scholarly journals The Realization of Lexical Cohesion in EFL Students’ Explanatory Texts Across Two Levels of Proficiency

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 16-30
Author(s):  
Saudin
Keyword(s):  
Low Achievers ◽  
Writing Quality ◽  
Lexical Cohesion ◽  
Proficiency Levels ◽  
Positive Effects ◽  
Good Writing ◽  
Efl Students

Lexical cohesion is the most prominent resource of cohesion, which is a property usually associated with writing quality. Around forty to fifty percent (Hoey, 1991; Kafes, 2012) even two-thirds (Witte & Faigley, 1981) of cohesion in texts are lexical regardless of proficiency levels. This research investigated how lexical cohesion (involving repetition, synonymy and collocation) is realized in the explanatory texts written by the two groups of participants (high and low achievers) and whether or not the denser realization of lexical cohesion is positively related to the writing quality. e results of the analyses conducted largely qualitatively showed that repetition came first as the most-frequently exploited sub-class of lexical cohesion, followed by collocation and synonymy. Unlike collocation and synonymy, repetition contributed negatively to the writing quality though complex repetition, one sub-type of repetition, contributed positively as synonymy and collocation did. Surprisingly, taken together as lexical cohesion, the three sub-classes in their percentages of occurrences in the corpus did not have positive effects on writing quality. Therefore, denser lexical cohesion when involving repetition was not always an indicator of good writing. Thus, this study presents, in relationship with writing quality, the discussion of each cohesive sub-class as one entity be more reliable than that of (lexical) cohesion as a superordinate. The study also recommends making use of exercises available or self-made to build up students’ skills in using synonymy instead of repetition, and in creating well-formed collocation.

scholarly journals A Systemic Functional Linguistic Analysis of Cohesion and The Writing Quality of Saudi Female EFL Undergraduate Students

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Khawater Fahad Alshalan
Keyword(s):  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Writing Assessment ◽  
Writing Quality ◽  
Lexical Cohesion ◽  
Cohesive Devices ◽  
Systemic Functional Linguistic ◽  
Efl Students ◽  
Qualitative Data Analysis Software ◽  
Writing Scores

This study aims to investigate how frequently Halliday and Hasan’s (1976) cohesive devices were used as well as their relationship with the writing quality of 100 Saudi EFL undergraduate students in Al Imam Muhammed Ibn Saud Islamic University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. It uses a mixed method approach, where the students’ essays were analyzed using systemic functional linguistics (SFL) in terms of the textual meta-function of cohesive devices. The five types of the cohesive devices are the following: lexical cohesion, reference, conjunction, substitutions, and ellipses. Moreover, each of their subcategories were analyzed in the students’ texts. The NVivo qualitative data analysis software and the corpus analysis (conducted using AntConc) were used to calculate the frequencies of each cohesive device found in the data. The IELTS writing assessment scale was also used to evaluate the students’ writing scores. The results show that the most frequently used device was lexical cohesion, specifically repetition. Saudi EFL undergraduate students tended to repeatedly stay focused on the central idea of the topic. Furthermore, Pearson’s correlation coefficient found a relationship between the students’ writing scores and length of their essays, the use of cohesive ties and the scores, and cohesive ties and the length of the students’ essays. This study recommends that EFL teachers provide Saudi EFL students several cohesive tools in order to help them improve their writing skills and connect their ideas smoothly.

scholarly journals ADOPTING THE THEORY OF PATTERNS OF COHESION TO ASSESS THE STUDENTS’ EXTENSIVE WRITING: DOES IT WORK?

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-58
Author(s):  
Saudin Saudin
Keyword(s):  
Error Analysis ◽  
Low Achievers ◽  
Writing Teachers ◽  
Writing Performance ◽  
Essay Writing ◽  
Lexical Cohesion ◽  
Proficiency Levels ◽  
Cohesive Devices ◽  
Analytic Scoring

