Problems of Cohesion and Coherence in Mo
Problems of Cohesion and Coherence in Mo
Problems of Cohesion and Coherence in Mo
ABSTRACT
This study aims at investigating and identifying cohesion and coherence
problems that Moroccan 2nd year baccalaureate classroom students encounter in
written discourse. An overall number of thirty students from two fields of study
(Math Sciences and Economics) participated in the study, producing a total
number of thirty essays. Students’ application of cohesion and coherence were
studied and analyzed based on Halliday and Hasan’s Cohesion in English (1976)
and Oshima and Hogue’s (2006) criteria for achieving coherence. Regarding the
analysis of the corpus, it was discovered that students tend to use more reference
ties, followed by lexical ties and conjunctions. Substitution and ellipsis ties were
scarcely used. Besides, the results clarify that Math Science Students outweigh
their Economic counterparts in using and dealing with cohesion devices. As for
coherence, the findings show slight differences between the two groups in
adhering to coherence techniques. Finally, the study reveals that students lack
important training in using and varying cohesion and coherence linkers.
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Problems of Cohesion and Coherence in Moroccan High School Students’ Writing
Acknowledgement
The completion and realization of this thesis would not have been possible without the
support of my family, my professors, and my friends.
I would also like to thank Dr. Mohammed Larouz for his immense guidance and
generosity throughout two years of thorough studies. Many thanks also go to the
students and teachers whose priceless contribution was the milestone of the study. I am
also grateful to all my friends who attended to my work and provided me with
resourceful materials.
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Problems of Cohesion and Coherence in Moroccan High School Students’ Writing
Dedication
I dedicate this paper to my mother, my wife, my child, my brothers
and sisters and to all my teachers.
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Problems of Cohesion and Coherence in Moroccan High School Students’ Writing
Table of Contents
Abstract ………………………..…….…………………….……………….........I
Acknowledgment ……………………………………...…………………..........II
Dedication ………………...……………………….…….………………….….III
1. Introduction
1.1. Introduction ……………………………………………………...……VIII
1.2. The Rationale …………..………………..………….……………..….VIII
1.3. Importance of the Study ……………………………………..………..IX
1.4. Organization of the Study …………………………………..…..…...…X
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Problems of Cohesion and Coherence in Moroccan High School Students’ Writing
5. General Conclusion
5.1. Summary of the Main Findings………………………………………….LI
5.2. Implications and Recommendations…………………...……………….LII
5.3. Limitations of the Study………………………………….……………LIV
5.4. Suggestion for Further Research………………………………...…….LIV
Appendices
Appendix 1: Cohesion Scoring Scale
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Problems of Cohesion and Coherence in Moroccan High School Students’ Writing
LIST OF TABLES
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Problems of Cohesion and Coherence in Moroccan High School Students’ Writing
INTRODUCTION
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Problems of Cohesion and Coherence in Moroccan High School Students’ Writing
1.1. Introduction
Researchers have long probed the difficulties that EFL learners usually encounter in
writing. Some of the most commonly investigated areas of study in foreign language
writing are cohesion and coherence. According to Halliday and Hasan (1976),
Cohesion involves different grammatical and lexical elements that combine various
parts in written texts as well as between and among sentences. This suggests that
cohesion creates syntactic and lexical relationships through different cohesive ties,
such as the five cohesive categories devised by Halliday and Hasan (1976). As for
coherence, it is broadly viewed as “the relationship that links ideas in a text to create
meaning for readers” (Lee, 2002, as cited in Castro, 2004, p. 216). Coherence then is
constructed as the meaningful interaction that exists between the ideas of a text and the
reader (Castro, 2004).
There is a recurrent belief that EFL students face tremendous problems in writing,
namely in cohesion and coherence. It is believed that when EFL learners write, they
pay more attention to grammatical errors within sentences. They often think that they
will come up with good pieces of writing if their texts are not syntactically deficient.
Such an assumption has been proved wrong, for there is a lot of research (Carrell,
1982, Halliday & Hasan, 1976; Oshima & Hogue, 2006; Renkema, 2009; Taboada,
2004; Tanskanen, 2006) that has asserted the important contribution of cohesive and
coherence linkers in the overall quality of students’ compositions. That is to say,
Cohesive and coherence devices bring sentences, ideas and paragraphs together
meaningfully, as well as construct the overall unity of the text as a whole.
Additionally, students presumably think about cohesion and coherence as hazy
concepts that are difficult to grasp. They also consider them a daunting mission to
accomplish.
