Cohesive devices in english information technology reading texts and implications in teaching and learning english for specific purposes at the people’s police university of technology and logistics

THESIS COHESIVE DEVICES IN ENGLISH INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY READING TEXTS AND IMPLICATIONS IN TEACHING AND LEARNING ENGLISH FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSES AT THE PEOPLE’S POLICE UNIVERSITY OF TEC

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

M.A THESIS

COHESIVE DEVICES IN ENGLISH INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY READING TEXTS AND IMPLICATIONS IN TEACHING AND LEARNING ENGLISH FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSES AT THE PEOPLE’S POLICE

UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY AND LOGISTICS

TIN VÀ ỨNG DỤNG TRONG VIỆC DẠY VÀ HỌC TIẾNG ANH CHUYÊN

TRAN THI VAN ANH

Field: English Language Code: 60220201

Hanoi, 2017

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

M.A THESIS

COHESIVE DEVICES IN ENGLISH INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY READING TEXTS AND IMPLICATIONS IN TEACHING AND LEARNING ENGLISH FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSES AT THE PEOPLE’S POLICE UNIVERSITY OF

TECHNOLOGY AND LOGISTICS

VÀ ỨNG DỤNG TRONG VIỆC DẠY VÀ HỌC TIẾNG ANH CHUYÊN NGÀNH TẠI

TRAN THI VAN ANH

Field: English Language Code: 60220201

Supervisor: Assoc Prof Dr Ho Ngoc Trung

CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY

I, the undersigned, hereby certify my authority of the study project report entitled

“Cohesive devices in English Information Technology reading texts and implication

in teaching and learning English for specific purposes at the People’s Police University of Technology and Logistics” submitted in partial fulfillment of the

requirements for the degree of Master in English Language Except where the reference is indicated, no other person’s work has been used without due acknowledgement in the text of the thesis

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

On the completion of this thesis, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to

my supervisor, Assoc Prof Dr Ho Ngoc Trung, who has offered me precious support, guidance, suggestions and encouragement throughout the research

My special thanks go to the lecturers of the Post-graduate at Ha Noi Open University - for their inspiring lectures

I would like to express my deep gratitude to all the teachers, colleagues and students at People’s Police University of Technology and Logistics for their willing participation in answering questionnaires and sharing ideas on relevant issues

Last but not least, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to my family who gave me supports during the study

TranThi Van Anh

This study deals with cohesive devices in English Information Technology reading texts The major concern is the distribution of cohesive devices in English Information Technology reading texts from the textbook entitled “Infotech- English for computer users- the fourth edition” by Santiago RemachaEsteras In addition to that, this study also reveal some common mistakes made by People’s Police University of Technology and Logistics students in using cohesive devices The aim

of doing this is to find out the ways to help the teachers and students to use English cohesive devices effectively in teaching and learning

A test was distributed to one hundred and fifty students at People’s Police University who acted as significant means to gather data and information for the research The most common students’ mistakes were found and followed with error analysis according to survey test

The result of the test indicate the followings:

- Rather deep analysis has been done on actual mistakes by students in using cohesive devices

- Probable causes for making mistakes were given, with a view to helping the students be able to avoid such mistakes

Basing on research findings, suggestions are given with the hope that the study may possibly to some extent improve current situation in teaching and learning English cohesive devices at People’s Police University of Technology and Logistics

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

ESP: English for Specific Purposes

IT: Information Technology

PPUTL: People’s Police University of Technology and Logistics

LIST OF TABLES

Table 2.1 Type of cohesion……… 16

Table 2.2 Grammatical and lexical cohesion ……… 16

Table 2.3 The description of reiteration ……… 23

Table 3.1 Grammatical cohesive devices in English IT reading texts………… 28

Table 3.2 Reference in English IT reading texts ……… 31

Table 3.3 Ellipsis in English IT reading texts ……… 33

Table 3.4 Conjunction in English IT reading texts ……… 34

Table 3.5 Lexical cohesive devices in English IT reading texts ……… 37

Table 3.6 Collocation in English IT reading texts ……… 41

Table 4.1.The result of multiple-choice task……… 47

Table 4.2 The result of reading comprehension for gap-filling task……… 49

Table 4.3 The result of correcting mistakes task ………

50

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Certificate of originality……….… i