The study investigated the extensive writing performance of the students across three proficiency levels of English: Advanced, Intermediate and Elementary. From each level, three students were selected purposively to represent high-, middle- and low-achievers. Their nine pieces of writing were then assessed by means of the theory of patterns of cohesion (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004; Eggins, 2004; Paltridge, 2006; Salkie, 1995; and Gerot & Wignell, 1994). The patterns consist of five cohesive devices: reference, conjunction, lexical cohesion, ellipsis and substitution. The assessment focused on analyzing the students’ failures in observing the patterns. The study, therefore, resembles an error analysis but adopts the cohesive devices, instead of linguistic/ grammatical classifications or other kinds of taxonomy as the sources of errors. As such, the study is the first that introduced the uses the devices as the sources of errors. Further, the errors made by the learners were calculated and compared with the total number of the words they wrote in their essay writing. This way, the data concerning the frequency of the failures in the cohesive devices across the students’ levels were obtained, tabulated and then discussed. Based on the results, a model of an analytic scoring guide was proposed to be used for assessing the students’ writing performance by considering the differences of levels. The model is expected to be useful for writing teachers as it has a higher level of practicality and measurability compared with other available analytic scoring methods.Key words: extensive writing, analytic scoring guide, cohesion, cohesive devices, error analysis, taxonomy

scholarly journals The Usage of Cohesive Devices by High-Achieving EFL Students in Writing Argumentative Essays

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-58
Author(s):  
Andri Saputra ◽  
M. Arif Rahman Hakim
Keyword(s):  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Writing Quality ◽  
Lexical Diversity ◽  
Cohesive Devices ◽  
Determining Factors ◽  
Good Writing ◽  
Efl Students ◽  
High Achieving ◽  
Argumentative Essays

This study aims to investigate types of cohesive devices frequently used in writing argumentative essays by high-achieving college students in Indonesia and to analyse their awareness of usage of these. Participants were asked to write an essay on a pre-determined topic; analysis was then conducted to investigate the most frequent cohesive devices used. Data on the second study question, understanding of the usage of cohesive devices, were gathered though semi-structured interviews. The data indicate that students effectively used various types of grammatical cohesive devices, particularly reference devices. However, some claimed not to know that they were using other cohesive devices. They believed that conjunctions were the only type that functions to connect ideas across sentences and paragraphs, and did not realise that this, that, the, and other reference devices are cohesive devices. In terms of the use of lexical cohesive devices, participants used synonyms more than other sub-types of lexical cohesive devices. The most frequently used device was the, which functions both as a cohesive device and an article. All participants agreed that though links or cohesive devices are necessary to achieve coherence, two claimed that these are not determining factors in producing good writing quality. They argued that high-quality writing needs to contain linguistic features related to sophisticated language and text difficulty. The first suggestion is that focused programs should be adopted to teach the writing of argumentative essays to help lower-achieving students attain the same writing level as high-achieving students. Second, a teaching programme integrating the use of sophisticated grammar, lexical diversity and cohesive devices should be a curriculum priority. 

scholarly journals Modern English Drama and the Students’ Fluency and Accuracy of Speaking

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (8) ◽  
pp. 69
Author(s):  
Kian Pishkar ◽  
Ahmad Moinzadeh ◽  
Azizallah Dabaghi
Keyword(s):  
Language Learners ◽  
English Language ◽  
Speech Rate ◽  
Oral Fluency ◽  
Ell Students ◽  
Positive Effects ◽  
Efl Students ◽  
Oral Communications ◽  
Teaching Learning ◽  
Mean Length Of Utterance

Speaking a language involves more than simply knowing the linguistic components of the message, and developing language skills requires more than grammatical comprehension and vocabulary memorization. In teaching-learning processes, drama method may have some positive effects on ELL students’ speaking fluency and accuracy. This study attempts to probe one of the main concerns of language learners, that is, how to improve their speaking components, e.g. oral fluency and accuracy. To attain this aim, the researchers investigated the effect of two selected texts from modern English dramas on students’ speaking fluency and accuracy. They distinguished fluent from non-fluent and accurate from no accurate learners. Therefore, the current study was designed as a true experimental research and the data were gathered from 60 EFL students, whose ages are between 19-25 (80 percent girls and 20 percent boys),of English language and literature at Hormozgan University in Iran. The data were the recorded speaking transcripts which were analyzed to show the probable progresses after four-time (10 weeks) treatment. The factors to be considered in present study were the numbers of filled and unfilled pauses in each narration, the total number of words per minute, mean length of utterance, and number of stressed words. The results were compared and their temporal and linguistic measures were correlated with their fluency scores. They revealed that the speech rate, the mean length of utterance, phonation time ratio and the number of stressed words produced per minute were the best predictors of fluency scores, and thus, students’ speaking fluency increased, whereas the students’ speaking accuracy decreased in some areas of speaking abilities and oral communications.

scholarly journals The Contribution of Lexical Cohesion to the Text Cohesion in EFL Students’ Expository Texts

