Pedagogical Implications

Based on the results of the study, some suggestions for writing instructions are offered from the perspective of proficiency level and genre difference.

First, in terms of proficiency levels, the study shows that high proficiency level writers significantly used more cohesive devices than low proficiency level writers did in narration and in exposition. In spite of this, observing from the quantitative analysis of each cohesive device, we can find that substitution and ellipsis were rarely used in both groups. The rare occurrence of these two grammatical cohesive devices probably resulted from either their difficult structure or their rare occurrence in the textbook. To enhance EFL learners’ ability to employ the substitution and ellipsis, teachers should install students with the idea of omitted sentence structures and offer students chances to practice these two structures in class. If possible, the authentic

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text with these two structures should be presented so that learners will have a clear idea of how to use these structures in the text.

With regard to errors made by both proficiency groups, writers of different proficiency levels suffered from the use of referential cohesive devices. The major problems encountered included additional or lack of definite articles in the narration and unclear pronominal referents in the exposition. The definite article is the most frequently used word in the English language (Francis & Kučera, 1982). Nevertheless, it is a major problem in EFL learners’ writing. The definite article or a personal pronoun is used for the noun that has been mentioned before. Observing from an angle of inappropriate use of cohesive devices, we found that writers from both levels failed to supply a proper referential device to introduce the second mention of the noun. In view of this, the teaching of the referential cohesive devices should go beyond the sentence level to include discourse and context. First, to avoid the problem of mismatching the pronoun and its referent in the referential cohesive devices, it is necessary for learners to practice the difference between countable and uncountable nouns by using a grid. Teachers can offer several nouns for learners to sort into the proper columns and ask learners to practice what pronoun goes with the countable or uncountable nouns.

Countable Uncountable

money, an egg, dresses, furniture, a table, coins, clothing, food

Secondly, focused instruction on the use of articles in discourses can make a positive difference for learners. Teachers can choose a short passage and ask students to mark

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the nouns with the articles and guide them to clarify whether the nouns are specific or nonspecific and find the corresponding referent in the discourse. Next, the teacher can choose a passage from any materials and remove all articles and leave or add spaces for students to fill in the definite article, indefinite article or zero article. After that, the original passage is offered for students to check their answers. The example runs as follows.

Complete the text with a/an or the, or leave blank for zero article

In 1961, art show called “The Store” opened in New York City. Bacon, own writing by giving them a checklist for the usage of articles. The questions in the checklist may require students to underline all the nouns in their writing and check if there are any articles before the noun. Next, students are required to draw boxes around the nouns with the article the and check whether the usage of definite article refers to someone or something that is specified by the previous instance of it or by the context. By raising students’ awareness of the usage of the definite article, students may benefit from the practice and be aware of the importance of discourse.

In addition to the referential cohesive devices, another problematic area for EFL learners is the use of conjunction. Although high proficiency level writers had fewer conjunctive problems, they still had some errors in the usage of conjunction or suffered from run-on sentences. For low level writers, there were serious problems with run-on sentences. As a result of this, fewer conjunctive cohesive devices were used. Further, even though low achievers used conjunctions, they didn’t apply the conjunction correctly in the discourse. Both local and global errors of conjunction were made, which included wrong sentence structures and global relationship

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between sentences in the discourse. Therefore, due to low level writer’s weak perception of the sentence structures, teachers should start from training low level students writing correct sentences and teach them how to connect the sentences by using the conjunction. Moreover, teachers should state clearly the usage of conjunctions in the sentence to avoid run-on sentences. Next, it is essential to teach students the meaning and function of each conjunction. By making use of the articles in the textbook, teachers can ask students to look for the conjunctive elements in the text to draw student’s attention to them. Further, a modified cloze exercise is a good way to get students to practice using logical connections, as shown by the following example.

1 , we may observe that animal communication systems are closed, 2 human systems are open-ended. 3 , even though bees communicate, they will only be able to exchange variants of the same message—in what direction the nectar is and how far away. Apes cannot communicate freely about anything for which they do not have a specific signal, and even in those cases the possibility are extremely restricted. People, 4 , can talk about anything they can observe or imagine, 5 , what they say on almost any topic is almost problems. From the quantitative analysis, high proficiency writers used significantly more synonyms than low proficiency writers. Meanwhile, from the qualitative analysis of errors, both proficiency groups had problems with word choices when employing lexical cohesive devices. Further, both groups, especially low proficiency writers, had many problems with basic vocabulary skills such as countable or uncountable nouns, spellings, part of speech. To enhance learners’ basic vocabulary

