How to identify and use cohesive devices in effective english reading comprehension and vocabulary studying a case study of esp fourth year students at ftu m a 60 14 10

CHAPTER 4: DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS 614.1 Data analysis...614.1.1 Problems in English reading and vocabulary studying ...614.1.2 Types of cohesive devices were frequently recognised by

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY – HOCHIMINH CITY

UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES & HUMANITIES

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LINGUISTICS & LITERATURE



HOW TO IDENTIFY AND USE COHESIVE DEVICES

IN EFFECTIVE ENGLISH READING COMPREHENSION AND VOCABULARY STUDYING

A CASE STUDY OF ESP FOURTH-YEAR STUDENTS AT FTU

Submitted to the Department of English Linguistics & Literature in partial

fulfillment of the Master’s degree in TESOL

By TRAN HUONG PHONG

Supervised by DANG THI HUONG, EdD.

Ho Chi Minh City, November 2011

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Dr Dang Thi Huong,for her very careful reading of my manuscript, her invaluable comments andwholehearted support and advice, without which my study could not have beencompleted

I am greatly indebted to all teachers of this TESOL course at HCMC University ofSocial Sciences and Humanities for their dedication and helpful instruction during thecourse

My special thanks go to Ms Le Hong Linh, Vice Dean of the Faculty of ESP, ForeignTrade University, other teachers and students of this Faculty, without whose kindassistance and cooperation, the thesis could not have been possible

I am also grateful to my friends and classmates in TESOL 08 for their help andencouragement

Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to thank my mother, my son and mysisters for their love, understanding and constant support to me at any time ofhardship in my life

CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY

I hereby certify my authorship of the thesis submitted today entitled:

HOW TO IDENTIFY AND USE COHESIVE DEVICES IN EFFECTIVE ENGLISH READING COMPREHENSION AND VOCABULARY STUDYING:

A CASE STUDY OF ESP FOURTH-YEAR STUDENTS AT FOREIGN TRADE UNIVERSITY.

in terms of the statement of Requirement for Theses in Master’s Programs issued bythe Higher Degree Committee

RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS

I hereby state that I, Tran Huong Phong, being the candidate for the degree of Master

of TESOl, accept the requirement of the University relating to the retention and use ofMaster’s Theses deposited in the Library

In terms of these conditions, I agree that the original of my thesis deposited in theLibrary should be accessible for the purposes of study and research, in accordancewith the normal conditions established by the Library for care, loan or reproduction oftheses

Ho Chi Minh City, November 2011

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

Acknowledgements i

Certificate of originality ii

Retention and use of the thesis iii

Table of contents iv

List of abbreviations v

List of tables vi

List of figures vii

Abstract viii

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1 1.1 Background to the study 1

1.1.1 The importance of EFL reading and vocabulary studying 1

1.1.2 Cohesion and coherence in relation to English reading comprehension and vocabulary learning 2

1.2 ESP programme at Foreign Trade University 3

1.2.1 Descriptions of ESP courses at FTU 3

1.2.2 ESP students’ problems in reading comprehension and vocabulary learning 8

1.3 The aims of the study 10

1.4 Significance of the study 11

1.5 The organization of the study 12

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 13 2.1 The concept of cohesion 13

2.2 Cohesion, coherence and textuality 15

2.3 Different types of cohesive devices 18

2.3.1 Grammatical cohesion 20

2.3.2 Lexical cohesion 24

2.4 Cohesive devices and the organization of texts 27

2.4.1 Text and discourse 28

2.4.2 How text is composed? 29

2.4.3 Discourse structure signaling system in texts 31

2.5 Cohesion and the reading process 33

2.5.1 Reading as a communicative event 33

2.5.2 Problems in reading comprehension 34

2.5.3 Text analysis and interpretation in reading comprehension 35

2.5.4 The role of cohesion in analysing texts 36

2.5.5 Developing reading skills and strategies 39

2.5.6 L2 reading curriculum for reading development 41

2.6 Cohesion in the reading-vocabulary relationship 43

2.6.1 Vocabulary demand for effective reading comprehension 43

2.6.2 The place of lexical cohesion in vocabulary learning 44

2.7 Cloze tests 45

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY 48 3.1 Research questions 48

3.2 Research design 48

3.2.1 Characteristics of the subjects 49

3.2.2 Instruments 53

3.3 Data collection procedure 59

CHAPTER 4: DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS 614.1 Data analysis 614.1.1 Problems in English reading and vocabulary studying 61

4.1.2 Types of cohesive devices were frequently recognised by students 804.1.3 The helpful dimension of cohesive devices in the studying of

reading comprehension and vocabulary 864.2 Findings 91

5.1 Conclusions 975.2 Recommendations 100

Appendix 1: Cloze test A, and test B and Answer keys

Appendix 2: Reading exercise 1, exercise 2 and Answer keys

Appendix 3: Criteria for identifying and selecting deleted items in test A

and test BAppendix 4: Classification of deleted items in test A and test B according to

the criteria described in Appendix 3Appendix 5: Number of students correctly answering on different items

Appendix 6: Questionnaires for students and teachers

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

USSH University of Social Sciences & HumanitiesTOEIC Test of English for international communicationTESOL Teaching English to speakers of other languages

LIST OF TABLES

Page

Table 4.1 Students’ ideas about the language knowledge needed for

Table 4.2 Students’ opinions about skills employed in studying reading

Table 4.3 Students’ opinions about factors causing problems in

Table 4.5 Students’ focus on different vocabulary knowledge 67Table 4.6 Vocabulary learning strategies used by students to explore

Table 4.7 Students’ ideas about methods to infer word meanings from

Table 4.8 Teachers’ ideas about the language knowledge needed for

Table 4.9 Teachers’ focus on the components of a reading curriculum

Table 4.10 Teachers’ opinions about skills employed in studying reading

Table 4.11 Cohesive devices employed to explore meaning relations 75Table 4.12 Teachers’ ideas about factors causing problems in studying