Acknowledgements……… ……ii

Abstract ……… …….iii

List of abbreviations ……… .… iv

List of tables ……… …v

Table of contents ……… ……vi

Chapter 1:INTRODUCTION 1

1.1.Rationale of thestudy 2

1 2.Aims and objectives of thestudy 3

1.3.Researchquestions 3

1.4.Methods of the study 3

1.5 Scope of the study………4

1.6.Significance of the study ………4

1.7.Design ofthestudy 5

Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 6

2.1 Previous studies 6

2.2 Overview of discourse ……… 8

2.2.1.The conceptofdiscourse 8

2.2.1.1.Discourse anddiscourseanalysis 8

2.2.1.2.Discourseand text 9

2.2.1.3.Spoken andwrittendiscourse 10

2.2.1.4.Discoursecontext 11

2.2.2 Cohesion 14

2.2.2.1.Definition 14

2.2.2.2.Cohesion and coherence 14

2.2.3 Cohesive devices 15

2.2.3.1 Definition 15

2.2.3.2 Classification 16

2.2.3.2.1 GrammaticalCohesion 17

2.3.Overvies of ESP 24

2.3.1 What is ESP? 24

2.3.2 Classification of ESP……….……….25

2.3.3 Characteristics of ESP……… …… 26

2.4 Overview of the textbook “Infotech”……… ………26

2.5 Summary……….…………27

Chapter 3: COHESIVE DEVICES IN ENGLISH IT READING TEXTS 28

3.1 Grammaticalcohesivedevices 28

3.1.1 Reference 28

3.1.2 Substitution 32

3.1.3 Ellipsis 32

3.1.4 Conjunction 34

3.2 Lexicalcohesivedevices 35

3.2.1 Reiteration 36

3.2.1.1Repetition 36

3.2.1.2 Generalnouns 37

3.2.1.3 Synonyms 38

3.2.1.4 Superordinate 39

3.2.2 Collocation 40

3.3 Summary……… 44

Chapter4:COMMON MISTAKES MADE BY STUDENTS IN USING COHESIVE DEVICES ………46

4.1 Test result analysis ……….…46

4.1.1 Aims of the test……… 46

4.1.2 Participants ……… …46

4.1.3 Methods of the study ………46

4.1.4 Test description ………47

4.1.5 Data result analysis………47

4.2 Implications for teaching and learning cohesive devices in ESP………51

4.3 Summary ………53

Chapter 5:CONCLUSION 54

5.2.Limitations of thestudy 55

5.3.Suggestions forfurtherstudies 55

REFERENCES 57

APPENDICES………60

Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale

Language is an essential form of communication It allows people to convey and communicate something among the speaker and the addressee; so that the information delivered well and there is no misunderstanding among them

Discourse used in linguistics to refer to any passages, spoken or written, of whatever length, that does form a unified whole Due to discourse is a comprehension language, the syntaxes and description research are not limited only for sentence but must be continued to the higher postulate unit like dialogue, paragraph, chapter, etc

According to Nguyen Hoa (200:11), the arrival of discourse analysis on the linguistic scene helps to explain many problems that structural approach fails to account for Among these are the use of the definite article, reference, substitution and ellipsis In other words, that’s cohesion of a discourse Basically, cohesion refers to the formal relationship that causes texts to cohere or stick together It is indicated by grammatical, logical and lexical relationships found among or between the sentences of a text Undoubtedly, content in documents cannot be communicated logically and coherently without the elements adhering to the elements in the text

However, during my process of teaching IT English for students at The People’s Police University of Technology and Logistics (PPUTL), the author come

to realize that the students lack the adequate linguistic knowledge in English to read and understand reading texts in IT textbook Students also tends to make grammatical, contextual and textual errors leading to misinterpretation of ideas conveyed in the texts They often make errors at sentence and discourse levels may

be attributed to their insufficient language base, one of which is the cohesive devices in the text Students even do not pay attention to the cohesive devices used

in the context of the text They just ask teacher the meaning of some technical terms

or they try to understand the content by looking up all new words in dictionary As a result, students find it hard to understand the text or express their answers in the comprehension check questions even when they know most of the words

In order to build a deep understanding of the cohesion in ESP reading texts to English learners as well as increase the interest in the ESP learning, the study on

“Cohesive devices in English Information Technology reading texts and

implications in teaching and learning English for Specific Purposes at The People’s Police University of Technology and Logistics” is carried out

1.2 Aims and objectives of the study

The study aims at finding out the solutions to improve students’ capability in using English cohesive devices in English for Information and Technology at The People’s Police University of Technology and Logistics (PPUTL)

From this aim, the study attempts:

- To analyze cohesive devices in English IT reading texts in terms of type and number of occurrence

- To find out the common mistakes made by students via the survey test and suggest some solutions to improve students’ capabilities in using cohesive devices effectively

1.3 Research questions

In order to achieve the objectives, the study is meant to find out the following research questions:

1 What are common cohesive devices used in English IT reading texts?

2 What are the students’ common mistakes in using cohesive devices in English IT reading texts?

To achieve the aims mentioned above, the study with descriptive, quantitative and qualitative method is used and the following tasks are involved in the study After collecting IT reading texts from books “InfoTech- English for computer

users”- the fourth edition, the data are selected, analyzed and grouped into categories so that the subject can be described clearly Examples, figures and tables are also provided to illustrate the description For the case study at PPUTL, the writer uses personal observations and designs test in order to investigate the students’ common mistakes in using cohesive devices in English

IT texts As a result, the reliability of the research is highly appreciated

The following tasks are involved in the study:

1 Collecting IT reading texts from textbook entitled “InfoTech- English for computer users- the Fourth edition” at People’s Police University of Technology and Logistics

2 Studying the materials to assure the reliability and the validity

3 Analyzing the data and discussing the findings

4 Designing a test and conducting a survey on the target students in combination with personal observations to explore students’ common mistakes in translating cohesive devices in IT readingtexts

5 Suggesting solutions to improve students’ capabilities to usecohesive devices correctly

1.5 Scope of the study

The study is narrowed down to the cohesive devices used in English IT reading texts from the textbook “InfoTech- English for computer users- the Fourth edition”

In detail, this study mainly focuses on seven reading texts which are selected from the book for teaching ESP at PPUTL

1.6 Significance of the study

Theoretical significance: This study contributes to verifying the correctness and significance related to linguistic theories in discourse analysis by working on a certain kind of discourse (English IT reading texts)

