1.6.1 Theoretical Significance

The findings of the research could consolidate and supplement the theories onthe classification of cohesion errors in students’ essays

1.6.2 Practical Significance

The research could help teachers and students who study English essays writing

at TDMU improve their teaching and learning essay writing so that the studentscould avoid committing cohesive errors in their essays

1.7 Organization of the Study

Besides this Introductory Chapter 1, the study includes four other main chapters,each dealing with a separate issue

Chapter 2, Literature Review, provides the definition of key terms in this study.This chapter also reviews some previous closely related studies on error analysis andidentifies the gap in these studies

Chapter 3, Research Methodology, explains the methods employed in theresearch This chapter clarifies the research participants, sample population, researchinstruments, and describes how data are collected and analyzed

Chapter 4, Findings and Discussion, describes, analyses, and discusses thecharacteristics of each kind of cohesive errors which the TYEMS at TDMU made inwriting essays From the findings, the current researcher compares the number andpercentage of types of cohesive errors in order to see which kinds of errors thestudents commit the most and the least, then finds out the reasons which havecaused these errors

Chapter 5, Conclusion and Implications, presents the summary of major resultsand provides some implications for teaching and learning of English essay writing tohelp students avoid the cohesive errors Moreover, the current researcher alsoclarifies the limitations of this research and recommendations for further studies aregiven

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter reviews previous studies that are closely related to errors of essaywriting in general and cohesive errors in particular

2.1 Previous Related Studies

2.1.1 Studies in Vietnam

In a thesis entitled “Third - year Students’ Essay Writing Errors: An Analysis atThu Dau Mot University”, Trinh (2018) studies the common errors that students ofEnglish at Thu Dau Mot University commit when they write essays He identifiedand analyzed some common errors that undergraduate students often make whilewriting English compositions This thesis has dealt with the common linguisticerrors in essay writing by students of the Department of Foreign Languages at ThuDau Mot University The research reveals some of the most frequent error types thatthese students commit A great number of errors belong to four categories:morphological, lexical, syntactic and mechanical errors Morphological errors areverb errors, noun ending errors, and determiner errors Lexical errors consist oferrors in word choice or word form, preposition errors, pronoun errors and spellingerrors Syntactic errors can be classified according to word order, omitted words orphrases, unnecessary words or phrases, fragments, run-ons and comma splices.Mechanical errors are errors in which the students use wrong punctuation and awrong spelling capitalization

The findings of this study indicate that students of the Faculty of ForeignLanguages usually commit morphological, lexical, syntactic and mechanical errors

In addition to these errors, text structure errors are found in the students’ essays

In another study entitled “Error Analysis on English Compositions andParagraphs of Vietnamese Students”, Pham (2010) investigates the writing errors inEnglish compositions and paragraphs of Vietnamese students at different levels at aVietnamese University and compared the common errors made in their writings.This study was conducted to see if students of different levels of knowledge madethe same errors in their writing of English compositions and paragraphs A corpus of

36 Vietnamese students' English composition writings and their 36 paragraph

writings was used in the study The data were classified into three types of errorsaccording to the Chanquoy framework (2001).

The findings revealed that the three most common writing errors in paragraphsand compositions were spelling, subject-verb agreement, verb tense, and form.However, there was no significant difference in the number of errors committed bythese students It is suggested that intensive knowledge of language teaching invocabulary, spelling, and English grammar, particularly subject-verb agreement, beemphasized to solve the problem Based on the findings, implications andrecommendations were made to teachers in order to assist their students in writingand limit common errors among Vietnamese students of English as a foreignlanguage

2.1.2 International Studies

There were a number of other relevant cohesion studies available prior to thepublication of Halliday and Hasan's (1976) book "Cohesion in English." One of theearliest studies of cohesion in English, according to Xi (2010), was conducted byJakobson (1960) investigates the syntactic structure and parallelism of poetry-relatedliterary texts Gutwinski (1976) then attempts to create cohesion within amulti-layered framework His research focuses on the potential stylistic applications

of cohesive studies, and it has served as a springboard for the start of a number ofstylistic research studies After Halliday and Hasan studied cohesion in English in

1976, many scholars from various branches of Linguistics focused on the term

"cohesion" and investigated it from various perspectives and approaches Hasan(1984) broadens the concept of cohesion and classified it into structural andnon-structural cohesion Parallelism, theme-rhyme development, and given-neworganization are examples of structural cohesion (Xi, 2010, p 140) It includespartial and original relations in non-structural cohesion Following the publication of

"Cohesion in English" (1976), Halliday and Hasan continues to research cohesionand expanded on their theories of cohesion in subsequent works In "An Introduction

to Functional Grammar," Halliday (1994, p 317) classifies substitution and ellipsis

as "variants of the same type of cohesive relation" and grouped them together.Following the publication of "Cohesion in English," the concept of cohesion was

applied to a variety of fields, including stylistics, discourse analysis, languageteaching and learning, translation studies, psycholinguistics, and sociolinguistics Inaddition, cohesion has been studied in the field of language teaching by manyscholars (e.g., McCarthy and Carter, 1994; Zhang, Miao, and Li, 2005).