Table 4.14 Teachers’ opinions about methods of inferring word

Table 4.16 Comparison of different types of deletions in test A and test

Table 4.17a Descriptive statistics of students’ scores on test A and test B 88Table 4.17b Frequencies of students’ scores on test A and test B 88

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 4.1 Priority given to the four language skills by ESP students at

Figure 5.1 Decision chart for dealing with low-frequency words in

This case study is an attempt to investigate how English cohesive devices can helpESP students learn reading comprehension and vocabulary more effectively Cohesivedevices are identified in accordance with the classification proposed by Halliday andHasan (1976), and modified by Nuttall (1982) Research was made within descriptiveframework, and methods of analysis applied in the study were both qualitative andquantittive, due to the nature of data collected The data comprised structured surveyquestionnaires for ESP teachers and fourth year students at FTU, and two cloze testsand reading exercises

The findings of the study indicated that lack of knowledge about cohesion, coherenceand the use of cohesive devices in organizing a text might cause problems for learners

in studying reading comprehension and vocabulary The need to develop a largevocabulary is urgently required, since an inadequate vocabulary knowledge has beenconsidered as a potential difficulty for students in foreign language learning.Therefore, vocabulary studying should be one of the main components of a readingcourse It also suggested that if students were explicitly, systematically and carefullytaught these cohesive devices, their notions and terminology, they would find it mucheasier to recognize, and use them more effectively in their learning of English readingcomprehension and vocabulary

The study came up with some suggestions that make use of cohesive devices foreffectively improving reading comprehension ability and vocabulary knowledge forESP teachers and learners at FTU It is hoped that this study would be able to givelight to the application of a reading course especially suited for ESP programme

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

The thesis is designed to carry out a study of how fourth-year ESP students at ForeignTrade University (FTU) can take advantage of cohesive devices as a specificdiscourse feature to assist them in studying reading of English texts and enlargingtheir vocabulary knowledge effectively

1.1.1 The importance of EFL reading and vocabulary studying

This part presents the importance of reading skills and vocabulary knowledge inforeign language teaching and learning, and the role of cohesion and coherence asessential discourse features in the studying of English reading comprehension andvocabulary It also discusses about the major significance of reading comprehension,particularly for ESP students at FTU, as well as some most common problems thatteachers and learners often encounter in their teaching and learning of English forspecific purposes

The reading of the first language is crucial for most of us as an effective way to learn,

to obtain information, to broaden our knowledge, and to entertain The reading of aforeign language in academic contexts is of even greater significance that has beenrecognised and affirmed by several famous researchers (Grabe, 1991, 2009; Celce-Murcia & Olshtain, 2000; Carrell & Grabe, 2002) Reading is not only one of the fourbasic language skills required by any course of EFL teaching and learning, but alsothe greatest available means by which learners are exposed to English language

environment through printed materials Closely related to reading ability isvocabulary knowledge Just like grammar, vocabulary is the core of linguisticcompetence, as Read (2000, p 1) comments: “words are the basic building block oflanguage, the units of meaning from which larger structures such as sentences,paragraphs and whole texts are formed” The knowledge of vocabulary involvingknowing the meanings and many other aspects of words, thus is fundamental tocommunicative competence, and apparently to the interpretation and comprehension

1.1.2 Cohesion and coherence in relation to English reading comprehension

and vocabulary learning

Together with the rapid development of discourse analysis, cohesion and coherence,often viewed as specific features of texts, have received particular attention andbecome the focus of investigation for many researchers Halliday and Hasan (1976,p.26) demonstrate that cohesion and coherence are two essential qualities of texts that

“distinguishes text from non-text” According to these authors, the function ofcohesion is to semantically connect one part of the text to another parts which have

gone either before or after that part, thus lending “continuity” to the text (p 299).These connections are referred to as cohesive chains, based on which the readerwould be able to reconstruct all components of the text in its entirety forcomprehension (Halliday & Hasan, 1976, p 331) Therefore, it is reasonably assumedthat the knowledge about meaning relations between lexical items in a text couldprovide students with a useful tool for decoding that text, and help enlarge theknowledge of vocabulary as well.

Recognizing the role of cohesion in forming a text largely through the use ofgrammatical and lexical devices, Celce-Murcia & Olshtain (2000, p 126) state thatcohesion which “relies heavily on grammatical and lexical devices” requires areader’s language ability, so unless readers have enough knowledge of cohesivedevices and their function in text organization, they might miss important clues fromthe text, and as a result, have difficulties in the reading process Nunan (1999) alsosuggests that it is significant to have some understanding of “text forming devices”and the way they serve to create texture, and that explicit instructions of how to usethese devices in reading and writing can be beneficial to English learners (p 126)

1 2.1 Descriptions of ESP courses at FTU

The teaching of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) plays a very important role inhigher education, due to both a great number of Non-English majors at tertiary levelnowadays, and the great demand of the society, especially in the new context ofinternational integration and globalism Its aim and objectives are to meet the specificneeds of learners, to provide them with adequate knowledge of English required bytheir specialized job in the near future (Dang, 2004; Do & Cai, 2010) In one of herstudy of ELT at tertiary level and the role of English as a world language and

especially in Viet Nam, Dang says that “…even ESP requires a wide range ofactivities in FL, in which the four language skills ought to be developed” (Dang,

2004, p 91)

FTU is where students are trained to become international business people, and thisuniversity has a long established good reputation for teaching foreign languages,particularly foreign languages for specific purposes Apart from its primary focus onsuch main education programmes as international economics, business administration,international business, finance and banking, technology and some other related fields,FTU also specializes in business foreign languages including English, French,Russian, Japanese, and Chinese Each language is conducted by one faculty, with theexception of English which is taught in two faculties to meet the learners’ requirementfor this language There are the Faculty of Business English, and the Faculty ofEnglish for Specific Purposes which aims at teaching English language needed for theparticular professions educated at FTU