With the appearance of Halliday and Hasan’s cohesion theory in 1976,
understanding cohesion and coherence of writing has witnessed a major breakthrough.
They provided a framework that consisted of five types of cohesive devices for
studying and evaluating cohesion and coherence: reference, lexical, conjunction,
substitution, and ellipsis ties. These researchers assert that these ties can be used not
only to examine cohesion, but also to determine the coherence and the general quality
of writing. This view was later confronted by a lot of researchers such as Carrell
(1982) and Brown & and Yule (1983).
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Problems of Cohesion and Coherence in Moroccan High School Students’ Writing
On this basis, this study comes to highlight and examine one of the most common
problematic areas in students’ writing skills; i.e. cohesion and coherence at the
discourse level. They are key rhetorical aspects that specify the correct organization of
written texts. This paper, then, aims at a) investigating 2nd year baccalaureate students’
coherence and cohesion difficulties in writing, b) addressing their instructional and
educational implications, and c) coming up with sustainable recommendations on how
best to help EFL classroom learners develop sufficient awareness and understanding of
coherence and cohesion ties..
The paper will adopt Halliday and Hasan’s (1976) cohesion theory, in which there is
a cohesion taxonomy that is considered a reliable reference in studying cohesive ties.
As for coherence, this study will make use of Oshima and Hogue’s (2006) coherence
conventions in order to evaluate the informants’ use of coherence linkers. As a matter
of fact, students’ cohesion and coherence linkers included in their writing essays are
going to be examined based on Halliday and Hasan’s (1976) cohesion taxonomy and
Oshima and Hogue’s (2006) coherence conventions.
The paper will also center on the following key points that make up the core issues
in the discussion and analysis of cohesion and coherence difficulties that are
encountered by 2nd year baccalaureate students:
a- Explore the problems of cohesion and coherence that students face in writing.
c- Find out about the types of cohesive ties used by baccalaureate students.
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Problems of Cohesion and Coherence in Moroccan High School Students’ Writing
baccalaureate classroom learners. Most of the existing research involves ESL College
writing, whereas EFL writing does not seem to attract substantial investigation.
The introduction highlights the purpose of the study and its important contribution for
the research on cohesion and coherence in Moroccan High School writing. The first
chapter provides and explains the theory governing cohesion and coherence from both
EFL and ESL perspectives. The related literature in the 1st chapter paves the way for
Chapter three (data analysis and interpretation), because it details the foundations and
meanings of cohesive ties and coherence techniques needed in the analysis of data. As
for chapter two, it consists of methodology, data collection and data analysis, and
criteria for evaluating cohesion and coherence in students’ compositions. In chapter
three, there is a thorough discussion and analysis of the findings of the study. Finally,
the thesis concludes with some pedagogical implications and recommendations and
suggestion for further research.
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Problems of Cohesion and Coherence in Moroccan High School Students’ Writing
Chapter One:
Review of the Literature
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Problems of Cohesion and Coherence in Moroccan High School Students’ Writing
Introduction
The following chapter starts with a brief introduction of the history of writing, and
then highlights the definitions of both coherence and cohesion in written discourse. It
also illustrates Halliday and Hasan’s (1976) cohesion taxonomy that is made of two
main categories: grammatical and lexical categories. In addition to this, the researcher
explains the existing relationship between cohesion and coherence and pinpoints the
criticism that is directed towards Halliday and Hasan’s (1976) claim that cohesion
constitutes the basis of coherence in writing. Finally, the chapter ends with various
studies about cohesion and coherence in written discourse.
Actually, there are a number of approaches that provide guidelines for good writing:
the process approach, the product approach, and the functional approach. The process
approach is a process of planning, writing and reviewing. It deals with lexical and
grammatical structures in writing. This was characteristic of the audio-lingual
principles, which made it hard for learners to develop successful writing beyond the
sentence level. So, it was time for another approach: the product approach. It was
primarily concerned with writing at the discourse level. This approach contributed a
great deal to writing, in such a way that it has turned writing into an independent skill,
not dependent on or attached to the other skills (Connor, 1996, as cited in El-Sadig
Ezza, 2010).). The product approach, like the process one, was somehow deficient, for
it was apparently concerned with correctness (Zamel, 1983, as cited in Lina Blanton,
1987).