Furthermore, there have been some studies conducted on the impact ofcohesion on writing quality Specifically, Mc.Culley (1985) conducts research inthis area and discovered that specific cohesive ties (e.g., demonstratives, nominalsubstitution, and repetition) contributed to a positive assessment of writing quality.Although the findings of these studies indicate that using more cohesive ties isinsufficient for students to write quality essays and receive higher grades in writingcourses, we could acknowledge that cohesion is an important component ofacademic writing because it has an immediate impact on the quality of studentwritings Cohesive writing does not imply grammatically correct sentences.Cohesive writing, on the other hand, is distinguished by the connection of our ideas

at both the sentence and paragraph levels

Putra and Astari (2022) discovers types of cohesion and coherence in thebackground section of thesis and focuses on analyzing the use of cohesion andcoherence in the background section of thesis by English Education Study Programstudents of IAIN Bengkulu in September 2020 as a case study titled "Analysis ofCohesion and Coherence in the Background Section of Thesis” by thesestudents This research focused on text analysis The descriptive qualitativeapproach was used in this study Documentation was used to collect data by theauthor The data for this study came from ten background sections of thesis chosen

at random by the students

The study's findings demonstrated cohesion and coherence in the background ofthe thesis achieved by the use of cohesive and coherent devices Cohesion is dividedinto two kinds: grammatical cohesion and lexical cohesion Based on the findings,the authors of the study concluded that the background section of the thesis written

by English Education Study Program students of IAIN Bengkulu in the period ofSeptember 2020 is well-organized and becomes a good background of the thesis

because cohesion and coherence devices were used in various ways in creatingsentences and paragraphs.

Based on the results of the previous studies, the researcher of the current studycould withdraw some conclusions Firstly, there are not so many studies on theerrors in students’ writings In addition, previous studies mainly focus on suchcommon writing errors in paragraphs and compositions as spelling, subject-verbagreements, verb tenses, incorrect verb form, incorrect noun form, word orders,articles, prepositions, punctuation, expression errors, stylistic errors, structural errors,and digressions Moreover, up to now there have not been many studies on cohesionerrors in essays Form this reality, the researcher has carried out this currentresearch

2.2 Theoretical Background

2.2.1 Definitions of Text

According to Halliday and Hasan (1976, p 1), "text is used in Linguistics torefer to any spoken or written passage of any length that forms a unified whole." Inaddition, they assert that text is a "semantic unit" (ibid, p.2) which is distinguished

by cohesion It is not a grammatical unit like a sentence or a clause, and it has nosize limit A text is best viewed as a semantic unit, a unit of meaning rather thanform

Aside from those definitions of text, there have been some studies on thedistinctions between text and non-text A text is an extended structure of syntacticunits such as words, groups, and clauses, as well as textual units distinguished bycoherence and completion (Yalçinkaya & Rzayev, 2017) A non-text, on the otherhand, is made up of random sequences of linguistic units like sentences, paragraphs,

or sections in any temporal or spatial extension (Werlich, 1976) It is a collection ofmutually relevant communicative functions organized to achieve a larger rhetoricalgoal (Hatim and Mason, 1990)

2.2.2 Definitions of Essay

According to Keith (2010), a word is typically composed of one or more letters;however, a word alone is insufficient to express thoughts, so humans requiresentences to do so A sentence is typically composed of a subject and a verb It is a

group of words that indicates a complete idea Words are combined to form asentence, and several sentences can be combined to form a paragraph, whichdevelops into a point of view Every paragraph should have a topic sentence thatpresents the paragraph's main idea It informs readers about the information that thewriter intends to discuss.

A good topic sentence should include a topic, a main idea, and a controllingidea The first step toward any form of writing is to write a paragraph According toRajatanun (1988), a paragraph is a unit of writing that expresses one central idea and

is made up of two types of sentences: topic sentences and supporting sentences.According to Jayakaran (2005), the paragraph is the fundamental unit of any writing,such as a composition, an article, or a short story A paragraph is made up ofsentences that expand on the main basic idea Furthermore, O'Donnell and Paiva(1993) go into greater detail about the essential components of paragraph writing Agood paragraph contains a topic sentence, supporting sentences, details, logicalorders, logical connectors, and a final sentence Finally, many paragraphs can becombined into an essay

An essay is a collection of paragraphs that presents facts, opinions and ideas on

a topic Richards & Schmidt (2010) states that essay is a piece of writing thatanalyses and evaluates a topic or an issue It is a piece of writing which is writtenfrom the author’s personal dimension

2.2.3 Definitions of Cohesion in Essays

2.2.3.1 Cohesion

According to Halliday and Hasan (1976, p 4), the concept of cohesion is "asemantic one"; it refers to meaning relations that exist within the text and define it astext According to them, cohesion is the grammatical and lexical linking within atext or sentence that holds it together and provides meaning In short, text cohesionrefers to the links that connect different sentences and make the text meaningful.Linguists have conducted numerous studies on the topic of cohesion Hinkel(2003, p 279) defines cohesion as "the connectivity of ideas in discourse andsentences to one another in text, thus creating a unified flow of information."Cohesion refers to the variety of possibilities for connecting something to what has

come before In other words, cohesion focuses on the relationship between sentencesrather than the relationship within sentences Similarly, Kwan and Yunus (2014, p.131) define cohesion as "connectivity and flow within the text established throughthe use of devices that cause the elements within the text to be interrelated andinter-dependent."

