Cohesion

Figure 2 The Overall Performance of Errors in Cohesive Device

4.2 Research Question One

Research Question One:

In English-speaking learners’ compositions, what types of errors do they commit at the discourse level? What causes the errors to occur?

In response to research question one, the errors are discussed in the perspectives of cohesion, information and thematic structures. In consideration of cohesion, reference, ellipsis, conjunction and lexical cohesion are discussed. As for the aspect of information and thematic structures, old-new information, focus and topic are the main categories which will be addressed. Descriptions and examples are provided. Sources of errors are discussed according to linguistic typology and information gleaned from student interviews.

4.2.1 Cohesion

This section consists of discussions of four types of cohesive devices, including

62

reference, ellipsis, conjunction, and lexical cohesion.

4.2.1.1 Reference

With respect to reference, three types of errors were found in this study: addition of pronouns (zero pronouns should be used), addition of nouns (pronouns should be used), and addition of possessive pronouns (zero possessive pronouns should be used). The examples are displayed below.

First, students tended to use more pronouns.

(71) 食客看到菜單的時候他們常常大吃一驚也嚇一跳．

Shíkè kàndào càidān de shíhòu tāmen chángcháng dàchīyìjīng yě xiàyítiào.

When people see the menus, they are often surprised and frightened.

As indicated in example (71), the student attempted to use the pronoun “tāmen”

(they) to refer backwards to “shíkè” (guests) while the addition of the pronoun “tāmen”

resulted in the redundancy of the sentence.

According to linguistic typology, Chinese is a pro-drop language in which pronouns can be omitted when considered unnecessary or redundant while English is a non-pro-drop language in which pronouns are not omitted when occurring with high frequency.

The researcher interviewed six students. Two elementary students pointed out that they wanted to use more pronouns because the pronoun rule in English had negative effects on their production of Chinese pronouns. Two intermediate students indicated that they did not clearly understand about the pro-drop rule in Chinese. Two advanced students stated that they used their sense of language to judge where to omit pronouns because experience over time, with Chinese as a second language, increased student’s ability to develop automaticity which resulted in more authentic expression. In addition,

63

six students all mentioned that the concept of pro-drop was not explained clearly by their language teachers. Therefore, the author identified the addition of pronoun was an interlingual error.

Second, students tended to use names or titles, e.g., Charlie or “bàba” (father) rather than pronouns to refer other people, as shown in (72).

(72) 除了了解我以外，查理也教了我很多道理。我在寄宿學校的最後一年，查理的 媽媽在乍得病死了。因為查理沒有錢，而且查理的美國簽證也過期了，查理 沒有辦法回乍得參加她媽媽的葬禮．

Chúle liǎojiě wǒ yǐwài, Chálǐ yě jiāo le wǒ hěnduō dàolǐ. Wǒ zài jìsù xuéxiào de zuìhòu yìnián, Chálǐ de māmā zài Zhàdé bìngsǐ le. Yīnwèi Chálǐ méiyǒu qián, érqiě Chálǐ de Měiguó qiānzhèng yě guòjī le, Chálǐ méiyǒu bànfǎ huí Zhàdé cānjiā tā māmā de zànglǐ.

Besides knowing me, Charlie also taught me a lot. When I was in my last year in the boarding school, Charlie’s mother passed away because of illness. Charlie could not go back to Chad to attend the funeral because Charlie did not have money, and Charlie’s Visa has expired.

The student repeatedly used “Charlie”, which resulted in redundant writing.

Through interviews, the researcher found out that it was exercise-based induced error resulting from exercises which required manipulations of language patterns. Students indicated that in a drill class, they were required to produce a clear and complete sentence; therefore, they produced non-native-like sentences by repeating names or titles.

Third, possessive pronouns were overused.

64

(73) 我的爸爸現在六十四歲，我的媽媽六十二歲。我的爸爸十年內會退休。我的媽 媽也開始想退休的事了。我的爸爸說退休以後想看很多的書，我覺得非常好。

Wǒde bàbà xiànzài liùshísì suì, wǒde māmā liùshíèr suì. Wǒde bàbà shínián nèi huì tuìxiū. Wǒde māmā yě kāishǐ xiǎng tuìxiū de shì le. Wǒde bàbà shuō tuìxiū yǐhòu xiǎng kàn hěn duō de shū, wǒ juéde fēicháng hǎo.

My father is 64 years old now, and my mother is 62. My father will retire within ten years, and my mom is also thinking about retirement. My father said she would like to read a lot after retirement. I think that was a good idea.

For instance, “wǒde” (my) in example (73) could be omitted to make the passage more succinct. However, the learner used the “possessive pronoun + title” structure to refer to his father and mother, creating an unnatural style of writing.

According to the pro-drop rule in linguistic typology and the interviews with students, the phenomenon could be L1 negative transfer and exercise-based induced errors. Students pointed out that it is preferable in English to refer to family members by using “pronoun + titles”, e.g., “wǒde bàba” (my father) and “wǒde māma” (my mother) rather than pronouns alone. Additionally, students were required to produce sentences as completely as possible in a language class. Thus, the researcher identified that possessive pronouns were added redundantly under the influence of interlingual factors and prior learning as a result of language class exercises.