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skills, teachers can design some in-class activities. For example, to help students review vocabulary by asking the derivative forms of each word. In addition, teachers should offer a topic for students to brainstorm the main ideas they plan to put into their writing and ask students to form a semantic map. Later, the teacher could ask students to think of synonymous or antonymous words to express the key idea. After that, the chosen passage should be presented and the teacher should guide students to underline the topic key words and instruct them how these words with different semantic relationship form the cohesion in the discourse. Another activity would be to offer students a list of vocabulary and ask students to write down one synonymous word or phrase. After that, students can exchange the vocabulary list and check whether they have the same synonymous word or phrases. Next, the teacher will distribute a short passage and ask students to change the given word to the one they come up with. After students finish the substitution, they have to read aloud and check whether the substituted synonymous words have changed the meaning of the article.

The purpose of this is to enhance students’ ability in synonyms and to learn the distinct word meaning and usage.

a) BRANCH b) TEAR c) BILL d) INVALID e) REFUSE f) DESERT

“Was the phone ringing? Not again!”

“Mary went into the hall and picked up the receiver with shaking hand:”Hello”

“Good morning. Swann’s, Retford BRANCH here. Is that Mrs. Taylor?

“Oh. Yes.”

“I’m afraid the check you sent us in the settlement of our BILL for US. 300 is INVALID. The back REFUSE to pay it.”

“Oh, I’m terribly sorry. I’ll connect them right away.”

“Thank you.”

‘She sank into the chair. Her usual confident manner had begun to DESERT her. A TEAR formed in the corner of her eye and slowly descended her ashenwhite cheek…’ (Taylor, 1992, p. 102).

In addition, teachers can also list some words that students are more likely to feel confused (e.g., admit and permit) and make a comparison of usage between them by

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offering more examples. Alternatively, for words with multiple meanings, the teacher can assign students one word and ask them to brainstorm its different meaning and use the word to make sentences. The example is as follows (Taylor, 1992, p. 102).

To enhance students the idea that words were hierarchical, teachers can offer students a list of words and ask them to divide those words into several groups and assign a title for each word group.

MEATS: lamb beef mutton chicken

SPORTS: cycling jogging walking in the mountains

Secondly, some teaching implications are offered from the perspective of genre difference. Upon examining both groups’ cohesive devices it becomes clear there were no significant differences in the total number of cohesive devices between narration and exposition, but from the means, we can still find that greater numbers of cohesive devices were used in narration. The inference can be drawn that the expository writing may be a more difficult genre for learners to use cohesive devices in. In view of this, to enhance learners’ ability of writing the expository essays, teachers could offer students different topics on various issues, hold the group discussion and share different ideas or opinions from various perspectives. Students should be trained to clarify, or argue their statement clearly with logic and reasons.

Later, the teacher could offer a model essays and guidelines for students to notice the use of cohesive devices in exposition.

On the other hand, both groups exhibited more inappropriate use of pronominal reference in exposition, mainly because of unclear referents in the text. Therefore, in

KEY

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the writing class, teachers should clearly state how to use pronominal referential cohesive devices in the text, and guide students to focus on the common errors in the mismatch between the pronoun and the noun it referred to. A checklist could be offered, after which the teacher could ask students to underline all the pronominal referential cohesive devices and examine whether these devices correspond to the noun first mentioned in the prior text. In addition to the mismatch of the pronouns, low proficiency writers tend to use one pronoun throughout the text, which may cause difficulty in interpretation when the distance between the pronoun and its referent is too far away or when there is a new topic in the following text. Therefore, teachers should offer students the whole text and teach them how to properly employ a noun phrase to start a new topic or a pronominal reference from the perspective of discourse.

With regard to lexical cohesive devices in the two genres, it is found that for both high and low proficiency level writers, genre is not a crucial factor in the total number of lexical cohesive devices or the error types. Nevertheless, low proficiency level writers were found to have more synonyms and superordinates in narration than in exposition, which seemed to indicate that low proficiency level writers have a limited vocabulary base to do the argument or elaboration in the expository writing. In view of this, teachers can offer students some key words and ask them to brainstorm synonymous words or encourage them to offer details or examples by employing the subordinate words to form cohesive relationship with the superordinate words. More importantly, in both high and low proficiency groups, more antonym was found in exposition than in narration, which perhaps suggests that a greater number of antonym is needed in exposition to discuss or support the thesis from different perspectives.

Therefore, in class, teachers could design activities for students to practice words of opposite meanings. Through plentiful practices, students could be more familiar with

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the semantic relationship of words.

In conclusion, through inductive and deductive teaching of grammatical and lexical cohesion in the context and in-class group activities, students can be motivated and have their awareness of the importance of the cohesion in the discourse raised.