Cohesion, in fact, represents the presence of explicit cues in the text that allowreaders to find semantic relations within it as part of the linguistic system, therebyenhancing the semantic potentials of text Ghasemi (2013) recognizes that a text ismeaningful only when elements in the text refer to each other and establish arelationship Through the appropriate use of the necessary lexical and grammaticalcohesive devices, cohesion distinguishes texts from non-texts and enables readers toestablish relevance between what has already been said, what is being said now, andwhat will be said next (Castro, 2004)

Aside from the above views on cohesion, there are some criticisms of cohesivetheories Carrell (1982) challenges Halliday and Hasan's (1976) cohesive theory Hebelieves that "processing a text is an interactive process between the text and thelistener's or reader's prior background knowledge." It means that the text's structureand content, as well as the readers' knowledge of the text, must be carefullyconsidered According to this researcher, there is no meaningful relationshipbetween the number of cohesive devices and the coherence of writing However, due

to the findings of Halliday and Hasan's (1976) study, a lot of authors disagree withthis notion They observe that cohesive devices appear to be important Salkie (2001)believes that cohesion is an important textual aspect for qualified writing Somefeatures, namely grammatical and lexical cohesion, contribute to this aspect ofcohesion Grammatical cohesion refers to the various grammatical devices that can

be used to clarify the relationships between sentences (Azzouz, 2009)

Based on those definitions, it is possible to conclude that cohesion in the textrefers to the links that connect different sentences and make the text meaningful Atext is only meaningful when its elements refer to one another and establish arelationship As for grammatical and lexical cohesion, the relationship can be

established through reference, substitution, ellipsis, and conjunction As a result,cohesion can be measured and verified using grammar and semantic rules.

2.2.3.2 Cohesion in Argumentative Essays

Cohesive devices (CDs) are classified as grammatical or lexical by Halliday andHasan (1976) Reference, substitution, ellipsis, and conjunction are examples ofgrammatical cohesion; reiteration and collocation are examples of lexical cohesion.The use of grammatical cohesion in learners’ argumentative essays has become thefocus of their study Investigating CD errors is also essential as CDs could affect thewriting quality Admittedly, the presence of the error does not always make thewriting incoherent Nevertheless, the errors' existences affect the writing quality.Rahayu and Cahyono (2015) identifies the correlation between the conjunctionerrors of undergraduate Chinese EFL learners, yet EFL learners at differentproficiency levels deviated from developing their cohesive errors In a differentaspect, Hidayati (2014) also conducts research to observe the use of conjunction andthe errors in essays written by Spanish learners The conjunction errors negativelyinfluence the quality of writing; the more frequently the learners produced the errors

in their essays, the lower the paragraph quality is

An argumentation essay is one type of academic essay An official argument isanother term for writing argumentation essays at the tertiary level Such essaywriters must explicitly state major propositions, present supporting evidence andreasoning, use formal language and academic terminology, be objective, and becovered if there are disagreements Arguments must be presented directly andstraightforwardly in order to be convincing (Podis & Podis, 1996, p 283) Thewriting method is distinguished by a three-stage structure, with the organizationconsisting of a thesis, argumentation, and conclusion Each stage is organized interms of writing, which is expressed in a variety of grammatical and lexical ways.The stages of the thesis include the introduction of propositions to be debated, thestage of the argument, and the conclusion, which includes synthesis andconfirmation of the validity of the thesis A marker frame is needed to show thesequence and interrelationship of the steps in the argument, especially at the stage of

an important argument Transition signals that mark additions, contrasts, or

conditions describe changes in discussion (Hyland, 1990, p 68-72) Pointing words

or signals, such as firstly or next, mark steps in the order of argumentation.This isuseful in argumentative writing because it allows the writer to identify the reader'sobjections and counter them in his own arguments (Axelrod & Cooper, 1988, p.494-511)

Several studies have already investigated EFL learners’ cohesive errors inproducing essays, yet the previous ones have not identified the factors causing theerrors Hence, this study is to fill the gap of the previous studies Therefore, thisresearch analyzes EFL learners’ cohesive errors in their argumentative essayscommitted by the TYEMS at TDMU

2.2.4 Cohesive Devices Used in Essays

Halliday & Hasan (1976) classifies cohesive devices into various types asfollowed:

2.2.4.1 Grammatical Cohesive Devices

a Reference

Reference is considered as a relation between linguistic features mentionedearlier Reference is classified into three types: personal, demonstrative, andcomparative

- Personal reference is a group of pronouns including personal pronouns, possessive pronouns and possessive adjectives such as I, he, she, his, hers, her, his, my …

- Demonstrative reference represents a noun in a sentence and it also refers to distance and time in the text It includes this, these, that, those, here, there, then, then and now.