Practical significance: This thesis helps to gain an insight into the use of lexical cohesive devices in the English IT reading texts

1.7 Design of the study

The study begins with Certificate of originality, Acknowledgment, Abstract, and Table of contents The main body of the study consists of 5 chapters:

Chapter 1 is the Introduction This chapter consists of rationale, aims and

objectives, research questions, methods of the study, scope of the study, significance and design of the study

Chapter 2 is the Literature Review that consists of theoretical notions necessary for

the study including review of previous studies and overview of theoretical background: cohesive devices and English IT reading texts

Chapter 3 focuses on the Findings and Discussions; that is cohesive devices in

English IT reading texts

Chapter 4 is the Applications It reveals some common mistakes made by students

when dealing with cohesive devices Moreover, It offers the teachers and students some solutions to the teaching and learning of cohesive devices and developing PPUTL students’ translation skills

The last chapter, chapter 5, is the Recapitulation, Concluding remarks, Limitation

of the research and some recommendations for a further research

Apart from the three main parts, the references and the appendices of the study are also included at the end of the research

Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1.Previous studies

This section presents the related studies after the thorough and in-depth search carried out by the researchers This will also present briefly reviews of what has been found, and then identifies a gap The study discusses the related researches with key findings, then finds out weaknesses in the method and/ or limitations in the findings and finally, discusses how the next researchers tried to address these problems

Although many studies on cohesion (or cohesive devices) have been carried out

in the field of teaching English all over the world, the greatest number of researchers emphasized the relationship of the use of cohesive devices to the quality of writing of a text or coherence The study of Johnson (1992) sought to find out the relationship of cohesion to overall writing quality of a text To achieve this, she correlated the amount and type of cohesive devices used in three groups

of students’ essays to the overall quality rating of these essays given by the respective writing teachers of each group The results revealed that there is no significant difference between the amount and number of cohesive ties used to the overall quality of essays among three groups Palmer’s (1999) study is concerned with coherence and cohesion in the English classroom The purpose of his study was to analyze the way non-native English language students create coherent texts Results have suggested that lexical reiteration is often used by ESL students in order to create coherenttexts

As in Johnson’s study, Meisuo (2000) also investigated qualitatively the relationship of cohesive ties in the expository essays of Chinese students with their quality of writing The study revealed that lexical category had the highest percentage of ties, followed by conjunctions and references Meisuo included quantitative finding which revealed cohesive features such as errors, ambiguity,

overuse and misuse of cohesive devices Furthermore, Meisuo’s study also found that there was no significant relationship between the number of cohesive ties used and the quality of writing, or there was a significant difference between the highly-rated and poorly-rated essays in the frequency of use of cohesive ties The qualitative analysis showed that Chinese students tended to overuse additive and temporal devices and to misuse adversatives Some similar researches were conducted by Liu and Braine (2005), Crossley and Mcnamara (2010)

However, there are some researches focusing on students’ problems and errors with using cohesion devices For instance, the study of Abdel Hamid Ahmed (2010) focused on the organisational problems that Egyptian students of English encountered when they wrote an English essay In particular, the study aimed at investigating student’s cohesion and coherence problems in EFL essay writing In Vietnam, Tran Thi Hai Binh (2005) also conducted a study in her MA thesis in order to analyze the students’ errors on the use of cohesive devices in writing

Related to studies on information technology texts, there are some theses from Vietnam National University, College of Foreign Languages For instance, Mai Thanh Hanh (2014) investigates the lexical cohesive devices in the reading texts of textbook – Infotech The thesis offers theoretical knowledge of lexical cohesive devices in English The thesis then focuses on analyzing the lexical cohesive devices employed in some reading texts The findings of this thesis revealed that both types of lexical cohesive devices which are reiteration and collocations appear quite frequently All kinds of reiteration, namely repetition, synonyms, near-synonyms, superordinates, and general words, can be found in letters of enquiry Collocations are also common in reading texts

All those studies revealed the characteristics of cohesive devices in some certain types of texts such as: English enquiry letter, economic texts, writing and narrative texts They also suggest some solutions to improve students’ skill in using cohesive devices However, in my thesis, the author concentrate on technical texts-

that is IT text which there is a few research on this field Especially, the author strictly emphasize on the practical significance of this study It will help the author,

in particular and the reader, in general have deeper insight of cohesive devices in one kind of texts- IT reading texts

2.2 Overview of discourse

2.2.1 The concept of discourse

2.2.1.1 Discourse and discourse analysis

There are many different notions of discourse among linguists as to the use

of the term discourse in that some is used in reference to texts, while others claim it denotes speech which is illustrated by these following definitions:

“Discourse can be defined as a stretch of language consisting of several sentences, which are perceived as being related in some way Sentences can be related, not only in terms of the idea they share, but also in terms of the jobs they perform within the discourse- that is in terms of their functions.” (Nunan D, 1993)

Halliday and Hasan (1976) define that “Discourse is language that is functional – language that is doing some job in some context as opposed to isolated words to sentences Discourse is a unit of language in use It is not a grammatical unit, like a clause or a sentence Discourse is a semantic unit, a unit not of form but

of meaning A discourse does not consist of sentences, it is realized by, or encoded

in sentences”

In Crystal’s opinion, discourse is considered “a continuous stretch of language larger than a sentence, often constituting a coherent unit such as a sermon, argument, joke, or narrative”