4.2.1.2 Ellipsis

As for ellipsis, students used words or phrases repeatedly to refer to certain objects.

65

(74) 最大的區別是比薩餅的厚薄．義大利的比薩餅很薄，芝加哥的比薩餅很厚．

Zuì dà de qūbié shì bǐsàbǐng de hòubó. Yìdàlì de bǐsàbǐng hěn bó, Zhījiāgē de bǐsàbǐng hěn hòu.

The biggest difference is the thickness of the pizza. Italian pizzas have thin crusts while Chicago pizzas have thick crusts.

In(74), it would be more appropriate to delete the second and third “bǐsàbǐng”

(pizzas) to make the sentence more succinct.Regarding the source of error, it was exercise-based induced error according to the interview. Students indicated that they attempted to create complete sentences because of prior learning and teacher requirements.

4.2.1.3 Conjunction

Four types of errors were found considering conjunction: omission, mis-selection, addition, and misordering.

First, students tended to omit conjunctions which functioned to connect with sentences in the discourse. The researcher observed that the omission happened frequently for two pairs of conjunctions in Chinese: “yīnwèi…, suǒyǐ…”

(because…so…) and “suīrán…，dànshì (kěshì）…” (although…but…), as indicated in example (75) and (76).

(75) a （因為）只有兩個學生，b所以輔導課的教授很重視學生的討論．

a Yīnwèi zhǐyǒu liǎngge xuéshēng, b (suǒyǐ) fǔdǎokè de jiàoshòu hěn zhòngshì xuéshēng de tǎolùn.

a Because there were only two students, b the professors of tutorials paid a lot of attention to students’ discussions.

66

(76) 他想來想去，終於決定雖然他要讓家人享受生活，（但是）他也要幫很多人，

要使孩子理解幫助別人比賺錢更重要。

Tā xiǎng lái xiǎng qù, zhōngyú juédìng suīrán tā yào rang jiārén xiǎngshòu shēnghuó, (dànshì) tā yěyào bāng hěnduō rén, yào shǐ háizi lǐjiě bāngzhù biérén bǐ zhuànqián gèng zhòngyào.

He considered this for a long time. Finally he made a decision that although he would earn money to afford a good life for his family, he would also help other people. He wanted to make his children understand that helping others was more important than earning money.

Learners used one segment of each pair because they were not aware of the fact that the pairs are often used together in Chinese even though one segment is sufficient to signal the causal or transitional relationships in English. Chinese uses the discourse-initial marker “yinwei” as a guidepost to be echoed by the discourse marker

“suoyi”; thus, it draws the reader’s attention to the following discourse (Chen, 2010: 66).

In (75), the cause and effect relationship will be clearer if “yīnwèi” (because) is added before b. This can be supported by the previous research.

According to Chen (2010), it is uncommon for Chinese native speakers to produce

“yīnwèi…,

ø

(because) without the echoing marker of “suoyi” (so). Similarly, in (76), the addition of

“dànshì” (but) after “suīrán”(although) can express a clearer constrastive relationship in Chinese. By constrast, either “although” or “but” is sufficient to mark such a relationship in English, and it is ungrammatical to use both conjunctions in a sentence.

In addition, students omitted other conjunctions (not the pairs of “yīnwèi…, suǒyǐ…”

and “suīrán…，dànshì (kěshì）…”.

67 (77) 所以我就鍛煉身體，（也）開始吃蔬菜。

Suǒyǐ wǒ jiù kāishǐ duànliàn shēntǐ, (yě) kāishǐ chī shūcài.

So I began working out and eating vegetables.

In (77), “yě” should be added to link “duànliàn shēntǐ” and “chī shūcài”. This type of error resulted from simplification. Three students in the interview indicated that they were all aware of the meanings of the conjunctions; however, they did not consider about the connections among sentences because they tried hard to write every sentence in a long composition. Therefore, they chose an easier and communication-driven learning strategy “simplification” since the first priority was to deliver the the general idea by using clear sentences. The general idea could still be expressed even though some conjunctions were omitted. Thus, omissions occurred frequently in learners’

compositions.

Second, students chose incorrect conjunctions. The researcher believed the mis-selection was the result of overgeneralization.

(78) 因為我學習得很努力，*不但（不只）只是做我需要做的事，所以我的成績進 步很多。

Yīnwèi wǒ xuéxí de hěn nǔlì, *búdàn (bùzhǐ) zhǐshì zuò wǒ xūyào zuò de shì, suǒyǐ wǒde chéngjī jìnbù hěn duō.

I studied very hard, and I did not just do what was required, so I made a great progress in my studies.

Learners failed to use the target conjunctions by choosing other ones from the same semantic domain, as shown in example (78), “bùzhǐ” (not only) rather than “búdàn”

(not only) should be used. In (78). Although both “bùzhǐ” and “búdàn” meant “not only”, ‘bùzhǐ’ was the only one that could be chosen when there was no main clause in the sentence. Thus, the student chose the wrong one due to overgeneralization.