After these two approaches, came the functional approach. It was considered a
revolution in writing pedagogy, as it put greater emphasis on students’ psychological
functioning. It was also an attempt to do without the socio-cultural context. Following
these changes, a number of approaches, namely the communicative approach,
appeared on the surface. They were in line with the new wave that gave importance to
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Problems of Cohesion and Coherence in Moroccan High School Students’ Writing
Following this brief background, language teachers in writing courses need to take
into their account the existing link between writing and the various language theories,
especially that these theories have a direct impact on enhancing students’ writing skills
(Grabe and Kaplan,1997, as cited in Nguyen Ho Hoang Thuy, 2009),) . These skills
primarily include two of the most common aspects that are problematic in students’
writing: coherence and cohesion.
Coherence is “the outcome of a dialogue between the text and its listener or
reader.” (Tanskanen, 2006). It reinforces the unity of discourse, be it at the sentence,
the paragraph, or at the text level. It is, along with cohesion, a significant criterion that
determines the quality of students’ written texts. Without it, a written text cannot be
properly a text (Hatch, 1992, as cited in Nguyen Thi Le Hang & Le Pham Hoai
Huong, 2012). This explains that coherence, through rhetorical devices, establishes
order and unity in a given discourse.
In order to help students write a coherent text, there are several techniques that need
to be followed to achieve a coherent discourse. They are derived from Oshima and
Hogue (2006). The first one is to use consistent pronouns. They claim that pronouns
should be connected to the same person and number in the text. The second technique
concerns transition signals that are said to add a special meaning to the text; here are
some of them:
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Problems of Cohesion and Coherence in Moroccan High School Students’ Writing
Halliday and Hasan’s Cohesion in English is undoubtedly the primary reference for
understanding cohesion. According to these researchers, cohesion or cohesive ties
determine whether a set of sentences make a text. To them, a text is conceived of as
“any passage, spoken or written, of whatever length, that does form a unified whole”.
This leads to the creation of ‘texture’, which entails that the texture of a text is
established by the cohesive ties that the latter includes. In considering the following
example ‘Peter made a delicious meal. He cooks spaghetti’ it appears that, in these
sentences, cohesion is achieved through the cohesive device that connects the
presupposing item (the pronoun he in the second sentence) with the presupposed one
(Peter in the first sentence) across the two sentences. This is a signification of how
cohesive devices can form meaningful relationships between sentences and distinguish
a text from a set of isolated sentences.
Halliday and Hasan (1976) put forth a set of cohesive taxonomy that constitutes
various types. They are divided into grammatical (reference, substitution, ellipsis, and
conjunction) and lexical cohesion (reiteration and collocation).
a- Reference Cohesion
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Problems of Cohesion and Coherence in Moroccan High School Students’ Writing
b- Substitution
Nominal substitution
Nominal substitution is about replacing nouns by one, ones or same, as in this
example:
Verbal substitution
Verbal substitution is attributed to the process of replacing verbs with do, did, and
several other auxiliary verbs, for example:
Clausal Substitution
Clausal substitution explains the replacement of a clause by so or not, as in:
c- Ellipsis
Ellipsis stands for the process of omitting an item (a word or a phrase) in a text or
discourse, or substituting it by ‘zero’ or nothing. It usually takes place when there is a
structure that may not be needed. Ellipsis has three aspects: nominal ellipsis, verbal
ellipsis, and clausal ellipsis.
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Problems of Cohesion and Coherence in Moroccan High School Students’ Writing
Nominal Ellipsis
Although the noun is omitted in nominal ellipsis, the text meaning does not change,
because it can be quickly derived and understood from the context, as explained in:
I think we have enough materials, but we need more
The plural noun materials is omitted in the second part of the sentence. The meaning
can still be understood without difficulty.
Verbal Ellipsis
The verb is omitted, but it can be understood quite easily:
Clausal Ellipsis
Clausal ellipsis concerns the omission of a whole clause, as shown in the following:
d- Conjunction
The company has lost most of its indexes; however, it still gains significant annual
profits.
The adversative conjunction however brings the two clauses together, indicating that
there is a sequential order of ideas, actions, or events.
Together with reference, conjunction is said to be the mostly used by language
learners, and it is the cohesive type in which a myriad of problems occur. As
mentioned in Brown and Yule (1983), Halliday and Hasan differentiate between four
types of cohesion by conjunction:
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Problems of Cohesion and Coherence in Moroccan High School Students’ Writing
In Halliday and Hasan (1976), lexical cohesion involves two main types: reiteration
and collocation. Reiteration is a “form of lexical cohesion which involves the
repetition of a lexical item, [and] the use of a general word to refer back to a lexical
item” (ibid., p.278). In this manner, reiteration creates relationships and continuity
within a text by means of repetition, synonym, hyponymy, and general word, as
illustrated in:
The words new and medieval express an antonym that explains a semantic paradox
between something new but medieval.