In general, discourse is defined differently but had something in common Discourse is understood as language in use, which can reflect people’s point of view and value systems

Brown and Yule (1983: viii) rightly remark: the term “discourse analysis” has come to be used with a wide range of meanings which cover a wide range of activities at the intersection of many disciplines from sociolinguistics, philosophical

linguistics to computational linguistics

Scholars operating in the field of discourse analysis tend to focus on different aspects of discourse Basically, there are three distinct strands of discourse analysis It includes involvement in text grammar dealing with cohesion and coherence The other direction has to do with conversation analysis The last one is the area of pragmatics

As the view of Michael McCarthy (1993: 5), discourse analysis is concerned with the study of the relationship between language and the contexts in which it is used It grew out of work in different disciplines in the 1960s and early 1970s, including linguistics, semiotics, psychology, anthropology and sociology Discourse analysts study language in use: written texts and spoken data of all kinds, from conversation to highly institutionalized forms oftalk

2.2.1.2 Discourse and text

It is aware text exists in both written and spoken language In the former,

“text” requires its interpretation as a type of linguistic unit larger than the sentence

as a result of linguistics’ dissatisfaction with the traditional understanding of linguistic levels

According to Nguyen Hoa (2000: 13), there are two approaches to text The first

sees text as “the verbal record of a communicative act” (Brown and Yule, 1983: 6) or as “the linguistic product of a communicative process” (Widdowson, 1984:

100) The second approach tends to see text as a semantic or communicative

category For example, Halliday and Hassan (1976) view text as a “semantic unit” characterised by cohesion or a framework that is logical and general “A text is a unit of language in use It is not a grammatical unit, like a clause or a sentence; and it is not defined by its size A text is sometimes envisaged to be some kind of super sentence, a grammatical unit that is larger than a sentence but is related to

a sentence in the same way that a sentence is related to a clause, a clause to a group and so on” De Beaugrande and Dressler (1981: 3) define text as a

“communicative occurrence which possesses seven constitutive conditions of textual communication: cohesion, coherence, intentionality, acceptability, informativity, situationality and intertextuality” However, Widdowson probably is

one of the first who makes clear and explicit the distinction between text and discourse According to him, text typically has cohesion whereas discourse has

coherence And “discourse is a communicative process by means of interaction Its situational outcome is a change in a state of affairs: information is conveyed, intentions made clear, its linguistic product is Text” (Widdowson, 1984:100)

From this point of view, a text is simply a representation or a verbal

record of the whole communicative process (that is discourse) in which many

situational factors are involved In the light of distinction, discourse analysis can

be contrasted with textanalysis

2.2.1.3 Spoken and written discourse

Talking and writing represent different modes of expressing linguistics meanings As stated by Halliday (1985) “Speaking does not show clearly sentence and paragraph boundaries or signal the move into direct quotation while writing leaves out the prosodic and paralinguistic contribution” While written discourse comprises complete sentences with subordination, rich lexis and frequent modifications via adjectives and adverbs, spoken contains incomplete sentences Although spoken and written discourses share the communicative functions, they serve various functions The former is concerned with interact ional use and the latter with the transactional use (Brown and Yule, 1983: 13)

By comparison, writing language is under no temporal, spatial pressure The writer has time to choose lexical items, check words and structures to make necessary correction which is primarily concerned with the transactional use Spoken language, as stated by Brown and Yule (1983), is the kind of language which is produced under some temporal, spatial pressure with the speaker’s monitoring of what it is that he has just said, determining his current phrase and

simultaneously planning his next utterance and which is primarily concerned with the interactional use

There are three prominent features that can apply to distinguish written and spoken discourse

1 Density: the density is the information volume presented Evidently, written language is dense while spoken language is sparse

2 Complexity of grammar: in spoken language grammar is not so important, but information For written language, it is important to maintain enough information, appropriate grammatical structures as well as rational organization of sentences

3 Grammatical metaphor: Written language presents rather few different verbs, whereas spoken language uses more verbs

These above characteristics are inherent in spoken and written language in whatever types of discourse Written texts can be read out and heard such as letters, stories, novels, contracts, reports, speeches Moreover, spoken discourse such as lectures, lessons, interviews, conversations and so on can also be reserved in the form of writing

2.2.1.4 Discourse context

Context refers to the situation giving rise to the discourse, and within which the discourse is embedded Context plays a very important role in the interpretation of discourse There is a dialectical relationship between discourse and context The context creates the discourse as much as the discourse creates the context

According to Nunan (1993: 8), there are two types of context: linguistic context and non-linguistic context Linguistic context is the language that surrounds or accompanies the piece of discourse under analysis Non-linguistic context is the context in which the discourse takes place Linguistic context is in fact referred to as co-text It surrounds or accompanies the piece of discourse under analysis Non-linguistic context was taken up by Firth (1957) who placed great emphasis on the

"social context" He saw context of situation as crucial determinants of utterance

meaning However, Firth did not give a theoretical account of the effect of context

on utterance meaning

As far as the features of context are concerned, the term SITUATION,

meaning the “context of situation” in which a text is embedded, refers to all

those extra-linguistic factors which have some bearing on the text itself Firth, the famous British linguist believes that a context of situation should embrace the following categories:

 The relevant features of participants: persons,personalities

(i) The verbal action of theparticipants

(ii) The non-verbal action of theparticipants

(i) Addressor andaddressee

(ii) Audience

(iii) Topic

and decodes the utterance He also identifies “audience”- the overhearers - or in

other words, the unintended addressees Topic is certain to constrain the range of language used And if you have information about the setting, both in terms of

place and time, the things like posture, gesture and facial expression, your expectations will be further limited

Channel refers to how the contact between the participants is maintained-

by speech, writing, signing, or signal Code is what kind of language or dialect or

style of language is being used – standard language, or the one spoken in a region

Message-form tells us about the forms intended – a chat, debate, sermon, fairytale,

a love letter, a lecture, a radio talk, a play etc And event is about the nature of the

communicative event within which a genre may be embedded For example, if a meeting is the event, then there may be the opening speech, the welcoming speech

or the papers read aloud by those attending it Key is another concept which

involves evaluation – you may ask yourself if it was a good speech, a good or bad

lecture or an interesting love letter, etc Finally, purpose is what outcome the

participants want tohappen

2.2.2 Cohesion

2.2.2.1 Definition

The concept of cohesion is closely connected with text It is defined as the grammatical and lexical relationship between different elements of a text According to Yule (1996), a text is usually considered to have a certain structure which depends on factors quite different from those required in the structure of a single sentence Some among those factors are described in terms of cohesion, or the ties and connections which exist within a text

Halliday and Hasan (1976:4) also define cohesion in a similar way: “The concept of cohesion is a semantic one; it refers to relations of meaning that exist within the text, and that define it as a text.” They also point out that cohesion often occurs where the interpretation of some elements in the discourse is dependent on that of another

To summarize, cohesion refers to the linguistic elements that make a discourse semantically coherent; or as Hoa (2000: 23) indicated “cohesion refers to the formal relationship that causes texts to cohere or stick together”

2.2.2.2 Cohesion and Coherence

The concept of cohesion refers to relations of meaning that exist within the text, and that defines it as a text Cohesion occurs where the interpretation of some element in the discourse dependent on that of another

Cohesion is the network of lexical, grammatical, and other relations which link various parts of a text These relations or ties organize and, to some extent, create a text, for instance, by requiring the reader to interpret words and expressions by reference to other words and expressions in the surrounding sentences and paragraphs Cohesion is a surface relation and it connects together the actual words and expressions that we can see or hear

Halliday and Hasan (1986) identify five main cohesive devices in English: reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction, and lexical cohesion

Coherence, on the other hand, is defined as the relationships of various ideas

in a text that are linked together to create a meaningful discourse According to Nunan (1993) coherence is “the feeling that sequences of sentences or utterances seems to hang together and make sense In short, coherence means the relationships that link the meanings of utterances in a discourse or of the sentences in a text These links may be based on the speakers’ shared knowledge

Though cohesion and coherence, in essence, is different from each other, they are closely linked together They represent the very essential elements that make a text or discourse coherent and that make coherent text or discourse different from random sentences or utterances Cohesion is mainly used to embody coherence by a system of cohesive devices Accordingly, cohesion and coherence help consolidate the text as a complete and unified linguistics unit beyond the largest syntactic unit of sentence

2.2.3 Cohesive devices

2.2.3.1 Definition

The term “cohesive” has been defined in various ways Some researchers apply the term cohesive to the surface structure of the text “Cohesive” has sometimes been

applied to smaller units of language in the text Other researchers have defined

cohesive as continuity in words and sentence structure

Cohesive devices consist of grammatical cohesive devices and lexical cohesive devices We called grammatical because at least one of the elements in the tie is a grammatical word We make a distinction between content or lexical words and grammatical words Lexical words have a meaning in the dictionary - words like

table, chair, go and come; grammatical words are words which have a function rather than a meaning: a word like she, for example, has the grammatical function

of indicating a female

2.2.3.2 Classification

According to Halliday and Hasan (1976: 303), the classification of cohesion is based on the linguistic form; these are the categories of cohesion that can be recognized in the lexicogrammatical system Therefore, the type of cohesion depends either on semantic relation in the linguistic system or on lexico- grammatical relations It can be made clearer in the followingdescription:

Table 2.1: Type of Cohesion

Relatedness of form

Relatedness of reference

Semantic connection

Substitution and ellipsis; lexical collocation

Reference; lexical reiteration

Conjunction

(Source: Haliday and Hasan, 1976:304)

Reference, substitution and ellipsis are clearly grammatical; lexical cohesion, as the name implies, lexical Conjunction is on the borderline of the grammatical and the lexical; the set of conjunctive element can probably be interpreted grammatically in terms of systems, and some conjunctive expressions involve lexical selection However, it is better to put it in the group of grammatical cohesion as it is mainly grammatical with a lexical component inside Consequently, we can refer to grammatical cohesion and lexical cohesion as follows:

Table 2.2: Grammatical and Lexical Cohesion

an overall background of grammatical cohesion, the author attempts to go into details with each type in thefollowing:

(i) Reference

Halliday and Hasan (1976) point out that reference features cannot be semantically interpreted without referring to some other features in the text Reference is a semantic relation and "since the relationship is on the semantic level, the reference item is in no way constrained to match the grammatical class of the item it refersto"

Reference can be distinguished by “exophora” (situational) and

“endophora” (textual) functions This is because we expect the reader to

interpret it by either looking forward, backward or outward Halliday and

Hassan (1976:32) state that “in the evolution of language, situational reference preceded text reference; in other words, that the meaning ‘the thing you see in front of you’ evolve earlier than the meaning ‘the thing I have just mentioned’ Being present in the text is, as it were, a special case of being present in the situation” It is easy to see that there is a logical continuity from naming