In the Faculty of ESP, the purpose of English teaching and learning is not only toteach the language itself but also necessarily to achieve non-linguistic aims Studentsare educated and trained to work with foreign partners and customers in manycontexts such as doing business, taking part in meetings, conducting negotiations,handling claims or even telephoning and using English in social contacts The mostimportant goal is to develop communication skills in English that students need tosucceed in their future career, among those skills, reading and writing (together withtranslation) are of paramount significance In order to achieve the goals of FTU,improving reading skills and enlarging business vocabulary size become an essentialrequirement for any ESP course in this University

For students majored in the specializations other than foreign languages, English is amain subject taught throughout the whole programme at the university Students have

to learn English for 630 periods (one period is equivalent to 45 minutes class-contact),divided into two phases: the initial phase involves teaching basic English during thefirst four semesters; the second phase focuses on teaching specialized Englishtogether with advancing students’ knowledge of general English during the next three

semesters Therefore, in the first as well as the second phase, the Market Leader, New Edition (D Cotton, D Falvey, & S Kent Pearson, Longman) is used as the textbook

and practice files These books are specifically designed for multi-level businessEnglish courses to provide students of business with basic knowledge of Englishstructures and necessary vocabulary The books also aim at developing the learners’ability to communicate in English, that help them pass the standard TOEIC testsrequired on the completion of the first phase with the result of at least 400 scores, and

of the second phase with at least 620 scores

In the second phase, besides the Market Leader, teaching materials in use consist of

the following:

1) A Handbook of Commercial Correspondence (by A Asley, 1995, Oxford); 2) Giáo trình Thư tín Thương mại (by Dr Nguyen Trong Dan); and

3) ESP I, ESP II compiled by ESP teachers to meet learners’ specific needs.

Commercial correspondence is a main subject taught in separate courses to providestudents with knowledge and skills to deal with various kinds of business letters in awide range of business scopes and situations At the same time, the purpose of ESP I

and ESP II courses, as stated in Course Introduction, is to familiarize students with

the basic concepts of different areas of business These two courses incorporateinstructions and various classroom activities including reading, discussion, mini-presentation and other practices Total teaching time for each of these ESP courses iswithin 45 periods which lasts for five weeks, i.e 9 periods per week, including a mid-term test and a final exam As far as continuous assessment is concerned, students’

performance is evaluated on the basis of their class attendance and active contribution(10%), the result of mid-term test (20%) and the final exam (70%).

Course syllabuses for ESP I and ESP II with a focus on FTU specialized subjects are

Class 1 Company structure International trade

Class 2 Management and cultural diversity Banking

Class 3 Human resources Finacing foreign trade

Class 4 Work motivation Accounting and financial

statements

Class 6 Pricing Mid-term test (60 minutes)

Class 7 Advertising Futures and derivatives

Class 8 Mid-term test (60 minutes) Merger and acquisition

Class 9 Arbitration Central banking

From the teaching materials used in the Faculty of ESP at FTU, we can get somegeneral ideas about the main course structure and teaching methods applied to theESP training programme In ESP I and ESP II, the lesson plan for class activitiescould be summarized as follows:

 Reading the text, and answering the questions.

 Doing reading comprehension tasks with a variety of exercises, such asfinding equivalence between words/expressions in the text with givenwords/expression; finding synonyms, or logical connections amongwords/group of words in the text; true/false

 Practising summarizing skill with a variety of exercise types

 Discussion: involving a variety of exercises done by pair work or groupwork

- Completing sentences;

- Putting words in their correct places;

- Matching up nouns/verbs to make common collocations;

- Matching words with their definitions/examples/explanations;

- True/false;

- Doing cloze exercises,

- Doing exercises concentrating on grammar,

- Assigning writing tasks

So, in both phases of the ESP programme at FTU, the use of the Market Leader aims

at providing students with general knowledge of English, developing all four languageskills but also with a focus on business topics In the second phase, ESP I and ESP II

are employed with an emphasis on training reading comprehension and writing skillswith various kinds of activities and exercises for the special purpose of FTU.

1.2.2 ESP students’ problems in English reading comprehension and

vocabulary learning

It is obvious that the role of reading comprehension and vocabulary knowledge forESP students at FTU is of great importance After graduation, FTU students aresupposed to be competent to communicate in English, particularly to deal withEnglish texts of all kinds, such as sale contracts, insurance policies, charter party, bills

of lading or letter of credit, and so on However in reality, it is not always true due toseveral reasons, both objective and subjective As a result of the Grammar-Translationmethod which still has a long lasting effect on the way of FL teaching and learning inVietnam, generally speaking “students read and understand the text very slowly, andthey are always passive in the reading clasroom” (Nguyen, 2000, p 2) Ascommented by Do & Cai (2010) on the quality of and challenges to the teaching ofESP presently, in many cases, although achieving quite high marks at university,students could not use English for their work Their English proficiencies are far fromsatisfying the requirement and they need to be retrained in foreign languages

Le (2006), an ESP teacher at FTU who studied lexical devices in the textbook

“International Business” previously taught at FTU, also said about students’ problems

in her research that it was easier for students to notice grammatical cohesive devices,but they neither took lexical cohesive devices into sufficient consideration, nor knewhow to use them properly when reading or writing The weakness in the analysis andinterpretation of English texts might partly result from learners’ poor knowledge ofvocabulary, and from their inadequate awareness of all kinds of English cohesivedevices and of their role in creating texture So “an awareness and understanding of

cohesive devices may turn out to be vital for students of English in improving theirreading comprehension and translation” (Le, 2006, p 2).