- Comparative reference indicates identity, similarity and difference It is used to

compare two things in terms of likeness and unlikeness in the context This category

includes the following items: same, equal, similar, different, many, more, other …

b Substitution

Substitution is the replacement of a linguistic item with another item or phrasethat functions as a noun, verb, or clause Nominal, verbal, and clausal substitutionare the three types of substitution

- Nominal substitution is the use of specific linguistic elements to replace nouns or

noun phrases in a preceding clause This category includes one, ones, and the same.

- Verbal substitution refers to a group of specific linguistic items that replace

preceding verbs or verb phrases in a text, such as do, be, and have.

- Clausal substitution refers to the use of a group of grammatically correct linguisticelements to replace an entire presupposed clause in a context Clausal substitutioninvolves the words "so and not."

c Ellipsis

Ellipsis refers to an omission of a noun, verb, and clause in a context which isleft unsaid yet understood Ellipsis can be divided into nominal, verbal, and clausaltypes

- Nominal ellipsis refers to a group of modifying linguistic elements functioning as a

noun in a context

E.g.: How did you enjoy the exhibition? - a lot (of the exhibition) was very good,though not all (Halliday and Hasan,1976, p.130)

- Verbal ellipsis refers to one or more words representing a verbal group in the

previous clause which is not fully expressed yet still comprehensible

E.g.:What have you been doing? - Swimming (Halliday and Hasan,1976, p.167)

- Clausal ellipsis describes a group of linguistic features referring to a clausal group

that presupposes the previous statements in which the systematic features are notfully represented but are nevertheless understood

E.g.: I keep quiet because Mary gets very embarrassed if anyone mentions John’sname I don’t know why (Halliday and Hasan,1976, p.222)

d Conjunction

Conjunctive cohesion is a device which not only binds clauses, sentences orparagraphs, but also signifies the relationship between them Conjunctive cohesionfalls into five categories: additive, adversative, causal, temporal and continuative

- Additive occurs when a speaker or a writer wants to add another point in the

context It conveys the sense of “there is something more to be said” (e.g: similarly,

in addition, besides, moreover…)

- Adversative represents the contrary relation between two clauses.(e.g:though, despite, however…)

- Causals (cause - effect) express causal - effective relationships by making use of transitional words such as so, thus, hence, therefore, consequently, accordingly, because of, since, as, for, because…

- Temporals help a writer manage linguistic components, sentences and paragraphs chronologically, such as first, second, then, next, after that, finally.

- Continuative refers to linguistic components that intensify a communication process smoothly This includes now, of course, well, anyway, after all …

2.2.4.2 Lexical Cohesive Devices

The selection of vocabulary is an aspect of lexical cohesion It is concerned withthe interaction of lexical items in a text, such as words and phrases There are twotypes of lexical cohesion: reiteration and collocation

a Reiteration

Reiteration is defined by Halliday and Hasan (1976) as two items in a text thatshare the same referent and can be repeated or have similar meanings The forms ofreiteration are repetition, synonymy and superordination (hypernymy andmetonymy)

- Repetition is the restatement of the same lexical item This is illustrated by thefollowing:

Nam ate a cake The cake was delicious.

- Synonymy refers to items with similar meanings: attractive and beautiful

- Hypernymy (superordinate) /hyponymy refers to 'general-specific' or 'an example

of' relationship items For example, vehicle is the hypernym (superordinate) of car

both within the same sentence boundaries since they are independent of thegrammatical structure.

2.2.5 Definitions of Error and Error Analysis

2.2.5.1 Definitions of Error

Error is "a mistake that people make when doing something" (CambridgeAdvanced Learner's Dictionary, 2010) Despite numerous studies on the distinctionbetween "errors" and "mistakes" by many researchers, it is impossible to make aclear distinction According to James (1998, pp 78-79), errors represent

"problematic criterion" to apply in practice, whereas mistakes reflect "incompetence

or a defect in one's knowledge." In other words, mistakes are based on performanceand can be self-corrected They are caused by performance factors or a lack ofvigilance in applying the rule

Besides, errors are usually the result of a lack of knowledge (Tran, 2005) Anerror is a faulty or incorrect process that deviates from the rules, model, or specificcode They are caused by incompetence or an inability to master a language's rules.Mistakes are caused by temporary failures in memory, confusion, and carelessness,whereas errors are caused by a lack of the target language knowledge

In fact, determining whether students make mistakes or errors is difficult If weare unsure whether students have made a mistake or an error, we must determinewhether they are capable of correcting themselves If they can correct it, it is mostlikely a mistake; otherwise, it is an error However, due to time constraints, thisstudy does not conduct in-depth interviews with those students in order todifferentiate between errors and mistakes As a result, all detected cohesive errorsare considered errors

2.2.5.2 Definitions of Error Analysis

In his 1967 journal article "The significance of the learner's errors," Corder iscredited as the primary author of error analysis He stated that language learnershave their syllabus, which determines the learners’ learning quality and sequence intheir language studying (Corder, 1981) In other words, rather than reflecting onwhat the teacher instructs them to learn, errors demonstrate what the studentsalready know He believes that learner errors are not bad behavior that should be

punished because they reflect the nature of students' learning processes As a result,

it can be viewed as a method of assessing learners' learning processes (Corder,1967)