(referring to a thing independently of the context of situation), through situational reference (referring to a thing as identified in context of situation) to textual reference (referring to a thing as identified in the surrounding text) Also according to Halliday and Hasan (1976: 37), there are three types of reference: personal, demonstrative, and comparative Based on that, Ho Ngoc Trung (2013) explains more details in his book as:

Personal reference items are expressed through personal pronouns (I, me, you,

we, us, he, him, she, her, they, them, it, one); possessive pronouns (mine, yours, ours, his, hers, theirs, its, one's) and possessive determiners or possessive adjectives (my, your, his, her, our, their, its) They serve to identify individuals

and objects that are named at some other points in thetext

Demonstrative reference is essentially a form of verbal pointing The speaker identifies the referent by locating it on a scale of proximity, such as:

this, these, here, now (near proximity); that, those, there, then (far proximity);

or the (neutral proximity)

The last one, comparative reference is expressed through adjectives and adverbs and serves to compare items within a text in terms of identity or

similarity, such as same, equal, identical/ identically (identity); similar/ so, additional, similarly, likewise, such (similarity); other, different, else/ differently, otherwise (difference); more, fewer, less, further/ so-as-equally + quantifiers (numerative); comparative adjectives and adverbs(epithet)

These various devices enable the writer or speaker to make multiple references to people and things within a text Examples of these types are as follows:

In the late 1970s and early 80s, the way users accessed computer system was very complex They had to memorize and type a lot of commands just to see

the contents of a disk, to copy files or to respond to a single prompt

A worm is a self-copying program that spreads through email attachments;

it replicates itself and sends a copy to everyone in an address book

In the first example, both “users” and “they” refers to the same people

“They” in the second sentence is regarded as personalreference Also in [2],

“it” refers to “a worm”, so “it” is considered as personal reference

Hard drives are very sensitive to vibration and shocks, especially when they are operating; when the read/write head touches the rotating disk, it can scratch

and damage the disk surface This is known as head crash

“This” replaces the meaning of the whole preceding sentence In this case,

“this” is demonstrative reference

CD-R (recordable) discs are write-once devices which let you duplicate

music CDs and other data CDs

In the last example, “other” is used as comparative reference

(ii) Substitution

According to Halliday and Hasan (1976: 88), the distinction between substitution

and reference is that substitution is a relation in the wording rather than in the meaning Substitution is a relation between linguistic items, such as words or phrases, whereas reference is a relation between meanings A substitute is used in place of the repetition

of a particular item As a general rule, the substitute item has the same structural function as that for which it substitutes Hence, most of the substitutes are proforms within sentences, which can be used across sentences

From the point of view of textual cohesion, substitution resembles reference

in being potentially anaphoric Halliday and Hasan put it that “Exophoric substitution is rarely used But the vast majority of all instances of substitution are endophoric; and of these again, the vast majority are anaphoric” (1976: 90) More specifically, Ho Ngoc Trung (2012: 61) points out that “Endophora is a relation among items within the same text; therefore, endophoric substitution has a high potentiality of creating cohesion Exophora does not have the function of linking sentences in the texttogether”

In English, the item to be substituted may be realized as a noun, as a verb or

as a clause For this reason, there are three types of substitution: nominal, verbal, and clausal These items can perform assubstitutes:

 Nominal: one, ones; thesame

 Verbal:do

 Clausal: so,not

 Nominalsubstitution:wherethenounoranominalgroupcanbereplacedby one(s) or

the same

 Verbal substitution: the verb or verbal group can be replaced by other verb:

verbal substitute “do” This functions as a head of verbal group, and it is usually placed at the end of thegroup

 Clausal substitution: where a clause can be usually substituted by “so” or“not”

(iii) Ellipsis

Ellipsis is considered a special case of substitution because ellipsis is

“substitution” by zero (0) Ellipsis is an omission of certain elements from a

sentence or clause and can only be recovered by referring to an element in the preceding text In ellipsis some elements are omitted from the surface text, but they are still understood The omission of these elements can be recovered by referring to an element in the preceding text Thus elliptical cohesion always appears anaphoric

Ellipsis is similar to substitution in terms of three types: nominal ellipsis, verbal ellipsis and clausal ellipsis

 Nominal ellipsis: means ellipsis within the nominal group, where the omission

of the head noun takesplace

 Verbal ellipsis: involves the omission of the verbal element in the predicator

 Clausal ellipsis: includes ellipsis of the whole clause or a clause element

The fourth and final type of grammatical cohesion is conjunction Conjunction is different from substitution, ellipsis and reference in that it is not a device for reminding the readers of previously mentioned entities, actions and

state of affairs It is not in the kind of anaphoric relation “Conjunctive elements are cohesive not in themselves but indirectly devices by virtue of their specific meanings; they are not primarily devices for reaching out into the preceding (or

following) text, but they express certain meanings which presuppose the presence

of other components in the discourse” (Halliday & Hasan, 1976:226)

There are four types of conjunction: temporal, causal, additive and adversative Following are some examples of conjunctive relations:

- Temporal: then, next, after that, just then, at the same time, finally, at last, at

once, soon, after a time, next time, on another occasion, meanwhile, until then, etc

