Low Proficiency Group in Narrative and Expository Writing

To address the fourth research question, that is, whether there is any cross-modal difference in low proficiency level students’ use of cohesive devices in narration and exposition, the total number of cohesive devices between the two genres was compared, as shown in Table 59. The low proficiency group had a slightly higher number of cohesive devices in narration than in exposition. Through the application of the t-test, the fact that no significant difference in the use of total cohesive devices existed between the two genres was ascertained, as indicated in Table 60. Second, another t-test was applied to examine whether the number of grammatical or lexical cohesive devices between the two genres had significant difference. The result shows that there was still no significant difference in the low proficiency group’s use of grammatical and lexical cohesive devices between narration and exposition (Table 61).

Table 59

Low Proficiency Group’s Cohesive Devices in Narration and Exposition Low Proficiency Group

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Table 60

Low Proficiency Group’s Cohesive Devices in the Two Genres

Genre N Mean Std. Deviation Std. Error Mean T-value

Note. Gram= Grammatical cohesive devices; Lexicon= Lexical Cohesive devices.

*p < .05.

Third, as shown in Table 62, a complete list of grammatical cohesive devices was made to examine whether there were differences in the subcategories of grammatical cohesive devices in the two genres. Both in narration and exposition, reference has the highest frequency, followed by conjunction, substitution and ellipsis. Further, a t-test was used with the subsequent result showing that there was a significant difference in the low proficiency group’s use of conjunction, as indicated in Table 65. Besides, among the three sub-forms of reference, no significant difference was found apart from in the category of pronominal cohesive device, the result almost reaches significance. (Tables 66-68, See Appendix H, p. 146). In addition, with regard to the four sub-types of the conjunction, only in the category of adversative cohesive device was there a significant difference between the two genres (Tables 69-73, See Appendix H, p. 147-148).

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Table 62

Low Proficiency Group’s Grammatical Cohesive Devices in the Two Genres

Grammatical Cohesion Narration Exposition TOTAL

(N+E)

Low Proficiency Group’s Reference Cohesive Devices in the Two Genres

Genre N Mean Std. Deviation Std. Error Mean T-value Narration 10 31.9000 17.85404 5.64594

Exposition 10 21.0000 7.85988 2.48551

T=1.767 P=.102 Note. *p < .05.

Table 64

Low Proficiency Group’s Substitution in the Two Genres

Genre N Mean Std. Deviation Std. Error Mean T-value

Low Proficiency Group’s Conjunction in the Two Genres

Genre N Mean Std. Deviation Std. Error Mean T-value frequency counts was made, as shown in Table 74. A t-test was applied to determine whether there was a significant difference in the low proficiency group’s use of lexical cohesive devices. The results show there was no significant difference in the low proficiency group’s employment of the lexical cohesive devices between the two genres (Tables 75-78).

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Table 74

Low Proficiency Group’s Lexical Cohesive Devices in the Two Genres

Lexical Cohesion Narration Exposition TOTAL

(N+E)

Low Proficiency Group’s Repetition in the Two Genres

Genre N Mean Std. Deviation Std. Error Mean T-value

Low Proficiency Group’s Synonym in the Two Genres

Genre N Mean Std. Deviation Std. Error Mean T-value

Low Proficiency Group’s Antonym in the Two Genres

Genre N Mean Std. Deviation Std. Error Mean T-value

Low Proficiency Group’s Superordinate in the Two Genres

Genre N Mean Std. Deviation Std. Error Mean T-value

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4.1.6 Summary and Discussion

When comparing the total number of cohesive devices employed by high proficiency groups, it was found that there were no significant differences when it comes to genre differences. In spite of this, from the observation of the means of the total number of cohesive devices used by the high proficiency group in narration and exposition, high proficiency level students used more cohesive devices in narration than in exposition, as indicated in Table 39 (p. 65). Also, through the application of the t-test, the result was very close to being significant (t=1.881, p=.078), which appeared to indicate that the high proficiency group tend to employ more numbers of cohesive devices in narration than in exposition. With regard to the low proficiency level students, no significant difference was found in the total number of cohesive devices between the two genres. Nevertheless, from the observation of the means in the two genres, low proficiency level students also used more cohesive devices in narration than in exposition, as indicated in Table 60 (p. 70). The result seemed to suggest that the low proficiency writers are likely to use more cohesive devices in narration than in exposition. To sum up, for both groups, there were no genre differences in the total number of cohesive devices and more cohesive devices were used in narration than in exposition. These findings are in accordance with the results of previous studies despite the fact that those studies used different subjects or genres (Jin, 2001; Norment, 1982, 2002).

As for the comparison in grammatical cohesive devices concerning the two genres, for high proficiency writers, there was a significant difference in the employment of the grammatical cohesive devices between the two genres; yet, for low proficiency writers, there was no significant difference in the employment of grammatical cohesive devices between the two genres. In addition, when we compared the use of reference, substitution, ellipsis and conjunction in the two genres,

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high proficiency writers showed a significant difference in using reference between the two genres while low proficiency writers showed a significant difference in using adversative conjunction between the two genres.

Furthermore, the sub-form of reference, pronominal reference, was proved to be significantly different for high proficiency writers in writing narration and exposition and the use of pronominal reference was near to significantly different for low proficiency writers, as indicated in Table 64 (p. 71). This may suggest that genre is crucial in composing a coherent writing, for in the narrative writing, referential cohesive devices are much more frequently used because writers need to specify characters and elaborate what happened to the characters in the story (Crowhurst, 1987; Norment, 1982, 2002; Tierney & Mosenthal, 1983). As a result, it is natural to narrate the story from the first or third person perspective by using more pronominal reference I or he/she in the text.

On the other hand, observing the issue in respect of frequency and percentage of reference, substitution, ellipsis and conjunction in high and low proficiency groups’

writing in the two genres, it was found that reference was still the dominant cohesive devices in the high proficiency group’s writing in narration and exposition,, followed by conjunction, substitution and ellipsis. This ordering of grammatical cohesive devices was also observed in the low proficiency group’s writing in the two genres. In addition, the similar frequencies of grammatical cohesive devices occurring in narration and exposition were also found in Norment’s (2002) study. The results of the ordering of grammatical cohesive devices between the two genres enhance the previous findings regarding the lack of impact genre differences have on the frequency of grammatical cohesive devices.

With regard to the comparison of lexical cohesive devices, for both groups, there was no significant difference when it comes to genre differences. For high proficiency

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writers, they used repetition most, followed by synonym, antonym and superordinate when writing in narration and exposition. As for low proficiency writers, like high proficiency writers, repetition was still the dominant lexical cohesive devices used in the two genres. The findings apparently suggest that the use of repetition was not restricted to different genres. Even though the genre or topics may be different, repetition was still the frequently-used cohesive devices. By the employment of repetition, writers can use the same word or words with different grammatical or morphological forms to develop and support the main idea in the text.

On the other hand, although the category, antonym, was not significant when compared in the two genres, from the frequency and means, we can still find that both high and low proficiency writers employed more antonym in the expository writing than in the narrative writing, which probably could be attributed to the nature of the expository writing, because it is common to give arguments from different angles for a particular point of view on a issue to support a thesis in exposition (Hyland, 2004;

Littlefair, 1991; Macken-Horarik, 2002). Therefore, to explain or clarify the topic, more antonym could be found in the exposition because the employment of antonym could strengthen the arguments and provide an opposite view for readers.