Collocation is a type of lexical cohesion that “is achieved through the association of
lexical items that regularly co-occur” (ibid., p. 286). In other words, it deals with
words or items that occur with each other.
It can be deduced from this taxonomy that Halliday and Hasan’s (1976) cohesion types
represent a reference for studying cohesion.
Halliday and Hasan’s (1976) cohesion theory states that cohesion is the basis for
coherence in written texts. They claim, as mentioned in Tanskanen (2006), that
grammatical and lexical devices become cohesive when they are interpreted through
their relations to other elements in the text. Tanskanen illustrates that they have given
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Problems of Cohesion and Coherence in Moroccan High School Students’ Writing
They have been severely criticized for this by several researchers. They emphasize
that cohesion alone cannot create unity in a text. In here influential article “Cohesion is
not Coherence” (1982), Carrell says that cohesion is not the essence of coherence. She
contends that a text can be coherent, but not necessarily cohesive. Following the
example ‘the picnic was ruined, no one remembered to bring the corkscrew’, Carrell
explains that coherence in this example is not achieved by cohesive elements of the
‘picnic’ and ‘the corkscrew’, but rather by the reader’s ‘schema’ of picnic. This brings
to light the schema theory that states that cohesive ties can be noticed only when
coherence is accomplished in the text. Therefore, coherence is likely to be observed
before cohesion, because we normally conceptualize and think about the coherence of
texts, which is built based on the common cultural knowledge of the writer and reader,
before we consider texts’ cohesive properties.
Morgan and Sellner (1980), as reported in Castro (2004), also criticized Halliday
and Hasan for claiming that coherence of content does not appear to make a text
coherent, and that for a text to be coherent there should be certain cohesive elements in
it (Morgan and Sellner; as cited in Castro, 2004). They actually stress the significant
role of content in texts, claiming that cohesion heavily involves content.
From their part, McClure and Steffensen (1980) explored the influence of cohesive
links and background knowledge over students’ reading of short texts. The students
were given several passages in their own culture and in a foreign one. They were asked
to read different passages and write about what they have recalled. After investigating
the passages, McClure and Steffensen discovered that students were able to recall
some cohesive links in their native culture more than in the foreign one. The outcome
revealed that textual cohesion may be lost if students’ background knowledge is far
removed from that of the assumed text.
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Problems of Cohesion and Coherence in Moroccan High School Students’ Writing
The discussions ended last week. A week has seven days. Every day I feed my cat. Cats
have four legs. The cat is on the mat. Mat has three letters.
Enkvist shows that text unity cannot be established if there is no coherence between
the propositions.
Widdowson (1978) (as cited in Tanskanen, 2006, p.28) believes that a text can also
be coherent even if it may not be cohesive. He says that when we engage in a
discourse, we express a proposition, and, through this proposition, we perform an
illocutionary act. According to Widdowson, the communicative value of a sentence
depends on whether it carries a proposition, and this is what makes a cohesive
discourse. And if the reader is unable to identify cohesive devices in a discourse, then
he/she can resort to covert propositional links to make sense of the text. Widdowson
provides an example to show that a text can be coherent although there may be no
cohesive links:
The three utterances are not attached by any cohesive tie. If each utterance is signaled
out individually, it just does not make any sense. However, ‘that’s the telephone’ is
taken to be a request to answer the phone, whereas ‘I’m in the bath’ is considered a
replay that is meant to be an excuse for not answering the phone. Hence, the non-
cohesive dialogue does indeed bear a communicative objective, which ultimately
explains its coherence.
In a similar regard, Brown and Yule (1983) emphasize the existence of coherence in
order to come up with a meaningful text. They contend that ’meaning relations’ are
important in identifying texts; relying on cohesive elements is not the only option.
They illustrate that when we read texts, we quickly conceptualize ‘semantic relations’.
So, cohesion only does not appear to be the only source for making sense of a
discourse.
The relationship between coherence and cohesion reveals the diversity of opinions
towards the importance of cohesion and coherence in written discourse. Both of them
are key elements in the development and construction of readable sentences and texts.
