Summary of the Qualitative Analysis

In the section, the summary of the qualitative analysis regarding (1) high and low proficiency groups’ inappropriate use of cohesive devices in narration, (2) high and low proficiency groups’ inappropriate use of cohesive devices in exposition, (3) high proficiency groups’ inappropriate use of cohesive devices in the two genres and (4) low proficiency groups’ inappropriate use of cohesive devices in the two genres, will be presented as what follows.

5.2.1 High and Low Proficiency Groups’ Inappropriate Use of Cohesive Devices in Narrative Writing

In the qualitative analysis of different proficiency writers’ inappropriate use of cohesive devices in the narrative writing, low proficiency level writers had made much more errors in cohesive devices than high proficiency level writers did (103 vs.

28). In terms of grammatical cohesive devices, reference, the major problem with

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both high and low proficiency level writers was the use of definite or demonstrative reference. Both high and low proficiency writers made mistakes because of the addition or lack of definite articles in the text. Different from high proficiency writers, low proficiency writers also had problems with how to use the deictic demonstrative reference to refer to a present or past-time referent. The second common error is the use of pronominal reference, low proficiency writers had a mismatch between the pronoun and the referent. Moreover, they also suffered from poor sentence structures so that they failed to supply a needed pronominal reference in the text. As for comparative reference, unlike high proficiency writers, low proficiency writers were weaker in producing the correct comparative structure and even failed to judge when to use the structure in the text.

In addition to reference, both high and low proficiency groups had errors in the use of conjunction. First, both groups had fragments and failed to use conjunction in their texts. Moreover, low proficiency writers tended to produce simple sentences and also failed to recognize the inter-sentential relationship so that they failed to supply a needed conjunctive tie in the discourse. What’s more, even though low proficiency group writers used conjunction in their text, they sometimes suffered from poor sentence structures and produced fragments. Further, they had no idea of the correct expression of each conjunction and failed to choose the correct form in the text.

In the aspect of lexical cohesive devices, high proficiency writers made few errors while low proficiency writers made a tremendous number of errors, especially in the category of repetition. Simply stated, although both high and low proficiency groups utilized repetition most, the quantitative number of repetition in the low proficiency writers’ samples could not serve as an index for the quality of a good writing because low proficiency writers’ repetition led to the redundancy and non-idiomatic expression in the text.

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Observing from the overall errors made by both groups, the major problem was the word choice. Although writers employed the lexical cohesive devices to form different kinds of ties, they failed to choose the proper word in the context. As a result, the wrong choice of word may cause readers’ misinterpretation of the text. In addition, despite the fact that both groups employed various numbers of lexical cohesive devices in the text, their minor mistakes resulting from basic grammars (e.g., non-native English, misspellings, tense, plural inflections and sentence structures) made their cohesive devices imperfect and inappropriate. In comparison with high and low proficiency writers’ performance, and from the observation of the total number of the inappropriate use of cohesive devices, low proficiency writers had more local or global mistakes in terms of grammatical and lexical cohesive devices than high proficiency writers. Further, a large proportion of low proficiency groups’ errors were involved with the basic grammatical sentence structures, lexical spellings or plural inflections, which seemed to indicate that the low proficiency writers’ poor command of English may be detrimental to the cohesion in the text.

5.2.2 High and Low Proficiency Groups’ Inappropriate Use of Cohesive Devices in Expository Writing

Regarding high and low proficiency level writers’ inappropriate use of cohesive devices in the expository writing, low proficiency writers still made more errors than high proficiency writers did. In terms of the grammatical cohesive devices, the major problems in both groups’ samples were unclear referents of the pronominal reference.

Moreover, low proficiency level writers tended to employ the pronominal reference throughout the text and failed to use the noun phrase to signal a new topic in the discourse. Also, they suffered from poor sentence structures even though they used the correct pronominal reference. More importantly, low proficiency writers produced shift of pronouns in their samples.

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As for definite or demonstrative articles, low proficiency writers had more errors involving lack or addition of the definite articles than high proficiency ones. Next, for the use of comparative reference, compared with high proficiency writers, low proficiency ones not only had more errors but they also had suffered from writing the correct comparative structures. In respect of substitution and ellipsis, high proficiency writers had used more substitution and ellipsis than low proficiency ones, but their employment of substitution and ellipsis suffered from immature sentence structures.

Unlike high proficiency writers, members of low proficiency levels did not use ellipsis in the writing, but only one instance of substitution, which proved that ellipsis not only creates difficulty in learning what structural omissions are permissible, but also does not seem to be readily used even by proficient learners (Scarcella & Brunak, 1981).