For example:

First, data is fed into the computer’s memory Then, when the program is run, the computer performs a set of instructions and processes the data Finally, we

can see the results on the screen or in printed form

- Causal: so, then, hence, therefore, consequently, for this reason, account for this,

as a result, with this in mind, for, because, on this basis, to this end, arising out of this, in that case, that being so, under the circumstances, otherwise, in this respect,

with reference to this, aside from this,etc

Optical discs can store data at much higher densities than magnetic disks

They are therefore ideal for multimedia applications where images, animation

and sound occupy a lot of disc space

- Adversative: yet, though, however, only, nevertheless, despite this, in fact,

actually, on the other hand, at the same time, instead of, on the contrary, at least,

in any case, anyhow, at any rate,etc

They also both use a laser beam to read data However, they are very different

in internal structure and data capacity

- Additive: and, and so, nor, furthermore, in addition, besides, alternatively,

incidentally, by the way, that is, I mean, in other words, for instance, thus, likewise, similarly, in the same way, by contrast,etc

Clock speed is measured in gigahertz For example, a CPU running at 4GHz

will enable your PC to handle the most demanding applications

2.2.3.2.2 LexicalCohesion

Another type of cohesion, co-acting with reference to create texture, is lexical cohesion (Halliday and Hasan, 1976) Lexical cohesion is the central device for making texts hang together experientially, defining the aboutness of a text

Lexical cohesion differs from the other cohesive elements in text in that

it is non-grammatical Lexical cohesion refers to the “cohesive effect achieved

by the selection of vocabulary” (Halliday and Hasan, 1976: 274) The two main

categories of lexical cohesion are reiteration andcollocation

In Cohesion in English (1976:278), Halliday and Hasan define reiteration

as follow: Reiteration is a form of lexical cohesion which involves the repetition

of a lexical item, the use of a general word to refer to back to a lexical item, and a number of things in between- the use of a synonym, near-synonym, or super-ordinate

Halliday and Hasan (1976: 288) also suggest the framework for the description of reiteration as follows:

Table 2.3 The description of reiteration

(a) same word(repetition)

We can consider the following examples:

Storage devices (hard drives, DVD drivers or flash drivers) provide a permanent storage of both data and programs Disk drives are used to read and write data on disks Input devices enable data to go into the computer’s memory The most

common input devices are the mouse and the keyboard Output devices enable us

to extract the finished product from the system For example, the computer shows

the output on the monitor or prints the results onto paper by means of a printer

It can be seen from the example above, many words are repeated such as: the word

“data” is repeated three times, “storage” is two times, “input devices” gets two times This repetition helps the reader remember the key words related to storage devices

(ii) Collocation

Collocation is the second type of lexical cohesion and deals with the relationship between words on the basis of the fact that these often occur in the same surroundings Or in other words, collocation is known as the tendency of some words to co-occur together without depending on any semantic relationships

In brief, collocation refers to words that keep company with each other In terms of the structure, collocation can be divided into two types: grammatical collocation and lexical collocation

Grammatical collocations often contain a lexical content word and a grammar function word, ie a noun, an adjective, a verb plus a preposition There are four main kinds of grammatical collocation: V + prep, Adj + Pre, N+ pre, pre + N In these cases, the open-class word is called the base or the dominant word and determines the word it can collocate with, the collocator

Lexical collocations are lexically restricted word pairs where only a subset

of the synonyms of the collocator can be used in the same lexical content Lexical collocations do not contain prepositions but consist of various combinations of nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs This type of collocation contains the following common patterns: adj + N, quant + N, V +N, V + V, N+N, adv +adj

For examples:

Expansion slots allow users to install expansion cards, adding features like sound, memory and network capabilities

To minimize the risk of data loss or corruption, you should install an to-date virus scanner You should also back up your hard drive regularly

up-In these examples, the grammatical collocations is: allow to (V + pre); lexical collocations are: expansion slot , expansion card, network capabilities, data loss, install an up-to-date virus scanner

In conclusion, the theoretical background and the theoretical framework of discourse and cohesion have been discussed above They provide us a fundamental knowledge of discourse and cohesive devices Moreover, this is basic foundation to develop the next chapter However, for each type of discourse, the features of cohesive devices is different In scope of this thesis, the type of discourse is English

Similarly, Munby (1978: 2) states: "ESP courses are those where the syllabus and materials are determined in all essentials by the prior analysis of the communication needs of the learner" And Robinson (1991: 3), discussing the criteria to ESP, also emphasizes the students' needs element of ESP: " An ESP course is based on a needs analysis, which aims to specify as closely as possible what exactly it is that students have to do through the medium of English" She defines that time period should be specified clearly for an ESP course, in which their objectives have to be achieved Likewise, Streven (1988: 1) stated: "ESP is a particular cause of the general category

of special purpose language teaching"

It is obvious that the entire above definitions stem at different time by different authors, these definitions reveal that any ESP course must be based on learners' needs

Hutchinson and Waters (1987: 16) classify ESP into three types: English for the Science and Technology, English for Business and Economics and English for the Social Sciences Each of these subject areas is further divided into two branches: English for Academic Purposes and English for Occupational Purposes Nevertheless, Hutchinson and Waters do emphasize that there is no clear distinction between English for Accademic Purposes and English for Occupational Purposes because: “people can work and study simultaneously; it is likely that in many cases the language learnt for immediate use in a study environment will be used later when the students take up, or return to a job”