As a student of FTU, and long after that a EFL learner at the Department of EnglishLinguistics and Literature, USSH, National University of HCMC, I shared Le’s viewthat in general, the majority of students lack a good knowledge of English vocabulary,particularly the knowledge of English cohesive devices and discourse organization,thus affecting their ability to comprehend a text or to compose a coherent piece ofwriting It also came from my own working experience in this field that most texts intextbooks are simplified, but this is not the case with authentic texts in business areas,the complexity of which might give rise to problems for the readers, unless they haveinadequate knowledge of these cohesive devices and discourse organization to analysethe text, and to overcome their language deficiencies

So it was believed that if students were made well aware of such specific languagedevices right at university, they would be able to cope with various kinds of texts ontheir own for a better understanding in their future job Apart from readingcompetence, it is also necessary for ESP learners to build up a large vocabulary inrelation to international economics and foreign trade areas Furthermore they need tolearn how to bridge this lexical gap to read more effectively, especially throughmaking use of these cohesive devices Hence, there is a real need for making ESPstudents at FTU more conscious of these cohesive devices in the organisation of texts,thus enhancing their reading comprehension and vocabulary learning

I have started a course of teaching English reading and writing for my youngcolleagues in our company as a part of the training programme for some months I amgreatly interested in it, so I intend to spend more time on teaching after finishing thisTESOL course This experience also gives me a good reason for trying my best to

complete the study in the hope that it would be useful for my teaching in the very nearfuture.

The views about the effect of cohesive devices on reading comprehension arediffering among researchers It may result from the fact that there are still fewempirical studies of this language area Therefore, it is necessary to find out evidencefor an approach to teaching English cohesion to promote reading comprehension andvocabulary learning, especially at tertiary level On the basis of previous researchers’achievements in the field, and with the motivation for exploring how to make use ofcohesive devices from discourse-based approach to develop reading and vocabularylearning of ESP students at FTU, this study aims at:

 Finding out whether FTU students are able to identify and use specific cohesivedevices to promote the study of English reading comprehension and vocabulary;

 Looking for some effective ways to help the learners promote their learning ofEnglish reading comprehension and vocabulary through using these specificlanguage elements

In order to achieve the aims of the study, the research process is guided by threeresearch questions as follows:

1) What are the most common problems ESP students at FTU have in readingcomprehension and vocabulary learning, particularly the problems in relation tocohesive devices?

2) What kinds of cohesive devices are frequently recognised by the students whilereading an English text?

3) To what extent can these cohesive devices help students with their effectivestudying of English reading comprehension and vocabulary?

The study aimed at examining English cohesive devices and their effect on thestudying of reading comprehension and vocabulary from both theoretical and practicalaspects Therefore, it is considered important to ESP students at FTU The findings ofthe study may suggest the following contributions:

- The study provides empirical evidence to support the idea that the teaching ofcohesive devices might help learners develop the studying of English readingcomprehension and vocabulary knowledge in the process of active interactionbetween the students and the text At least, it could make students aware of allkinds of cohesive devices and their functions in organizing a text, thus gives rise

to a better analysis and understanding of the text

- The study also has some implications for reading pedagogy and further research

on reading It is suggested that different kinds of reading activities and strategies

be further explored to develop students’ reading comprehension ability Anumber of exercises in relation to English cohesion could be fully employed todraw students’ attention to specific features of a text, to train them in dealingefficiently with new vocabulary and complicated texts to improve their Englishreading competence and vocabulary knowledge

- This research also has some practical value in training students for being capable

of studying on their own, i.e independent learning of English readingcomprehension and vocabulary which is badly needed for their coming job It ishoped that being well provided with skills and strategies to deal with unfamiliar

words and challenging texts, students would be able to cope with authentic texts

in terms of length, complexity, a variety of text types and contents, andespecially to acquire a large vocabulary size spared for their future work

The research includes five chapters Chapter One is an introduction presenting thebackground to the study, rationale for the study, research questions, the aims of thestudy as well as its significance, and the organization of the study

Chapter Two provides a review of relevant literature which deals with the concept ofcohesion and coherence, different types of cohesion and how cohesive devices cancontribute to the organization of a text This chapter also presents the need for readingcomprehension, the relationship between reading ability and vocabulary acquisition,the use of cohesive devices including discourse markers, text-structuring patterns asparticular kinds of cohesion above sentence level, and their significance in theinterpretation and comprehension of texts

Chapter Three focuses on the methodology employed in the study which consists ofresearch questions, research design, the characteristics of the subjects, and methods ofcollecting data This chapter forms the basis for data analysis and discussion of thefindings in the next chapter, Chapter Four

Chapter Five provides a conclusion of the study and suggests implications for theteaching and studying of reading comprehension, and enlarging vocabulary by way ofmaking students aware of cohesive devices and its use in text organization

This chapter has just presented the Introduction, next chapter – chapter Twointroduces the theoretical framework for the study

CHAPTER 2

LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter presents an overview of the relevant literature concerning the concept ofcohesion; cohesion, coherence and textuality; different types of cohesive devices;cohesive devices and the organization of texts; cohesion and the reading process; andthe place of cohesion in studying reading comprehension and vocabulary

The research on English cohesion conducted by Halliday and Hasan (1976) isconsidered the most influential theory of English cohesion as commented by Brown

& Yule (1983) “it is by far the most comprehensive treatment of the subject and hasbecome the standard text in this area” (p 190) Cohesion theory investigates specifickinds of meaning relations that are important to link elements of a text at the abovesentence level to create texture Halliday and Hasan’s model of English cohesionhence serves as theoretical framework for the analysis of cohesion as text-formingdevices in this study Besides, the views of other authors like Nuttall (1982), Celce-Murcia and Olshtain (2000), McCarthy (1991), and Grabe (1991, 2009) on cohesionand the aspects relating to reading comprehension and vocabulary pedagogy are alsotaken into consideration to provide the conceptual basis for the study

Different authors have different ways to describe the notion of cohesion Halliday andHasan (1976, pp 4-12) say that “cohesion is a relational concept”, it refers to a set ofmeaning relations between one item and some other elements in a text that providesthe text with “texture” According to Halliday& Hasan (1976), a text is said to becohesive “where the interpretation of any item in the discourse requires making

reference to some other item” (p 11) Throughout their book, Halliday and Hasan(1976) repeatedly affirm that cohesive relation is not the kind of structural relationswithin a sentence, it is set up to account for meaning relations across sentences thatare fundamental to the interpretation of a text, and that cohesive relations can beestablished by means of using both the grammar and lexical choice (p 5) Thus,cohesion has nothing to do with the meaning a text may have, it is about the way atext is organized as “a semantic edifice” (Halliday & Hasan, 1976, p 26) By its role

in creating text, cohesion is considered “part of the text-forming component in thelinguistic system”, or the language resources that can be used for forming semanticrelationships between different elements of a text to create texture (Halliday & Hasan,