As for conjunction, high proficiency writers only had two instances of conjunctive errors, lack of proper conjunction and misuse of the word, even, as a conjunction. In contrast with high proficiency writers, low proficiency writers suffered from run-on sentences. There were also fragments involved with the use of because and although. Furthermore, low proficiency writers had more global errors than high proficiency writers. They not only failed to supply a proper conjunctive element in the discourse but also failed to recognize the relationship of different contexts (e.g., causal relationship or additive relationship). Besides, because of their poor English, they couldn’t supply a correct form of the conjunction.

In the aspect of lexical cohesive devices in exposition, low proficiency writers still had more instances of mistakes in plural inflection of the word, misspellings and wrong part of speech than high proficiency writers did, which suggests that most of the low proficiency writers’ problems were local in nature. Also, in the category of lexical cohesive devices, both high and low proficiency writers had the most errors in

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repetition, and they had similar errors in the word choice. Besides, the greater number of repetition in the low proficiency groups’ writing may cause the redundancy in the text and the repeated noun phrases also revealed the low proficiency writes’ failure to use pronouns in the text, which may indicate the writers’ low ability level because the use of pronouns is an indication of the higher writing level at the stage of the developing writing ability. To sum up, the low proficiency group greatly suffered from the basic vocabulary use such as spellings, countable nouns, part of speech, not to mention the higher level skills in word choices.

5.2.3 High Proficiency Group’s Inappropriate Use of Cohesive Devices in Two Genres

The comparison of the error types in high proficiency writers’ narrative and expository writing revealed that there was no difference in the high proficiency group’s errors in the two genres. With regard to grammatical cohesive devices, the high proficiency group had errors in lack/addition of definite articles, pronominal reference and the use of conjunction. As to lexical cohesive devices, the high

proficiency groups mainly had problems in the word choice and other minor ones in misspellings, plural inflection, part of speech and sentence structures in the two genres.

On the other hand, through the comparison of the error rates in the two genres, we can find that high proficiency level writers had slightly more number of inappropriate use of cohesive devices in exposition. Also, in the category of pronominal reference, high proficiency level writers were found to have more instances of inappropriate use of cohesive devices in the expository writing. Secondly, few instances of substitution and ellipsis were used in high proficiency level’s writing and there were only two instances of substitution errors regarding wrong sentence structures and lack of substitution in the expository writing. Thirdly, as for

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conjunctions in the two genres, the common problems were the lack of conjunctions and the fragments in the participants’ writing.

Next, for the lexical cohesive devices, the overall error rate involving lexical cohesive devices in the two genres did not vary greatly as well. To sum up, high proficiency level writers had more instances of errors in the expository writing and the major problems of their lexical cohesive devices were the word choice or usage in the discourse.

5.2.4 Low Proficiency Group’s Inappropriate Use of Cohesive Devices in Two Genres

The comparison of the error types in low proficiency writers’ narrative and expository writing revealed that the low proficiency group had many diversified and similar errors. Concerning the errors of the grammatical cohesive devices in the two genres, lack/addition of definite articles and unclear referent in employing pronominal reference were not uncommon. Additionally, inappropriate use of deictic article, shift of pronouns and lack of pronouns were also found in the low proficiency group’s writing. Aside from this, the low proficiency group couldn’t construct grammatically-correct comparative structures. As for the conjunction, low proficiency writers failed to identify the inter-sentential relationship and used the wrong conjunction in the text. Moreover, they also employed incorrect form of conjunction and produced fragments in the text.

With regard to lexical cohesive devices, low proficiency writers mainly had problems in the word choices, non-idiomatic expression and many minor mistakes in misspellings, plural inflection, tense, and part of speech in the two genres. In addition, many of the low proficiency group’s repetition led to redundancy and also revealed their incapability of using the pronouns appropriately. Hence, the number of repetition in the low proficiency group could not serve as an index of a good writing. Based on

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the aforementioned observation, there was no great variation in terms of error types in the low proficiency group’s narrative and expository writing and most of the inappropriate use of cohesive devices was resulted from the low proficiency group’s immature sentence structures and basic vocabulary skills.

On the other hand, the low proficiency group’s overall error rates in the two genres were calculated. It is found that in general, low proficiency writers made much more errors in exposition than in narration, which seemed to indicate that genre difference was correlated with low proficiency writers’ number of errors. Besides, it was also found that low proficiency groups had more inappropriate use of grammatical cohesive devices in exposition. In the category of reference, low proficiency level writers also had much more instances of inappropriate use of pronominal reference in the expository writing. Finally, when it comes to the lexical cohesive devices, low proficiency writers’ lexical cohesive errors did not vary greatly on the basis of the error rate in the two genres.