68

In addition to overgeneralization, simplification is another source of error. Students tended to choose the easiest one “hé” to link words or phrases instead of using bìng, bìngqiě, jí, yǔ, and tóng.

(79) 用談話的方式來使孩子了解錯誤a很有效和b不會影響孩子跟父母密切的關 係．

Yòng tánhuà de fāngshì lái shǐ háizi liǎojiě cuòwù, a hěn yǒuxiào hé b búhuì yǐngxiǎng háizi gēn fùmǔ mìqiè de guānxì.

Communication is an effective way to make children be aware of their mistakes, and it would not affect the close relationship between parents and children.

As shown in example (79), the learner chose “hé” to link a and b, whereas “qiě”

was the appropriate word to use because “hé” is used to connect two nouns. According to the student, he used hé because it was the easiest form they learned to link words.

Third, learners used additional conjunctions due to overgeneralization.

(80) 這家飯館的材料的確a很奇怪，可是也b很好吃．

Zhè jiā fànguǎn de cáiliào dìquè a hěn qíguài, kěshì yě b hěn hǎochī.

The food ingredients in this restaurant were indeed special, but the dishes were delicious.

As an example (80), the student attempted to use “yě” (also) to add more information to the subject “zhè jiā fànguǎn de cáiliào” (the culinary materials in the restaurant). However, it was ungrammatical to use “yě” when the two segments were opposite in the attributes because it is only used if the two predicates connected were both positive or both negative. In (80), “qíguài” (strange) was negative and “hǎochī”

(delicious) was positive; hence, the learner overgeneralized the rule and misused “yě”.

Fourth, students used more right-branching sentences. A right-branching sentence is a sentence in which the main subject of the sentence or the main clause is

69

described first, and is followed by a sequence of modifiers that provide additional information about the subject. English is a right-branching language and Chinese is a left-branching language.

(81) 第一種課是外語和藝術類的，比如說英文課、音樂課和中文課．a威廉大學的

英文系是非常好的。b一般來說修第一種課不會是一個問題，c因為很多的威廉

大學生熱衷於修英文系的課．

Dì yī zhǒng kè shì wàiyǔ hé yìshù lèi de, bǐrúshuō Yīngwén kè, yīnyuè kè hé Zhōngwén kè. a Wēilián dàxué de Yīngwén xì shì fēicháng hǎo de. b Yìbānláishuō xiū dìyīzhǒng kè búhuì shì yíge wèntí, c yīnwèi hěnduō de Wēilián dàxuéshēng rèzhōng yú xiū Yīngwén xì de kè.

The first type of courses covers the courses of foreign languages and art, e.g., English, music, and Chinese. The English department in Williams is very good.

Generally speaking, taking the first type of courses would not be a problem because a lot of students want to take courses in the department.

In this example, the sentence which consisted of part b and c was marked in Chinese unless part b was moved intentionally backwards to achieve the cohesion between b and the preceding sentences. Part a described that the English department was very good. Part b and c illustrated that the school’s requirement of taking the first category of courses was not difficult because the students in Williams were enthusiastic to learn English. However, there was an apparent semantic gap between a and b because a should be followed by c in terms of semantic cohesion. Part a was about the good quality of English department; thus, it was more cohesive to connect c which was about the students’ willing to learn English. As for its source of error, the researcher believed it was due to the difference of branching directions: Chinese is left-branching, and English is right-branching. Therefore, students ignored the cohesion in the discourse and used the unmarked right-branching form in English instead of the unmarked

70

left-branching form in Chinese.

The conjunctions that the students had errors are listed below. The detailed examples of errors are presented in Appendix A.

Omission of Conjunction: 因為（because）、［因為］所以（［because）so）、而

（while, whereas）、卻（but）、還是（still）、［雖然］但是/可是（［although）but）、

後來（afterwards）、因此（therefore）、不過（but）

Mis-selection of Conjunction: 然後/結果/所以/因此（then/as a

result/so/therefore）、不但/不只（not only）、最後/終於（finally/eventually）、為 /為了/因為（for/because）、和/並（and）、仍然/也/還（still）

Addition of Conjunction: 另外

4.2.1.4 Lexical Cohesion

In addition to reference, ellipsis, and conjunction, lexical cohesion was also found to have errors. Students preferred to use many repetitions in their compositions.

(82) 美國的餐館在世界各地開業．世界最著名的餐館莫過於美國的麥當勞．

Měiguó de cānguǎn zài shìjiè gèdì kāiyè. Shìjiè zuì zhùmíng de cānguǎn de zhīmíngdù mòguòyú Měiguóde Màidāngláo.

American restaurants opened their businesses around the world. The most famous restaurant in the world would be America’s McDonalds.

In (82), the learner attempted to use the repetition of “shìjiè” (the world) and

“měiguóde” (America’s) to create a lexical cohesion. However, it was redundant to reiterate the phrase. The researcher assumed this type of error was caused by the drills practiced in the class since students were required to produce sentences as complete as possible in those exercises.

71