He contends that linguistic errors are necessary components of the learningprocess for students because they reveal differences in the grammar of the learners'source and target languages Making errors is something that both teachers andstudents will encounter, so they can be viewed as an important and beneficial part ofthe language-learning process Corder (1967) concludes that we can learn from ourmistakes, which is preferable to simply learning from a sample without practicingand correcting the errors

Error analysis has a significant impact on language teaching According toJohanson (1975), error analysis is the most effective method for describing andcomprehending language learners' errors It is also a method for improving learners'learning capacity by prioritizing the resolution of their difficulties based on thefrequency of their errors Error analysis also provides information on the learners'level of language proficiency, the anticipated difficulties in language learning, andhow people learn a language (Sercombe, 2000) Error analysis studies helpeducators understand why students make errors in their work In fact, it is notenough for teachers to correct their students' errors Teachers should explain tostudents why they make them and how to avoid them It is preferable to teachstudents how to evaluate their acquisition of the target language through errors.There are numerous studies in this field that make use of error analysis.Johanson (1975) investigates the applications of error analysis and contrastiveanalysis Meanwhile, Ancker (2000), Giri (2010), and Nonkukhetkhong (2013)attempts to analyze errors in order to investigate whether teachers' expectationstoward error correction differed from students' expectations, as well as to identifythe learning strategies and mechanisms that learners used when learning their targetlanguage These studies provide teachers with information based on observed errors

to assist them in three ways: first, in correcting their students' errors; second, inimproving their teaching style; and third, in focusing on areas that requirereinforcement (Alhaisoni, 2012)

2.2.6 Studies of Error Analysis

2.2.6.1 Studies of Errors

Many researchers have investigated the weaknesses of students in their learningprocess by analyzing errors Students' grammar, syntax, lexical, semantics, and othermechanical errors are detected by AbiSamra (2003), Sawalmeh (2013),Nokukhetkhong (2013), and Yani et al (2014) They assume that students makethose errors because they apply their mother tongue's linguistic system to their targetlanguage (in this case, English) While these studies examine learners' writing,Beltran (2014) conducts personal interviews to examine the errors students make intheir utterances Linguists surmised some reasons and suggested some methods ofavoiding errors based on the benefits of error analysis (Azzouz, 2009; Yang, 2010;and Penny, 2001)

Vietnamese linguists have also conducted research on error analysis The errorscommitted by students at Phu Cat 3 high school in Binh Dinh Province are identified

in Nguyen's (2011) thesis The thesis focuses on the paragraph, which is one of thetext levels that high school students learn in English class Morphological, lexical,syntactic, and mechanical errors were investigated It also revealed that studentsstruggle with identifying a topic sentence, developing supporting ideas, and, mostimportantly, writing a concluding sentence Furthermore, Dinh (2008) and Pham(2010) hypothesize why students make errors One of the main reasons, according totheir research, is the influence of the mother tongue The second cause of errors is alack of frequent writing practice

2.2.6.2 Studies of Cohesion Errors

Aside from general studies on errors in student writing, lots of researchers havebeen interested in analyzing cohesion errors (Hidayati, 2014; Kwan & Yunus, 2014;Bao, 2015) Some cohesive errors, such as overuse, underuse, and misuse ofcohesive devices, are discovered in these studies Some linguists concentrated oneach type of cohesive error Azzouz (2009), for example, examines grammaticalcohesion errors in student writing Meanwhile, Vujevic (2006) focuses on ellipsisand substitution, believing that the purpose of those cohesive devices is to avoidburdensome repetitions within the text Darweesh and Kadhim (2016), on the other

hand, raises concerns about the use of conjunctions as cohesive devices among Iraqilearners Conjunctions are used in their research to indicate logical relationshipswithin a text and to help the reader connect different units and paragraphs.Furthermore, Do and Vo (2014) believe that errors are evidence of the concernedlearner in the process of internalizing the target language in use through erroranalysis We have an overall picture of the cohesion errors committed by languagelearners thanks to these narrowly focused papers.

2.2.6.3 Cohesion Errors in English Essays

Errors are associated with the issues of productive skill, conversation, andcomposition (Dulay, 1982) According to Harmer (2003), errors are areas ofstudents' inter-language That is the type of language in which a learner develops aproductive L2 skill that is constantly reformed as the learner strives to fully masterL2 Errors, according to Dulay, are "flawed sides of learners' speech or writing."They are conversations or compositions that deviate from a specific level oflanguage performance."