1976, p 27) Halliday and Hasan continue to point out one more important aspect ofcohesion, that “the continuity” or cohesive links can supply the reader with the cluesavailable in a text to find the missing information necessary for the interpretation ofthat text (p 299)

In the word of Beaugrande and Dressler (1981), cohesion is said to be related to “theways in which the components of the surface text (i.e the actual words we hear orsee) are mutually connected within a sequence” (p 3) These authors also assert theimportance of cohesion in providing a major source for signaling relationships amongsurface elements of a text

The concept of cohesion proposed by Carter’s et al (1997) has much in common withother researchers Following Halliday and Hasan (1976), these authors definecohesion as what makes the difference between a sequence of unconnected sentenceswith a passage as text by linking items of related meaning across sentences in thepassage In their view, cohesion refers to the language patterns existing within a textthat help organize larger units of the text such as paragraphs In particular, cohesioncan be achieved by the means of grammar and vocabulary: lexical cohesion or therelationship between words is the way vocabulary links together different parts of a

text, while grammatical cohesion is the way grammar binds text together (Carter’s etal., 1997, pp 171, 188, 322).

Based on the cohesive ties identified by Halliday and Hasan (1976), Celce-Murciaand Olshtain (2000) explain the notion of cohesion as: “The use of various cohesiveties to explicitly link together all the propositions in a text results in cohesion of thattext” (p 7) According to these authors, cohesion is the textual feature that provides

“surface evidence for the text’s unity and connectedness”, and this text- formingquality of cohesion is most obviously seen in the cohesive ties which are achieved byusing grammatical and lexical means (Celce-Murcia & Olshtain, 2000, p 126)

Similarly, Grabe (2009) also describes cohesion as “surface-level signals that reflectthe discourse organization of the text and the intended purpose of the writer” (p 244)

In his view, though cohesion is not coherence, it has an important role in guiding thereader to look for the meaning implied in texts by the writer He further remarks thatthe term ‘cohesive harmony’ suggested by Halliday and Hasan (1989) is a clearerconcept of cohesion which provides a helpful framework for the use of lexicalrelations as a major source of clues to analyse and discover discourse-structure(Grabe, 2009, p 245)

From the concept of cohesion explained by various authors as above mentioned,cohesion can be basically described as one of the language resources that contributes

to the formation of a text by establishing meaning relationships between parts of thetext Halliday and Hasan (1976) believe that a text has texture, i.e a coherent

“passage of discourse” which involves two kinds of semantic relationships incombination: register and cohesion (p 26) While affirming the significant role ofcohesion in organizing texts, these authors yet recognize that cohesion alone is not

adequate for creating a text (Halliday & Hasan, 1976, p 298) In her later work,Hasan (1984) makes further clear about the position of cohesion and coherence in atext by stating that cohesion forms the basis for building text coherence, and thoughnecessary, cohesion is “not sufficient by itself” (p 94) With this statement, Hasantends to mean that formal cohesion is only part of coherence, and textual coherencerequires more than cohesion to occur, because in the light of schema theory,coherence is regarded as being potentially attributable to the reader’s explanation of atext (cited in Celce-Murcia & Olshtain, 2000).

According to Nuttall (1982), cohesion and coherence can be thought of as ones of thefeatures that make readers easy or difficult to follow a text and grasp the writer’sideas during the reading process; while coherence is one of “the quality of theunderlying thoughts and the way they are organized into a message”, cohesion is thelinguistic devices indicating the relationships between various elements in a text thatare employed to achieve the coherence of that text (p 16) Supporting the view thatcoherence is based on the reader’s evaluation of a text, Hoey (1991, p 12) argues thatwhile cohesion is seen as a feature of the text thus is “objective” and can be able to berecognized automatically, coherence is only evaluated on the basis of a reader’s point

of view, thus is “subjective” and may be interpreted differently from reader to reader.Hoey further points out the relationship between these two elements that cohesiondoes not necessarily result in coherence, since it requires more than the existence ofcohesive ties to make a reader find a text coherent

Celce-Murcia and Olshtain (2000, pp 125-127) are also those researchers who studythe issue of cohesion, coherence and their relationship in the light of functionalgrammar and schema-theoretical approach In their view, coherence and cohesion aretwo major discourse features that help organize the ideas and propositions of a text.But they further maintain that coherence and cohesion can not be equated with eachother: “the coherence of a text is central, and cohesion is a linguistic consequence of

coherence” (p 125) The reason is that a well-written text may need both cohesionand coherence to make sense, but cohesion is not the only one factor that ensures thecoherence of a text Furthermore, a text may perfectly be coherent without overtcohesive links Celce-Murcia and Olshtain emphasize the importance of cohesion andcoherence for the studying of reading comprehension as follows:

A well-written text exhibits two important features: it has coherence, and it

has cohesion These inherent features of a well-written text facilitate the

interpretation of the text during the reading process While creating the text,

the writer invests time and effort to make the text coherent and cohesive; the

effective reader takes advantage of these features

(Celce-Murcia & Olshtain, 2000, p.125)

It should be noted that Halliday and Hasan’s (1976) theory of cohesion and itssignificance as a means to measure the coherence of a text has been criticallychallenged by many researchers as Carrell (1982, 1984), Carrell & Eisterhold (1983),Freebody & Anderson (1981), Brown and Yule (1983), and Alderson (2000)

