tailieunhanh - An analysis of Cohesive devices used in EFL major students’ written essays at Quang Nam University

Cohesion refers to a linguistic means by which elements of a text are arranged and connected. Cohesion analysis is of great significance in improving students’ academic writing skills. This paper presents the results of cohesion analysis in third year English major students’ essays based on Halliday and Hasan’s (1976) framework with the aim of drawing some implications on essay teaching and learning. | AN ANALYSIS OF COHESIVE DEVICES USED IN EFL MAJOR STUDENTS’ WRITTEN ESSAYS AT QUANG NAM UNIVERSITY Nguyễn Thị Trung1 Abstract: Cohesion refers to a linguistic means by which elements of a text are arranged and connected. Cohesion analysis is of great significance in improving students’ academic writing skills. This paper presents the results of cohesion analysis in third year English major students’ essays based on Halliday and Hasan’s (1976) framework with the aim of drawing some implications on essay teaching and learning. 1. Introduction Writing is considered the most difficult aspect of English to develop and learn by the majority of learners, especially in an English as a foreign language (EFL) context where exposure to English writing is limited to a few hours per week. Although much attention has been paid to teaching writing in recent years, the result is still unsatisfactory in comparison with other skills. In teaching essay writing, I have identified a number of noticeable problems including a lack of a clearly stated thesis statement, inadequate support or evidence for the thesis statement, a lack of unity in the essay ideas and unclear organization, a lack of coherence among the essay components, and especially inappropriate use of cohesive devices. Therefore, it is required to investigate cohesive devices used in the students’ written essays in response to the urgent need for writing quality improvement. In this article, I would like to present the analysis of cohesive devices based on Halliday and Hasan’s (1976) framework, which has had a great influence on the understanding and teaching of cohesion. 2. Literature review Over the past three decades, a large number of studies have focused on sentencelevel analysis. More recently, some linguists such as Harris (1952), Coulthard (1977), Cook’s (1989), van Dijk (1985), however, have given an insight into how texts are structured beyond the sentence-level, how the structuring of sentences has .