According to Richards and Schmidt (2010), errors caused by fatigue andcarelessness are classified as "performance" factors, whereas errors caused by a lack

of knowledge of language rules are classified as "competence" factors, which arecommon among new language learners Based on the definitions above, it is possible

to conclude that errors are a constant part of the language learning process

2.2.7 Classification of Cohesion Errors in English Essays and Causes

2.2.7.1 Errors of Grammatical Cohesive Devices

The framework for the majority of cohesion studies is based on Halliday andHasan’s (1976) Cohesion Taxonomy because it provides the most exhaustive andsystematic analysis of cohesion relations in English A summary of Halliday andHasan’s (1976) Cohesion Taxonomy, including all its sub-categories, can be seen inTable 2.1

Table 2.1 Halliday and Hasan’s Cohesion Taxonomy (1976)

These two researchers presents five distinct types of cohesive devices as a guidefor analyzing and evaluating the cohesion of writing In both the lexical andgrammatical systems, cohesion types can be identified The first type of grammaticalcohesion device is the reference, which indicates information from another source,such as personals, demonstratives, and comparatives The second type is thesubstitution, which replaces one component with another In other words, asubstitution is the replacement of a linguistic element within a text as opposed to itsrepetition It performs the same structural function as the component it replaces Thethird one is the ellipsis, which is the omission of a component It is said to be a form

of substitution in which the item is replaced by nothing The next one is theconjunction, which indicates specific meaning that presupposes present items in thediscourse, such as additive, adversative, causal, and temporal According to

Category Sub-Category

Reference Pronouns

DemonstrativesComparativeSubstitution Nominal

VerbalClausalEllipsis Nominal

VerbalClausal

Conjunction

AdditiveAdversativeCausalTemporal

Abadiano (1995), conjunction is a type of semantic relation that enables parts of thetext to be systematically connected to one another in meaning.

On the other hand, lexical cohesion is achieved through the choice of vocabulary

It involves the identification of a reference, which can occur through the exactrepetition of a lexical item It could also be a synonym, a superordinate, or a generalterm When vocabulary items share the same lexical environment in order to occur

in collocation together, a semantic relationship is established between them

Besides the above taxonomy, Witte and Faigley (1981) use another system toanalyze cohesive errors Their framework includes four types of the tie They areimmediate, mediated, remote, and mediated-remote Immediate cohesive tiessemantically link adjacent T-units Meanwhile, mediated links connect items inadjacent T-units These connections allow writers to introduce a notion in one Tunitand then change or explain the idea in subsequent T-units When one or moreintervening T-units separate two elements of a tie, the result is remote Finally, tiesthat are both mediate and remote are called mediate-remote This kind of framework

is not familiar with researchers because it is difficult to determine the distance ofelements

2.2.7.2 Errors of Lexical Cohesive Devices

Halliday and Hasan (1976) distinguishes two types of lexical cohesive errors:reiteration and collocation

Table 2.2 Halliday and Hasan’s Cohesion Taxonomy (1976)

The errors associated with reiteration are primarily caused by the misuse ofwords, as well as the group relationship between them to achieve cohesion.Reiteration errors caused by the repetition of a lexical item, or the occurrence ofcertain types of synonyms in the context of reference, where the two occurrenceshave the same reference Moreover, Halliday and Hasan (1976) claims that lexicalreiteration takes place not only through repetition of an identical item but also

Lexical Cohesion Reiteration

Collocation

through occurrence of a different lexical items that is systematically related to thefirst one, as a synonym or superordinate of it.

The number of any such set is in some kind of semantic relation to one another,but this relation is unimportant for textual purposes There is always the possibility

of cohesion between any parts of lexical items that are in some way associated witheach other in the language As a result of the occurrence in close proximity of pairssuch as the following, whose meaning relation is difficult to classify in systematic

semantic terms: laugh joke, blade sharp, garden dig The cohesive effect of

such pairs is determined by their proclivity to share the same lexical environment, tooccur in collocation with one another, rather than by any systematic semanticrelationship In general, any two lexical items with similar collocation patterns - that

is, tending to appear in similar contexts - will generate a cohesive force if theyappear in adjacent sentences

2.2.8 Causes of Errors

2.2.8.1 Interlingual Errors

With regard to the sources of error in EFL writing addressed earlier, interlingualerror could be found as one of the most important factors affecting deviant problemswhich result from negative transference from learners’ mother tongue According toBhela (1999), errors result from the word for word translation strategy or thinking inmother tongue language This is not surprising that negative interference of L1causes one-third of errors, according to Brudiprabha (1972)

In the following sub-section, errors could be classified into three categories: L1lexical interference, syntactic interference, and discourse interference

a L1 Lexical Interference

Sereebenjapol (2003) examines the types and frequency of errors found inscientific theses to determine the source of errors in four categories: syntax, lexis,morphology, and orthography The use of subordinators and conjunctions is themost common local error The causes of each error differ due to the students'carelessness, insufficient application of rules, and language differences betweenEnglish and Thai

Thep-Ackrapong (2006) also discovers that there was an L1 lexical interferenceinto collocation use in Thai students’ writing They directly translate Thai wordsinto English Subsequently, they use Thai collocation in written form of English toconvey their ideas This could be seen in the following example.

