Cognitive Apprenticeship Approach to Teaching Cohesion in Writing

Research in Language, 2016

This study investigated the use of lexical elements of cohesion in the essay writing of students of English as a Second Language. Two hundred essays of final year students of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka were collated and analyzed by the researchers in order to identify the lexical elements used to achieve cohesion in writing. The result showed that students used three lexical elements as postulated by Gutwinski in varying degrees in their writings. These include: repetition, synonyms, and lexical sets (collocations). Students tended to use more of repetitions and made minimal use of synonyms and lexical sets to achieve cohesion in writing. This has led to poorly written essays by students. It also implies that lexical cohesion elements should be taught in schools to enable students use them appropriately in writing.

Nordic Journal of African Studies, 2006

This paper examines the extent to which ESL (English as a Second Language learners) have been able to achieve cohesion in their written texts by examining the cohesive devices used by the students during their continuous writing sessions at school. The data used were drawn from seventy final year students of Ooni Girls High School in Osun State Nigeria. The elicitation technique was an essay writing exercise in which the students were given two essay questions which would enable them to demonstrate their knowledge of cohesive devices in English. An analysis of the data revealed that the students lacked competence in their use of cohesive devices despite the fact that they had been exposed to intensive teaching of English for six years in the secondary school.

The present study offers a corpus-based analysis of two written corpora, i.e. a native speaker corpus (part of the Louvain Corpus of English Essays) and a non-native speaker corpus, which is composed of several essays written by Hong Kong first year university students. It aims to find out the differences in the use of connectors. Altogether twentyfive connectors used in the two corpora have been examined, with the frequency of their usage being calculated. The reasons that have led to the variations in using these connectors are further discussed. This corpus-based study on connectors would have some pedagogic implications on writing teaching. As connectors have played a significant role in both sentence construction and coherence, based on our analysis, we hope that they should be taught explicitly, practiced extensively, and illustrated with learning materials given to students, so as to avoid the overuse and misuse in writing.

In ESL context, learners may have less attention to the use of conjunctions. In fact, the use of conjunctions in L2 learners' writings is crucial since it is one type of cohesive devices. This paper aims to find the cohesive devices of conjunctions used by the learners. Through analyzing eight learners' essays, the writer found 37 forms and 12 types of conjunctions in the learners' essays. The most significant form of conjunctions was'and', whereas the most significant types of conjunction was'addition'. Moreover, the writer also found some inappropriate use of conjunctions, which are grouped into five, namely, unclassified, wrong mechanism, L1 interference, wrong forms of conjunctions, and grammatical error.

Abstract In EFL context, writing is the most difficult skill to master. Saudi students of English, find it very difficult to construct a coherent written essay in English. The difficulties lie not only in the poor organization, the inappropriate thesis statement, the inadequacy of providing examples and details, the limited vocabulary but also the misuse of cohesive devices. Cohesion and coherence are considered as the two important features of good writing. So much attention should be paid to generating and organizing ideas in general and to the role of cohesive devices in particular. This study will make an important contribution to the basic issue in educational research, as it will provide a description of cohesive devices used in descriptive compositions written by Saudi University Students majoring in English. It is expected that the study might help to determine the relation between the use of cohesive devices and the quality of writing. It also specifies the common characteristics that the students share with regard to the choice and use of cohesive devices. An understanding of students' use of cohesive devices can help pave the way for preparation of writing course materials and upgrading of teaching and learning process to best suit the learners of English in Saudi Arabia. The technique for eliciting information employed was an achievement test. A sample of 50 Saudi female students was asked to write essays in English that were assessed by the researcher. The students were all majoring in English in the third year. Halliday and Hassan's (1976) model was selected as the most comprehensive framework for the analysis of the cohesive features in the student's writing. Analysis of the data consisted of investigating the relationship of these devices with scores of writing. The study concluded by bringing together the key findings, recommendations for EFL teachers and suggested areas for further research. Keywords: Cohesive Devices, Cohesion and Quality Writing, Reference, Substitution, Ellipses, Conjunction, Lexical cohesion

