Coding Scheme of Cohesive Devices

In order to address the four research questions, all cohesive devices in both high and low proficiency groups’ writing were calculated and analyzed accordingly. The coding scheme for the calculation of cohesive devices includes two major parts—

grammatical and lexical cohesive devices. The grammatical cohesive devices include

9 The two raters are experienced raters teaching writing for many years in National Taiwan Normal University. One of them graded the narrative writing while the other one graded the expository writing.

Both of them assigned the scores based on the same assessment criteria set by TOEFL writing test.

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10 In Halliday and Hasan's model (1976), the first and second personal pronouns were not counted in the cohesive framework. However, in this study, both are counted as cohesive devices because they are indispensable in the narrative writing.

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iii. Causal

so therefore consequently on account of this in consequence with this in mind for because it follows arising out of this

to this end in that case under the circumstances in this respect apart from this in other respects

iv. Temporal

and then next just then before that in the end first…then at first/originally finally/now at once soon next time next day meanwhile until then at this moment up to now at this point from now on

As for the lexical cohesive devices, they include repetition, synonym, antonym and superordinate. The lexical cohesive framework mainly followed Halliday and Hasan’s framework (1973), but some adjustments were made according to Stotsky’s (1983) and Hasan’s (1985) model. Originally, in Halliday and Hasan’s framework;

repetition, synonym, superordinate, general word and collocation were included. In this study, however, collocation was not included because of the lack of clear criteria for collocational judgment (Halliday & Hasan, 1976, Hasan 1985). Even though Stotsky (1983) tried to reformulate the category of collocation by counting words that tend to appear together in texts with similar topics, she was still not able to propose a set of clear-cut criteria. The judgment of collocational cohesion still depended heavily on the reader’s reading experience. Secondly, antonym was added to the analytic framework. Stotsky (1983) doubted what linguistic principles could be employed to classify antonym as collocation, and synonym under the category of reiteration. In Hasan’s 1985 model, she also added antonym to the reiteration and disregarded collocation as cohesive devices.

Thirdly, superordinate and general words were classified as one category.

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According to Halliday and Hasan’s definition of superordinate, the meaning of the superordinate “includes that of the earlier one” or “any item that dominates the earlier one in the lexical taxonomy” (Halliday & Hasan, 1987). And the difference between these two is “degree of generality”. Therefore, it is sometimes difficult to judge whether it is a superordinate or a general word. In view of this difficulty in judging the degree of generality of words, in this research, the entry “general word” is subsumed under the category of superordinate. Further, the semantic relationship of subordinate was categorized into the hierarchical category—superordinate. From Stotsky’s critique, presenting the general idea first followed by the discussion of examples is one of the features of essay writings. Therefore, the inclusion of a cohesive tie by a subordinate item that follows a superordinate one can verify whether different genres will show differences in the writers’ employment of cohesive devices.

Based on the adjustments above, lexical cohesive devices, like grammatical cohesive devices, consist of four categories—repetition, synonym, antonym and superordinate.

1. Repetition: In this category, simple repetition of the same word, words with different grammatical inflections and derivatives are counted as one instance of repetition. For example, walk, walked and walking are counted as one lexical item and are classified as the same word.

2. Synonym: Synonyms are different phonological words which have the same or very similar meanings (Saeed, 1997).

3. Antonym: Words that have the opposite meaning are classified as antonyms like cold/hot, high/low, etc.

4. Superordinate: Superordinate is a relation held between a general class and its sub-classes. In the lexical taxonomy, there are degrees of generality along the scale of the word meaning. Hence, words which include the meaning of the earlier

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ones in the text are classified as superordinate. At the highest end of the scale of generality are words like thing, human, creature. With the companion of the reference item the, they can anaphorically refer to the previous text, which makes them function like a grammatical cohesive device. Therefore, words with the most general meaning have the characteristics of both grammatical and lexical cohesive function and are called general word in Hasan and Halliday’s scheme. In this study, the so-called general word will be incorporated into the category of superordinate.

Aside from this, originally in Halliday and Hasan’s scheme, any item whose meaning anaphorically includes the earlier one is classified as a superordinate. That is, a cohesive tie is created by subordinate plus superordinate. Nevertheless, whether the exchange of the position between superordinate and subordinate constructs a cohesive relation is not discussed (Stotsky, 1983). In this study, it will be counted as cohesive devices as well.