“I *play a computer” which can be corrected to “I work on a computer”

Sattayatham and Honsa (2007) detects first language interference as well Agroup of Thai students is required to translate sentences and paragraphs from Thaiinto English The findings show that the most common errors occur at the syntacticand lexical levels, resulting in overgeneralization, incomplete rule application, andthe formation of false concepts It is also stated that L1 interference is a significantcontributor to the students' errors

Bennui (2008) conducts a study of L1 interference in Thai EFL students' writing,focusing on L1 lexical interference It discusses the literal translation of vocabularyused by Thai English students when students translate Thai words like "get/receive,serious, book, meet, use, true, close, change, alone, make, and cost" into English.However, based on the use of Thai words found in the students' English writing,only one Thai word "Tuk-Tuk" (A three-wheel cabin cycle in Thailand) was used,which pragmatically appeared to be a positive transference because this word wascreated from the use of the native word

As can be seen, L1 interference is a significant factor in EFL writing errors This

is consistent with Leech's (1998, cited in Dagneaux, Denness, & Granger, 1998)claim that students make significant lexical errors because the lexis is built from anopen system This is in vein with James (1998)’s viewpoint that word formation iserratic and unsystematic Lexis, unlike grammatical structure, cannot thus begeneralized into a specific rule

In addition to the studies on L1 lexical interference mentioned above, this studyaims to discuss two major types of semantic errors in lexis as defined by James(1998) These are sense relation confusion and collocational error

a1 Confusion of Sense Relation

The semantic error discovered in this thesis is consistent with Tuaycharoen(2003) in that the constraints at the L1 semantic level reflect the writer's semanticcompetence when writing in English, as demonstrated in the examples below.

I *play the internet (*surf)

There is no *day on this mail (*date)

I will *keep money for a house (*save)

The first example demonstrates L1 lexical interference, which occurs frequentlywhen Thai students use the word "play" in all contexts It can be seen that, ratherthan the word "play," English has specific words for doing something for fun, such

as acting in a play or film, surfing the internet, or fooling someone Thai studentwriters, on the other hand, frequently use the word "play" (Len in Thai) to refer toany enjoyable activity Similarly, the words "day" and "keep," which appear in allcontexts of Thai student writing, are the result of L1 interference and limitedsemantic competence in English

a2 Collocational Error

This type of error interfered by L1 is showcased when the writers use directtranslation to form the collocation as shown in the following examples

He described *about his house.” *[Ø]

The example of error found here is the unnecessary preposition “about” It isshown that the student writer encountered a problem with the unnecessary insertion

of a word This error results from L1 lexical interference when the learner employs adirect translation from Thai as L1 to English It can be assumed from this error that

it is caused by the direct translation of Thai collocation into English because itsounds correct

However, the sources of EFL writer errors are complex, and some of them donot reflect a single factor When intralingual error is considered, this unnecessaryinsertion "about" may result from false analogy (James, 1998) This is because somewriters may learn that it is correct when the word “about” is collocated with theword “talk” and “think” to form the collocations “talk about” and “think about”.Consequently, it may be wrongly assumed that the word “describe” also needs thispreposition This unnecessary insertion is also found in the word “discuss”

b L1 Syntactic Interference

Pongpairoj (2002) studies the three aspects of Thai syntactic interference inEnglish writing These aspects are sentence construction, sentence boundary andword structure Bennui (2008) also examines the word order of Thai syntax, tense,subject-verb agreement, the infinitive, the verb ‘have’, prepositions and noundeterminers He points out that the word order of Thai syntactic structure reflected inthe students’ English sentences is caused from “insufficient knowledge ofsimilarities and differences between Thai and English grammatical structure.”

The following example represents an error found in Thai student writing ofEnglish

*Have many trees in the university (*There are)

This example shows that the writer failed to construct an expletive sentence

structure (there + verb be) As a result, the sentence “Have many trees in the university” is found in student writing instead of “There are many trees in the university”.

I like to go out with my friends, but I don’t like to have alcohol * it is not good for health (*because)

The second example reflects the sentence boundary error It indicates a run-on

sentence error in which the independent clause, “it is not good for health” is joined

with the preceding sentence without an appropriate punctuation or conjunction Asinfluenced by L1 interference, a run on sentence can be short, such as the sentence

found in a student writing “Someone danced someone sang” In this case there are

two independent clauses: two subjects combined with two intransitive verbs lacking

the conjunction while.

Apart from sentence construction and sentence boundary, James (1998)proposes errors caused by misordering, which is one of the most common errors inEFL writing Regard to this error, it is a failure to arrange words in a sentence in theright order based on word-order regulation in English, as illustrated below

He is a * fat boy and friendly (*friendly, fat boy )

The example coincides with the finding from previous studies and could confirmthat L1 syntactic interference in English writing by Thai students is common in

sentence structure, sentence boundary and word order which reflect the learnersrelying on carrying out ‘word-for-word translation of native language surfacestructures’ (Dulay et al 1982, p.163).

c L1 Discourse Interference

Among specific differences in rhetorical organization examined in manynon-English languages by many various researchers, Kaplan (1966) proposes thenotion of contrastive rhetoric on written discourse influenced by oral, culture andsocial value As for negative transference by L1 acquisition, studies of non-nativeEnglish writing indicate that many students use writing conventions more differentlythan native-speakers do McDaniel (1994) proposes that many Thai student writers

do not use paragraph structure in their writing Sometimes the writers do not build

up a new paragraph for the additional idea created It is generally accepted that thesources of writing errors made by L2 learners are varied Based on overall patterns

of errors found in Thai EFL students’ written products (Thea-Ackrarapong, 2006), it

is proposed that these deviate forms of writing can be found in both the rhetoricaland typological differences between the L1 learners and L2 learners It is revealedthat for rhetorical pattern, Asian writers seem to have a general topic which is