Cohesion, on the one hand, establishes grammatical and lexical links between written
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Problems of Cohesion and Coherence in Moroccan High School Students’ Writing
ideas. Coherence, on the other hand, creates semantic build-up within and among those
connected ideas. No matter how disputable it may be, it can be deduced that each one
complements the other. The most comprehensible written discourse is the one that is
both cohesive and coherent. But we can say that cohesion and coherence are less
dependent on one another in spoken dialogues, as previously argued by Widdowson
(1978).
Derrick and Gmuca (1986), as reported in Kamel (1989), studied unity and sentence
structure among Malay, Arabic, and Spanish language learners. The result of the study
demonstrated that Arab EFL students had more difficulties than their Malay and
Spanish counterparts. Following this study, Arab speaking students face substantial
problems in coherence. They appear to use less factual statements – that normally
support writer’s opinions – and more elaboration and redundancy.
Khalil (1989) studies cohesion and coherence in Arab EFL college students'
writing. He investigated the relationship between cohesion and coherence in twenty
compositions written by Arab EFL students. Multiple correlation statistics was used to
test the relationship between cohesion and coherence. The results of the study revealed
that there was a weak correlation between cohesion and cohesion in students’ essays.
Khalil also discovered that Arab students overused lexical reiteration, but underused
other lexical and grammatical cohesive devices.
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Problems of Cohesion and Coherence in Moroccan High School Students’ Writing
Aljarf (2001) examined the difficulties that EFL Saudi college students encounter in
processing four cohesion elements: reference, substitution, conjunction, and ellipsis. In
this study, students were provided with a text and asked to identify its cohesive ties
and write a substitute for each anaphor. In addition to this, students were required to
categorize the various conjunctions used in the text and come up with the necessary
items that are part of ellipsis. After analyzing the correct and incorrect responses, the
researcher found out that the majority of students had serious difficulty processing
substitution, reference, and ellipsis devices. On the other hand, it was discovered that
they did have not singnificant problems in working with conjunctions, which appeared
to be the easiest cohesive tie.
Carolyn D. Castro (2004) compared the degree of cohesion and coherence in thirty
essays written by Filipino college freshmen. She analyzed the presence of the social
construction of meaning in students’ writing. She discovered that low level, mid level,
and high level essays were all equal in using grammatical cohesive devices, whereas
lexical repetition and synonyms represented the most widely used techniques in
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Problems of Cohesion and Coherence in Moroccan High School Students’ Writing
achieving cohesion. The findings revealed that second language writers, who belong to
similar socio-cultural backgrounds, utilize the same textual and linguistic techniques in
meaning construction.
Summary
The chapter explained and exemplified, in detail, Halliday and Hasan’s cohesion
taxonomy. It categorized it into its main types and sub-types. It also set a lot of studies
that deal with the relationship between cohesion and coherence, on the one hand, and
explore language learners’ use of cohesion and coherence on the other hand.
The following chapter will introduce the methodology adopted by the researcher in
this study in order to investigate Moroccan students’ problems in cohesion and
coherence in writing.
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Problems of Cohesion and Coherence in Moroccan High School Students’ Writing
Chapter two:
Methodology
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Problems of Cohesion and Coherence in Moroccan High School Students’ Writing
Introduction
The present study investigates the types of cohesion and coherence ties that
Moroccan EFL students use in writing and the problems they encounter in dealing
with them. To this end, Halliday and Hasan’s (1976) cohesion theory as well as
Oshima and Hogue’s (2006) set of coherence conventions will be adopted. This study
is due to explore the following:
This chapter states and describes the methodology used by the researcher, the
participants taking part in the study, the data analysis, and the criteria employed by the
researcher to evaluate students’ cohesion and coherence techniques.
3.2. Participants
The participants are 30 students in 2 high school classes, with 15 students from each
class. All of them are in second year baccalaureate, but from different fields of study:
Math Sciences and Economics. These fields are randomly selected to be
representatives of all baccalaureate students from other fields. Therefore, the
participants can be considered as representatives of the 2nd year baccalaureate students
in Kenitra.
The following table includes information about participants, their classes and schools:
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Problems of Cohesion and Coherence in Moroccan High School Students’ Writing
Number of
Schools City Students
15
Abderahman Nacer High School Kenitra
The following are Halliday and Hasan’s (1976) criteria for studying cohesion:
The following are Oshima and Hogue’s (2006) conventions for achieving coherence
that will be taken as a reference for studying coherence in students’ writing:
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Problems of Cohesion and Coherence in Moroccan High School Students’ Writing
Based on the research questions above, the following hypotheses are going to be
investigated:
Summary
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Problems of Cohesion and Coherence in Moroccan High School Students’ Writing
This chapter explains the methodology and the procedures that are applied to carry
out the study. There will be 30 participants from two different High Schools. The data
will be 30 essays written by the same participants and corrected by their classroom
teachers in terms of the use of cohesive ties and coherence techniques. In the following
section, the analysis and interpretation of the given data will be discussed in great
length.