Both theoretical and empirical researches on schema theory lay emphasis on an activerole of the reader during the interactive process between the text and the reader’sbackground knowledge for reading comprehension (Hagerup & Neilson, 1977; KarenFeathers, 1981; Morgan & Sellner, 1980; Steffensen, 1981) From the perspective ofschema theory, Carrell (1982) argues against the concept of cohesion suggested byHalliday and Hasan (1976) that:

Cohesion is not the cause of coherence; if anything, it’s the effect of

coherence A coherent text will likely be cohesive, not of necessity but as a

result of that coherence Bonding an incoherent text together won’t make it

coherent, only cohesive

(Carrell, 1982, p 486)

Despite her sharp criticism of Halliday and Hasan’s (1976) cohesion theory, Carrellfurther says that she is not claiming the unimportance of studying and teachingcohesion to students Her argument is just a reminder to those who think cohesion asthe answer to all problems with foreign language reading and writing Researchershave differing viewpoints on Halliday and Hasan’s theory of cohesion, thus arousingcontroversy about the role of cohesion and its advantage in the analysis of texts Yet,many of them (Nunan, 1993, 1999; McCarthy, 1991; Lubelska, 1991; Nuttall, 1982;Celce-Murcia & Olshtain, 2000) confirm the belief that cohesive devices play asignificant role in the interpreting and understanding of a text, and that there should

be further empirical studies of how cohesive devices (referential and lexical) could bebetter employed to help students improve their reading comprehension

Halliday and Hasan (1976, pp 3-4) use the term ‘tie’ to indicate a single relation

between “a pair of cohesively related items” They classify different categories ofcohesive ties into two major classes: grammatical and lexical Grammatical cohesiveties consist of reference, substitution and ellipsis, conjunction; and lexical cohesiveties comprise two main categories: (1) reiteration basically including four subsets ofrepetition, synonym or near synonym, superordinate and general words, and (2)

collocation (p 6) They call lexical cohesion as ‘phoric’ cohesion that is established

through the language resources as follows:

Linguistic level at which ‘phoric’ relation is established Type of cohesion

Semantic

GrammaticalLexicogrammatical

Lexical

ReferenceSubstitution and ellipsisLexical cohesion(Halliday and Hasan, 1976, p 318)

Nevertheless, Halliday and Hasan further remark that the demarcation between thesetwo types of cohesion is by no means distinct, cohesion is simply a matter ofreference in nature The taxonomy of cohesive ties proposed by Halliday and Hasan isconsidered the most comprehensive one based on which other researchers may givesome modifications or supplements to their own categorization.

Based on Halliday and Hasan’s (1976) classification of cohesion, Nuttall (1982,pp.89, 95-98) suggests such main kinds of cohesive devices as: reference andsubstitution, elliptical expressions, lexical cohesion, and discourse markers whichlargely falls into the conjunctive category suggested by Halliday and Hasan Thedifference between Halliday and Hasan’s and Nuttall’s ideas of cohesion is that whileHalliday and Hasan only emphasize the interrelationships across sentences, Nuttallsays cohesive relations can occur both between sentences and within a sentence, and

“can cause similar problems for the reader in either case” (p 89), he therefore aims todeal with both cases Looking at the way of using cohesive relationships differently toform a passage, Nunan (1999, p 260) otherwise classifies them into three kinds:logical, referential and lexical relationships

From discourse-based approach, Grabe (2009) calls cohesive devices as surface-levelsignals, i.e the signaling mechanisms that provide contextual clues to how discourse

is organized, and how the reader can use these devices in interpreting discourse With

a slight modification, he divides these signals into: repetition, synonymy, hyponymy,paraphrase, anaphora, transition markers, substitution, ellipsis, parallelism, and otherlexical relations which function as connectives between parts of the text (Grabe, 2009,

pp 244-245) In essence, the system of discourse-structure signaling suggested byGrabe is very much similar to Halliday and Hasan’s (1976) grammatical and lexicalcohesive ties, except for parallelism Grabe does not explain what he means by

“parallelism”, but Lautamatti (1987) describes it as the way “in which topics aresemantically identical”, i.e the way sentence topics are related to each other and

developed “through the text to build meaning progressively”, thus bringing aboutcohesive discourse (cited in Nattinger & DeCarrico, 1992, p 161) Other authors likeMcCarthy (1991, p 29) mentions ‘syntactic paralellism” that signals likely relations

in texts as the use of the same grammatical structure in two or more different clauses

to highlight a relation of comparison or contrast, hence it falls outside our concernhere in the study We shall briefly look into the description of these devices in thenext part

2.3.1 Grammatical cohesion

Reference, in the view of Halliday and Hasan (1976), is a particular type of cohesion

which expresses no meaning in its own right but refers to something else for itsinterpretation (p 31) So, reference is a meaning relation, in other word, a relation onthe semantic level that involves the ability to retrieve meanings from the environment(Halliday & Hasan, 1976, p 89) Reference items including pronominals,demonstratives and definite articles, and comparatives indicate that the information

needed may be found either in the context of situation (called as exophora, i.e outside the text), or in other items existing within the text (called as endophora) Halliday and

Hasan’s (1976, p 37) discussion focuses more on endophoric reference, for the reasonthat this kind of reference can produce cohesive effect to link parts of the text When

reference is made to the items lying in the preceding text, it is called anaphora, and when a referential item lies in the following text, it is called cataphora.

Following Halliday and Hasan (1976), Hoey (1991, p 5) emphasizes that referenceitems are not markers of cohesion but they themselves are semantic relations thatproduce cohesive effect, through which the meaning of some items can be found inthe context of surrounding areas The following extract from MacKenzie (1997)exhibits anaphoric relations that tie sentences together The first part of the referentialrelationship is underlined, the second part is in italic and bold:

[1] Advertising informs consumers about the existence and benefits of

products and services, and attempts to persuade them to buy them The best

form of advertising is probably word-of-mouth advertising, which occurswhen people tell their friends about the benefits of products or services thatthey have purchased Yet virtually no providers of goods or services rely

on this alone, but use paid advertising instead.