ETERNAL (English, Teaching, Learning, and Research Journal), 2018

I t is important to keep the cohesion and coherence when writing; this is where the use of cohesive devices starts to be taken into account. This study sought the types of cohesive devices used by undergraduate students in their writing. The qualitative discourse analysis was used as the design of this research. The data were collected from seven undergraduate students as the respondents who were in the 6th semester at a private university in Aceh. These respondents were asked to write a descriptive text approximately 200 words in length and they were given forty-five minutes to finish their writing. The result unveiled that the type of cohesion devices which was majorly used was addition, as there are 94% of the additive device usage. Then, 75% refers to the use of cohesive devices as comparison, 56% as consequential, and 40% as temporal device. In can be concluded that the students use more addition in writing. As a suggestion, it is essential to shed light on their ability to employ cohesive devices more on other types in balance as it is necessary in contrasting, comparing, sequencing, giving exception, and illustrating.

TESL Canada Journal

Coherence is central to effective writing. However, it is often regarded as a fuzzy and elusive concept that is difficult to teach and difficult to learn. This article attempts to identify the text-based and reader-based features that are crucial to the creation of coherence and describes a number of classroom tasks that can be exploited to enhance ESL students' awareness of coherence-creating mechanisms in writing.

Forum, 2002

2021

The present research aimed at investigating kinds of cohesive devices and the problems of using those cohesive devices in writing English paragraphs. 10 undergraduate English students from an institute in Curup, Bengkulu, Indonesia were involved as the participants purposively. Document analysis was conducted towards students’ written paragraphs to garner the data about kinds of cohesive devices, and they were then interviewed to reveal information with respect to their problems of using cohesive devices. The data were analyzed using an interactive model. The present research revealed that the students had used some kinds of cohesive devices such as references in the form of personal pronoun and demonstrative reference. They used conjunctions in the form of additive, adversative, and clausal conjunctions. They used reiteration in the form of making repetitions of the same words. This condition indicated that they had moderately been able to use general cohesive devices. However, the...

Tidsskriftet Antropologi, 1993

Når en rulle celloluid med kemiske mønstre og et magnetisk bånd med polariserede atomer saettes i en filmprojektor, så fremstår der på laerredet og i rummet et spil af former, farver, kontraster og lyde, som baerer en vis lighed med den fysiske verden. Disse sensoriske indtryk registreres af vores øjne og ører, og stimulerer nerveimpulser til hjernen. Impulserne ordnes til mønstre, som behaeftes med mening ved at de sammenhol des med kulturelt bestemte meningskoder, som vi hver isaer råder over og genkender i de nye informationer. Sådan kunne man kort resumere perceptionsprocessen hos en bio grafgaenger. Hvis man haevder, at i vores dagligdags perception af den fysiske verden, er det, vi ser, ikke er verden selv, men et kulturelt kodificeret billede af den, så er der egentlig ikke nogen stor perceptiv forskel på at se den fysiske verden og dens filmiske repraesentation. Når man så tilføjer, at det, antropologer gør, når de indvinder viden, netop er at opleve, at se og lytte til den fysiske verden omkring dem-i overensstemmelse med en positivistisk idé om, at hvis man ser/hører noget, så eksisterer det-så forstår man, at de kan have en noget ambivalent holdning til filmmediet. På den ene side forekommer film lige så lydligt og visuelt virkelige som den fysiske verden de repraesenterer, og på den anden side er de kun repraesentationer af den. Det er efterhånden alment accepteret, at socialvidenskaberne ikke kan vaere objek tive, uafhaengige af den, der opfatter, og at deres videnskabelighed skal søges andetsteds. Enhver tekstlig repraesentation af en oplevet virkelighed vil vaere subjektiv, og det samme gaelder naturligvis for film. Men fordi film ikke kun anvender symbolske tegn som teksten, (som jo på ingen måde ligner det, den repraesenterer, medmindre den handler om, hvordan tekster ser ud), fordi film både ligner og har denne uomtvistelige fysiske forbindelse til en virkelig verden, som de er direkte aftryk af, og fordi de minder om antropologisk oplevelses-og indsamlingspraksis i felten, forfører og forvirrer de. Den paradoksale relation imellem de to samtidige udsagn, som film uafladeligt kommunikerer-"jeg er virkelighed" og , jeg er blot en repraesentation"-har skabt røre inden for videnskabelige kredse lige fra fremkomsten af de første levende billeder i 1895