Summary of the Quantitative Analysis

The purpose of the present study is to examine Taiwanese college students’

employment of cohesive devices in writing in terms of distinct proficiency levels and different genres quantitatively and qualitatively. To be more specific, we attempt to examine whether proficiency level will influence the employment of cohesive devices in narration and exposition respectively and whether genres will affect high or low proficiency level writers’ employment of cohesive devices. In addition to the quantitative analysis of the frequency counts, the qualitative analysis is indispensable to identify the inappropriate use of cohesive devices from the perspective of proficiency difference and genre difference. A total of 60 college students, recruited from senior English majors and freshman non-English majors with equal numbers from National Taiwan Normal University, took part in the study. The participants were requested to compose narrative and expository writing. After the scoring section, the collected essays were further divided into high-rated and low-rated groups, representing high and low proficiency level writers respectively. Later, the total number of cohesive devices was calculated in high and low level writers’ writing and was analyzed with the modified version of Halliday and Hasan’s (1976) taxonomy of cohesion in English and with t-test. Additionally, the inappropriate use of cohesive devices was identified in high and low proficiency level writers’ essays in order to conduct the qualitative analysis of the participant’s errors. The major findings of the

107

study are summarized in the following.

There were significant differences in high and low proficiency level writers’

overall number of cohesive devices both in narration and in exposition, which revealed that proficiency level was the predominant factor that influenced the employment of cohesive devices. Assuming from this, the employment of the numerous cohesive devices seemed to serve as an index for the better writing quality (Ferris, 1994; Liu & Braine, 2005; McCulley, 1985; Normant, 1982; Witte & Faigley, 1981). In other words, high proficiency level writers have much competence in the perception of the grammatical sentence structures, discourse cohesion, organization of ideas, and semantic meaning of words than low proficiency level writers do.

In the comparison between high and low proficiency groups’ grammatical cohesive devices, there were significant differences between the two groups in narration and in exposition respectively. In addition, significant differences were found in high and low proficiency level writers’ use of reference and conjunction in the narration, especially in the category of pronominal reference, definite article, additive and temporal conjunction, while no significant differences were found in the use of the subcategories of grammatical cohesive devices in exposition. These findings are not only in agreement with the previous Jin’s (2001) study but probably suggest that high proficiency writers were better at narrating stories by employing more pronominal reference that revolved around the leading character and the development of the story. Additionally, high proficiency writers were good at exerting various conjunctive cohesive elements to achieve the global discourse coherence while low proficiency writers were less capable of applying the discourse transition words to make the text more globally coherent.

With regard to the comparison of lexical cohesive devices, high proficiency writers used significantly more lexical cohesive devices than low proficiency writers

108

in the exposition, but not in the narration. The results appear to suggest that the expository writing may be a more difficult genre for low proficiency writers to fully express their arguments by applying words with different semantic relationship.

Moreover, writers of different proficiency levels used repetition most in their writing, which may indicate that repetition of the key idea is not only indispensable but also easier for writers to employ in the text. More importantly, it is obvious that high proficiency writers distinguished from low proficiency writers by the employment of the various synonymous words whether in narration or exposition, which further supports the idea that proficiency is the dominant factor that determines the difference in the use of cohesive devices (Chen, 2003; Crowhurst, 1987; Jin, 2001).

Concerning the factor of genres, there were no significant differences in both high and low proficiency level writers’ overall number of cohesive devices between the narrative and expository essays. In spite of this, from the observation of the means, both high and low proficiency level students used more cohesive devices in the narration than in the exposition. In conclusion, for writers of different proficiency levels, no genre difference was found in the total number of cohesive devices and more cohesive devices were found in narration than in exposition. These findings are consistent with the results of the previous studies despite the fact that different subjects and genres were used (Jin, 2001; Norment, 1982, 2002).

With regard to the grammatical cohesive devices in the two genres, high proficiency writers significantly used more grammatical cohesive devices in narration while no significant difference was found in low proficiency writers’ writing between the two genres. In addition, both groups used more pronominal reference in narration than in exposition. The result perhaps reveals that the discourse type may influence the writers’ employment of referential cohesive devices because in narrative writing, the elaboration of characters is indispensable and the development of the story mainly

109

revolves around the characters. Therefore, as the story enfolds, it is necessary to use personal pronouns, either from the first or the third person perspective, in the narrative text. On the other hand, there was also a significant difference in the low proficiency level’s use of conjunction, namely, adversative.

In terms of the total number of lexical cohesive devices, for both groups, there was no significant difference as regards genre differences. Also, repetition was the most frequently-used lexical cohesive devices regarding genre differences. On the other hand, writers of different levels were found to use more antonym in exposition than in narration, which perhaps shows that genres affect the use of antonym because in the expository writing, clarifying or explaining the topic from different sides to support a thesis statement is essential and indispensable. By the employment of the antonym, writers can strengthen the arguments by offering a broader perspective for readers.