(Adapted from MacKenzie, 1997, p 71)

In the first sentence, the word “consumers” and “products and services” are given as

new information Two pronouns them within the same sentence are anaphoric references to “consumers”, “products and services” respectively But the pronoun this

in the third sentence refers to the known information in the previous sentence: the bestform of advertising - “word-of-mouth”, it is the referential relation across sentences

Substitution and ellipsis, according to Halliday and Hasan (1976, pp 88-89), are

basically viewed as the same mechanism, ellipsis is simply a kind of substitution, a

“substitution by zero” though the mechanism of realization of ellipsis is rathercomplicated and different from that of substitution Unlike reference which is arelation between meanings, substitution and ellipsis are the relations betweengrammar and vocabulary items, i.e the relations on the lexicogrammatical level.Substitution occurs when, instead of repetition, one particular item is replaced byanother item which has similar structural function, whileas in the case of ellipsis thatparticular item is left out, nevertheless it can still be understood when there is somestructural presupposition existing elsewhere in the text (Halliday & Hasan, 1976, pp

whole clause: ‘but providers of goods or services use paid advertising instead’, or better: ‘but they use paid advertising instead’ in the case the referential pronoun ‘they’

is used to replace the noun phrase ‘providers of goods or services’, and the word

‘instead’ is a good example of ellipsis at the noun phrase meaning level: “instead of word-of-mouth advertising” We can see that all these cohesive ties do not only

connect the words and ideas in this short paragraph thus resulting in its cohesion as atext, but make it sound much more natural and stylistic as well

Conjunction, as named by Halliday and Hasan (1976, pp 226-229), is another specific

kind of cohesive relationships: it is not a structural relation but a semantic one Yetconjunctive relation is unlike the meaning relation of reference which is rather a guide

to searching the context for interpreting some other elements According to Hallidayand Hasan, the cohesive power of conjunctive devices does not lie in themselves, butindirectly derives from their underlying specific meanings which “presuppose thepresence of other components in the discourse” (p 226)

A conjunctive item creates cohesion between parts (clauses or sentences) of a textthrough the specific function it performs to shows that what is to follow will occurlogically in succession to what has gone before Therefore, conjunctive devicesundoubtedly contribute to text organization in terms of meaning

There are, in general, four main types of conjunction under the headings: Additive Adversative, Causal and Temporal which can be further divided into various sub-

classes, though, there is a somewhat overlap between them Example [1] above also

displays such conjunctive items as ‘ye’t, ‘bu’t, which express an adversative

proposition to the common expectation of “word-of-mouth” as the best form ofadvertising in the preceding sentence

Most typically conjunctive relations classified by Halliday and Hasan’s (1976, p 243) are listed below

242-Additive and, and also, or, or else, further more, in addition, besides,

alternatively, thus, by the way, for instance, in other words, similarly,

on the other hand.

Adversative yet, though, however, nevertheless, but, in fact, actually, on the other

hand, at the same time, rather, instead, on the contrary, anyhow, at any rate, however it is.

Causal so, therefore, consequently, as a result, because of this, for this

reason, on account of this, for this purpose, to this end, arising out of this, in that case, in such an event, otherwise, under the circumstances, in this respect, with reference to.

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

first…then, at first, at once, soon, next time, on other occasion, meanwhile, until then, at this moment, at this point, up to now, to sum

up, in short, briefly.

Conjunction can also be otherwise termed as the discourse markers by Nuttall (1982)who treats them largely from the reader’s point of view Following Halliday andHasan (1976), Nuttall says that in addition to cohesive devices such as reference,substitution, ellipsis and lexical relations, the writer will employ explicit discourse

markers such as thus, and, however, although …to express the kinds of relationship

between different components he or she has in mind in creating a text Thus, theeffective reader might makes use of these devices to infer the meaning of difficultsentences The categorization of discourse markers suggested by Nuttall (1982) isslightly different from that of Halliday and Hasan’s (1976) conjunction as above-mentioned Nuttall’s discourse markers mainly consist of three types: (1) thediscourse markers signaling the sequence of time or events occurred; (2) those

signaling the text organization; and (3) those signaling the writer’s viewpoint, i.e hisway of text forming (pp 95-98) These discourse markers are also sub-classifiedaccording to the functions they provide in building up a text, so they will be discussed

in more detail for the purpose of recognition and interpretation in the next section

2.3.2 Lexical cohesion

In the view of Halliday and Hasan (1976, pp 281-283), lexical cohesion can bethought of as text-forming feature of vocabulary Lexical cohesion often refers to anyvocabulary item that is repeated with an accompanying reference item In other word,the repetition of a word normally occurs together with an anaphoric reference item,both having the same referent presupposed in text But lexical cohesion can alsoresults from the co-existence of purely lexical items which do not have the samereferent Accordingly, Halliday and Hasan identify two major types of lexicalcohesion: reiteration and collocation

Reiteration consists of the repetition of a lexical item itself, or the use of synonym,

near synonym or superordinate and general words Halliday and Hasan point out thatgeneral words may include a small set of nouns “having generalized reference withinthe major noun classes” such as: human/non-human/inanimate nouns (people, person,creature, thing, object, business, matter…); nouns of location, and nouns of facts(question, idea ) which may possibly be considered as superodinate members from alexical point of view (Halliday & Hasan, p 274)

There is an increasing awareness of the importance of lexis in organising text amonglinguists as acknowledged by McCarthy (1990) He claims that vocabulary createsregular patterns in extended texts One type of patternings may be called lexicalcohesion in which lexical variations as exact repetition, synonym or superodinate areused to refer to specific items in a text for meaning negotiation Lexical cohesion doesnot only concern the relationships between pairs of words but also involves relations

among several words, resulting in lexical chains; such chains show how topics areintroduced, developed or dealt with in discourse (McCarthy, 1990, pp 53-55).