“loosely” (p 95) supported in their writings Also, the real purpose is often found atthe end of the piece This feature contrasts with native English-speaking readers whohave a different expectation from writers They expect to find a coherent text inwhich each supporting sentence directly supports the topic sentence or controllingidea

This coincides with Sattayatham and RatanapinyowongIn (2008) comments It

is found in students’ paragraph writing that most students do not present “areasonable connection or relation” (p 30) between ideas in their paragraphs whichcause incoherence These student writers cannot create connected thought and do nottie prose together and cannot make the words and sentences in their writing unifiedand comprehensible for the reader Consequently, their paragraphs are considerablyshort and unclear

Some writing problems at discourse level in Vietnamese context can be found inparagraphs which are dis-unified because the topic sentence, which contains the

topic and controlling idea, are often unclear and sometimes appear at the end of theparagraph As a result, supporting sentences loosely support the topic sentence.However, when compared with the concept of discourse rhetoric based on thegrowing evidence that different cultures and language communities lead to differentconventions and expectations about maximizing rhetorical effectiveness, discourseerror found in some EFL writings seem to be open to question Based on Austin(1962 cited in James, 1998), he is not certain to define this difference as error, butaddresses this phenomenon as “infelicity” (p 163) It can be seen that the deviance

of writing output of L2 learners is not always wrong, but it is different from thestandard of the target language

It can be seen that interlingual errors are normally found in EFL writing This isbecause when writing in the target language, the writers rely on their nativelanguage structures to produce their written tasks As the structures of L1 and L2have differences, there is a relatively high frequency of errors occurring in the targetlanguage; therefore, indicating an interference of the native language on the lexis,syntax and discourse of the target language

In short, interlingual errors are the result of interference from the nativelanguage and are generally caused by the interference of learner’s mother tonguelanguage As stated by Brown (1980), most of the learners’ errors in the secondlanguage result primarily from the learners’ assumption that the second languageforms are similar to those of the native language Interlingual errors occur becausethere are differences between the first and second languages, however learners stillapply their knowledge of the first language to learning second language This isreferred to as negative transfer, or interference, which can be the source of errors insecond language Negative transfer is considered the most frequent cause of secondlanguage learners’ errors

2.2.8.2 Intralingual Errors

This section provides a theoretical review on learning-strategy-based error orintralingual errors in EFL writing This error can be defined as the deviation form oflanguage caused by the lack of the target language knowledge Unlike those

interlingual errors, which are traced to first language transfer, Scovel (2001, p.51)identifies intralingual errors as stated,

…the confusion a language learner experiences when confronting patterns within the structure of a newly acquired language, irrespective of how the

target language patterns might contrast with the learner’s mother tongue

This can be noted that intralingual errors are not related to the first languagetransfer, but attributed to the target language itself From the sources of errormentioned above, the following discusses the learning-strategy-based error whichcomprises of seven categories; false analogy, misanalysis, incomplete ruleapplication, exploiting redundancy, overlooking cooccurrence restrictions,hypercorrection (monitor over use) and overgeneralization, or system-simplification

in relation to learners’ writing

a False Analogy

False analogy reflects errors committed by the writers’ not fully understanding adistinction in the target language This strategy leading to errors coincides withcross-association (George, 1972 cited in James, 1998) The writers mistakenlyassume the rules in L2 from their so-called known information The followingsillustrate examples of this type of error found in students’ writing

My father used to feed many gooses * in the back of the house (*geese) Childs * in the village like to play with me (*children)

b Misanalysis

According to James (1998), this error type is caused from the wrong concept of

a particular rule in the target language For Thai student writers, it is possible thatthey formed a hypothesis of a TL item and put it into their writing The examples ofthese errors are given below

Harry Potter is my favorite who* has beautiful pictures and exciting scene.(*which/that)

I have two pets Its * is * a dog and a cat (*They *are)

c Incomplete Rule Application

This type of error occurs when the deviant structure "represents the degree of thedevelopment of the rules required to produce acceptable utterances," according to

Richards (1974) According to James (1998), it is the inverse of overgeneralizationand exemplifies the sentence's subject and verb 'be' deviancy.

Nobody knew where * was Barbie (* Barbie was).

We moved to *this here since 2004.

From the first example, it is found that the writer adds a qualifier “very”, which

is unnecessary to the sense of the word “perfect” According to the OxfordAdvanced Learner's Dictionary of Current English (Hornby, 2010), this word isexpressed by itself as the state of having everything that is necessary, beingexcellent or being completely correct Therefore, there is no need to use the qualifier

“very” to modify the word “perfect” Also, in the second example, the writeremphasizes the place “here” by using the word “this”, which is unnecessary becausethe writer tends to express the distance of a particular place that is very close, buteither “this” or “here” suffices in the sentence

d3 Synonyms

I *repeated it *again.

My friends and I cannot remember all the *past *history of this old palace.

*All the time I have been here, I *always miss my family.

There are unnecessary repetitions of the words “repeat”, “again”, “past”,

“history”, and the phrase “All the time” and the word “always” The writers decorate