ELT in Focus ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-18
Author(s):  
Hanif Nurcholish Adiantika
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Expository Texts ◽  
West Java ◽  
Lexical Cohesion ◽  
The Core ◽  
Cohesive Devices ◽  
Twelfth Grade ◽  
Efl Students ◽  
Text Cohesion

This study aims to investigate the use of lexical cohesion in students’ expository texts. It reveals thetypes of lexical cohesion employed by the students in their expository texts and the contribution oflexical cohesion to the text’ cohesion. This study employs qualitative research by using a case studydesign. Nine students of twelfth grade in a public senior high school in Kuningan regent, West Java,are chosen as the participants. The data in this study include the documents of students’ expositorytexts. The data are analyzed by using the concept of cohesive devices proposed by Halliday andHasan (1976). The findings show that there are two lexical cohesions identified in nine students’expository texts i.e. reiteration (covering i.e. antonymy, repetition, synonymy, meronymy, andhyponymy) and collocation. This study also indicates that lexical cohesion contribute to the processof keeping track of the participants and engaging the readers to the core argument of the text.Moreover, it can be stated that the contribution of lexical cohesion towards students’ expositorytexts is considered low. Therefore, there must be an encouragement for the students to use properlexical cohesion to make their text more cohesive.

Anxiety in Chinese EFL students at different proficiency levels

System ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 301-316 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meihua Liu
Keyword(s):  
Proficiency Levels ◽  
Efl Students

scholarly journals The Effects of Online Teaching on EFL Students’ Learning Motivation

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (11) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yinying Xu
Keyword(s):  
Online Teaching ◽  
Structured Interview ◽  
Study Data ◽  
Learning Motivation ◽  
Multiple Sources ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Learning Group ◽  
Positive Effects ◽  
Negative Effect ◽  
Efl Students

This study investigates the positive and negative effects of online teaching on EFL students’ learning motivation. There are 26 English majors in a Chinese university participant in this study. Data were collected from multiple sources: semi-structured interview and direct observation. The result shows that in the course aspect, it has a positive effect. In the teacher aspect, it has both negative and positive effects. But in the learning group aspect, it has a negative effect, because of losing of students’ interaction.

scholarly journals Peer editing: a strategic source in EFL students’ writing process

2011 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 85
Author(s):  
Nubia Mercedes Díaz Galvis
Keyword(s):  
Public School ◽  
Writing Process ◽  
Low Achievers ◽  
Proximal Development ◽  
Pedagogical Tool ◽  
Peer Editing ◽  
System A ◽  
Video Recordings ◽  
Efl Students ◽  
Field Notes

This article reports on a research project focused on peer editing as a pedagogical tool to promote collaborative assessment in the EFL writing process. With teachers overstretched in the Bogotá public school system, a method needed to be found that would allow students to receive much needed feedback without overtaxing the teachers` resources. Peer editing, a phenomenon that often occurs naturally within the classroom, was therefore systematically implemented as a solution to the stated problem. The main aims of this study, conducted with a group of ninth grade student at a public school in Bogotá, were to determine the role of peer editing in the writing process and to characterize the relationships built when students corrected each others writings. The instruments used for collecting data were field notes, video recordings and students’ artifacts. The results showed that when students were engaged in peer editing sessions they created zones of proximal development in which high achiever students provided linguistic scaffolding and empowered low achievers. It was also found that students used thinking strategies such as noticing and explaining when they identified errors related to the formal aspects of the language.

Beyond proficiency

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 265-289
Author(s):  
Stuart G. Towns ◽  
Richard Watson Todd
Keyword(s):  
Writing Development ◽  
Student Writing ◽  
Development Studies ◽  
Syntactic Complexity ◽  
Pulitzer Prize ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Writing Quality ◽  
Lexical Cohesion ◽  
Award Winning ◽  
Interpretive Methods

Abstract Many studies have investigated the correlations between linguistic features and human judgements of writing quality. These studies usually investigate either proficient student writing or exceptional literary writing. The current study attempts to bridge these two perspectives by comparing proficient writing to award-winning exceptional writing using movie reviews written by bloggers and Pulitzer Prize winners. A range of linguistic features representing syntactic complexity, lexical complexity, and lexical cohesion were analyzed using both automated and interpretive methods. It is found that some, but not all, of the trends seen in writing development studies continue on to exceptional writing, with lexical sophistication and lexical cohesion through conceptual associations making the largest contributions to the differences between proficient and exceptional writers.

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