Another important reseacher in lexical devices is Hoey (1991) This author considerslexical cohesion as the most important and the most interesting form of all cohesivecategories, which often accounts for almost 40 percent of cohesive ties in texts Heargues for the role of lexical cohesion as the only type of cohesion that forms variousrelationships in a text, thus represents the major means of creating texture In otherwords, he says: “the study of the greater part of cohesion is the study of lexis, and thestudy of cohesion in text is to a considerable degree the study of patterns of lexis intext” (Hoey, 1991, p 10)

We shall consider the following examples adapted from MacKenzie (1997) whichshow a combined system of lexical ties and reference Such lexical relations are verycommonly found in English texts (again, the first part of the referential relationship isunderlined, the second is in italic and bold):

[2] In most markets there is a definite market leader: the firm with the largest

market share This is often the first company to have entered the field, or at least the first to have succeeded in it The market leader is frequently able

to lead other firms…

[3] The good society accepts the basic market system and its managers, but

there are some things the market system does not do either well or badly In

the good society, these are the responsibility of the state.

(Adapted from MacKenzie, 1997, p 107, 129)

In example [2], the first sentence introduces ‘a market leader’ as new informationwith an indefinite article Then the definite article together with two synonyms ‘the

firm’, ‘the first company’, and an elipptical item ‘the first’ – instead of a full noun

compound ‘the first firm/or company’, are used to anaphorically refer to the given

information ‘a market leader’ Next, the repetition of an exact word makes the fourthreference to the same agent to create a lexical chain along this short passage, thusmaking it cohesive

In example [3], a general noun ‘things’ is used in the first part of the referential

relation, and is cataphorically referred to ‘the responsibility’ in the next sentence for

its interpretation; at the same time, ‘the good society’ is exactly repeated to link thesetwo sentence together So, a synonym or a general word accompanied by the denifite

article the can function cohesively like an anaphoric/cataphoric reference item.

Halliday and Hasan (1976, p 331) also refer to the term ‘the chain of cohesion’ which

is formed by both mediated or remote ties existing in a text These ties have the same

referent, or are related to each other in some way through the use of such specificlexical items as discussed above Cohesive chains link together different parts of atext, and the text itself into a unified entity Such cohesive chains can also serve assignals to the reader in their interpretation of a text, since cohesive relations help build

up that text

Collocation, a prominent feature of all language, is the second type of lexical

cohesion and also considered as the most problematic category Collocation has beenviewed differently by researchers, but the most common idea is that there areregularly organised patterns in a language of how words co-occur with each other, and

this notion refers to the term collocation Thus, collocation has been typically defined

as the occurrence of words in a predictable way, or strings of specific words occurring with a mutual expectancy greater than chance In other word, collocationmeans a pairs or group of words which most likely co-occur in natural texts withgreater than random frequency (see McCarthy, 1990; Nattinger & DeCarrico, 1992;

co-Lewis, 1997; Schmitt, 2000; McCarthy & O’Dell, 2005) According to Schmitt(2000), it is generally agreed that there are two main kinds of collocations:grammatical collocation and lexical collocation Grammatical collocations are wordsthat “fit together” grammatically on the open-choice principle as stated by Sinclair(1991, p 110; cited in Schmitt, 2000, p 76) Lexical collocation is the combination oftwo words that commonly match up with each other to make sense Besides singleword collocation, Schmitt confirms that there exist strings of words, lexical phrases orlexical patterning as well, i.e any collocational relationship that is determined notwithin two words but several words away (p 78).

Halliday and Hasan (1976, pp 284-286) nevertheless give delimitation to the term

‘lexical collocation’, considering it as one of the means of creating cohesiverelationships in a text In their view, the concept of collocation refers to a pair or pairs

of words, or lexical chains which co-occur in neighbouring paragraphs/sentences,since they tend to share similar lexical environment Such pairs of words or lexicalpatterns (existing both within a sentence or between sentences without anygrammatical constraint) can build up systematic semantic relationship, thus resulting

in a cohesive force among different parts of the text We say these words occur incollocation or collocate with one another Following Halliday and Hasan (1976),McCarthy (1990, p 65) also considers collocational cohesion to mean exactly certainsemantic relations between lexical items which co-occur in similar settings

Collocation, resulting in the cohesive effect, plays a role in creating textuality, the

textual feature that makes a text different from an arbitrary set of unrelated sentences

So far we have discussed cohesion and coherence as two fundamental properties thatmake a text a text, and the importance of cohesive devices in building up texture.Clearly, a text needs more than individual grammatical sentences to make sense, at

the same time it needs more than cohesion to make it coherent, since the coherence of

a text is potentially attributable to the reader’s perspective and self explanation ofwhat is created by the writer But how texts work above the level of sentence?Because text structure awareness which includes recognizing, and attending to anumber of discourse signalling systems has been shown to be a powerful means forimproving reading comprehension and retrieving information (see Grabe, 2009, p.212), now we shall look at how a text is generally organised, and also examine theway cohesive devices help with text organization

2.4.1 Text and discourse

We can see that the term text and discourse may be used interchangeably to refer to

language at the above sentence level (McCarthy, 2001; Lewis, 1993), but in fact there

is a distinction between these two terms Beaugrande and Dressler (1981) view a text

as an event of communication which must maintain seven standards to guarantee itstextuality These standards are: cohesion, coherence, intentionality, acceptability,informativity, situationality and intertextuality, among which the first two standards –cohesion and coherence, are considered as “text-centred notions” which characterizethe processing of the text material (Beaugrande & Dressler, 1981, p 6)

Following Widdowson (1978), Nuttall (1982, p.16) says that discourse has

“coherence while the text has cohesion”; while text concerns the language means used

to communicate a message to the reader, discourse is the way of organising themeanings underlying the conveyed message Carter et al (1997, p 166) claim that the

word text originally means “something woven” by the language “material”, i.e.

different aspects of language which are employed by speakers or writers in order to

give a text its quality of texture Texture is said to result from various relationships

between parts of the text, while discourse focuses on the way the text is organised interms of meanings Also according to McCarthy (2001), texts are often considered as