Basing on the classification by Dubley-Evans and John above, English for Electronics and Telecommunications could be seen as English for Science and Technology which further belongs to English for Professional Purposes branch Basing on Hutchinson and Water’s viewpoint, it cab belong to both two types: English for Accademic and for Occupational Purposes

2.3.3 Characteristics of ESP

Strevens (1988) defines an ESP course through its characteristics The absolute characteristics include: (1) designed to meet specified needs of the learner; (2) related

in content (that is in its themes and topics) to particular disciplines, occupations and activities; (3) centered on language appropriate to those activities in syntax, lexis, discourse, semantics and so on, and analysis of the discourse; and (4) in contrast with

“General English” Two variable characteristics defined by Strevens are: (1) it may be restricted as to the learning skills to be learned (for example reading only) and (2) it may not be taught according to any pre-ordained methodology

Dudbley-Evans (1997) proposes probably the most comprehensive definition of modern ESP, in which ESP is described with three absolute characteristics: (1) ESP is designed to meet specific needs of the learner; (2) ESP makes use of the underlying methodology and activities of the disciplines it serves; and (3) ESP is centered on the language (grammar, lexis, and register), skills, discourse and genres appropriate to these activities It is also pointed out in the definition that ESP has some variable characteristics as follows:

- ESP may be related to or designed for specific disciplines;

- ESP may use a different methodology from that of GEP;

- ESP is likely to be designed for adult learners, either at a tertiary level institution or in a professional work situation It could, however, be used for learners at secondary school level;

- ESP is generally designed for intermediate or advanced students Most ESP courses assume some basic knowledge of the language system, but it can be used with beginners

2.4 Overview of the textbook InfoTech- English for Computer users –The fourth

into small units This book is designed to revise basic grammar, and mainly focus on enhancing reading comprehension skills as well as translation skills through reading texts

At The People’s Police University of Technology and Logistics, this textbook

is used to teach junior IT students In order to meet the demand of the subject, some units in the textbook are selected

In scope of this thesis, the author would like to focus on analyzing cohesive devices in seven reading texts that selected from the textbook at PPUTL now, with the hope that our teachers and students may have a deeper insight into cohesion in English

IT reading texts and find out the most effective ways in teaching and learning English

IT reading texts

2.5 Summary

In this chapter, the theoretical foundation for my study has been discussed, i.e concept of discourse, distinction between spoken discourse and written discourse, cohesion and coherence, context, cohesive devices including grammatical cohesive devices and lexical cohesive devices I also attempted to look at the definition of ESP, classification as well as characteristics of ESP In brief, this chapter provides a general overview of theoretical background, which are basic foundation to build up the next chapters

Chapter 3: COHESIVE DEVICES IN ENGLISH IT READING TEXTS

A careful review of some concept related to discourse and cohesion, especially grammatical and lexical cohesion in chapter 2 is the basic foundation for the author to build up chapter 3 Chapter 3 mainly focus on exploring the frequency of cohesion in seven reading texts selected from the course book – Infotech by Santiago Remacha Esteras (2008) and this book is about intermediate level and it is used for third year students at PPUTL

The overview of grammatical cohesive devices in seven reading texts can be shown in the following table

Table 3.1 Grammatical and lexical cohesive devices in English IT reading texts

Types of grammatical cohesive devices Number of items Percentage

Exophoric reference is a kind of reference which refers to the situation Halliday (1985:312) confirmed that “Reference first evolved as an “exophoric” relation: that is, as a means of linking “outwards” to some person or object in the

environment” Moreover “Exophoric reference contributes to the creation of the text, in that it links the languages with the context of situation; but it does not contribute to the integration of one passage with another so that the two together form the parts of the same text

After a careful observation of 7 reading texts on Information and Technology, it

is a bit surprising when finding out that the number of exophoric reference is very small The reason for such a low frequency is probably because of characteristics

of technical English, which must be brief, succinct and concise Therefore, it requires no much sharing with the world outside the text Let’s look at some examples as follows:

The size of a bus, called bus width, determines how much data can be

transmitted, it can be compared to the number of lanes on a motorway- the larger the width, the more data can travel along the bus

interaction with the computer

The Symbian OS- used by some phone makers, including Nokia and Siemens

Linux- open-source software developed under the GNU General Public License

RIM-used on Blackberry communication devices Developed by Research In Motion (Text 6)

If you use online banking services, make sure they use digital certificate-files that

are like digital identification cards and that identify users and web servers

(Text 7)

As discussed in the previous chapter on “Reference”, endophora may be anaphora, which point to the preceding part of the text Or cataphora, to the following one According to Guido Telemans (2001-2002), cataphoric reference “is a classic device for engaging the reader’s attention” which often appears in the opening sentences of the text However, anaphoric reference requires readers to come back to the opening sentences of the text to get full comprehension These following examples are anaphoric and cataphoric reference:

Displays, often called monitors or screens, are the most-used output device on

a computer They provide instant feedback by showing you text and graphic

images as you work or play

A CRT monitor is similar to a traditional TV set It contains millions of tiny

red, green and blue phosphor dots that glow when struck by an electron beam that travels across the screen and create a visible image

Because of their slimmer design and lower energy consumption, LCD monitors

(also called flat panel or flat screen displays) are replacing CRTs

(Text 3)