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Problems of Cohesion and Coherence in Moroccan High School Students’ Writing
Chapter Three:
Data Analysis and
Interpretation
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Problems of Cohesion and Coherence in Moroccan High School Students’ Writing
Introduction
This chapter delves into the type and quantity of cohesive elements students in Math
Sciences and Economics use in writing. Numbers and percentages about cohesion and
coherence devices obtained from students’ essays will be presented to consolidate the
findings. They will be analyzed, discussed and commented on. They will then be
compared in order to see whether the number of cohesive ties used by students has any
relationship with the scores obtained by them.
Introduction
The High School students who participated in this research belong to two different
fields of study in the high school level:
a- Math Sciences
b- Economics
Thirty compositions were collected from each field of study. Practicing English
teachers from two different High Schools asked their students to write an essay on
different topics. The total number of written essays is thirty, equaling the number of
students-participants.
After teachers corrected their students’ writings, it was discovered that Math
Sciences students scored higher than Economics students. The objective behind this is
to study the types and amount of cohesive devices that students use more in their
writings and their respective scores.
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Problems of Cohesion and Coherence in Moroccan High School Students’ Writing
Substitution 4 0,41%
Ellipsis 1 0,10%
The corpus in this field of study appears to have extensive cohesive elements.
Reference ties are amongst the most common ties in students’ essays, particularly
personal pronouns that are highly recurrent: (220 pronouns). The number of relative
pronouns is also very reasonable: (55 counts). Most of students are aware of how best
to use relative pronouns. Let us consider this example:
‘The first thing that I want you to know is that education is one of the most
important things in our life because it gives us more information, which shows the
right way.’
This example shows that personal and demonstrative reference ties (I, that, the, our,)
are correctly used in the sentence.
What is special about this group is that a lot of students can use and correctly
manipulate comparative adjectives and adverbs, as in the following examples:
“You know, your future won’t be better if you don’t complete your studies.”
“You should know that you’re going to suffer because you will have more
problems.”
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Problems of Cohesion and Coherence in Moroccan High School Students’ Writing
As for lexical cohesion, it was considerably present in this group’s written texts.
Most of the repeated words involve personal pronouns, personal determiners,
demonstrative pronouns, and the conjunction ‘and’ (70 counts). The following is an
example:
“I was worried when I read your letter. I’m sorry for your father. I know he is dead
“You’re smart and you have just three years of hard work and then you will enjoy
and relax.”
In addition, one of the mostly repeated lexical items used by this group is the pronoun
’you’. In this way, students made their writing more personal and subjective, for they
used fewer third person pronouns. Here are some examples:
“I know that you are going through a hard time in your school, and you are very
exhausted”
“I know that you suffer due to the problems that you have, but you must take care of
your future.”
Indeed, this is not everything about lexical repetition. There are also other cases
where students use the same word more than once, which obviously means that L1
conventions are transferred into their English, as in:
“I heard about your last decision, and I want to tell you that the decision is a
mistake.”
According to Hoey (1991), Lexical cohesion, which includes repetition, is the most
widely used cohesive device. He said that “lexical cohesion becomes the dominant
mode of creating texture.” (Hoey, 1991; as cited in Tanskanen, 2006). He further
explains his claim by comparing the frequency of repetition to reference, conjunction,
substitution, and ellipsis. He also stresses that lexical cohesion is essential in
establishing cohesion, because it reduces ambiguity between sentences.
What is important again in this group of Math Sciences is the presence of - albeit in a
small number - synonyms and antonyms. This does not only represent the amount and
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Problems of Cohesion and Coherence in Moroccan High School Students’ Writing
diversity of their cohesive devices, but also their ability to play with words and avoid
redundant repetition, as in this example:
“Motivation can come from seeing the bad situation of other poor children who
“You should know that you’re going to suffer, because you will have more
problems as in our country if you don’t have a good degree, you can’t do anything
and you can’t have a good job. Moreover, I guess that you forgot your objective of
becoming a doctor.”
Yet, a number of other students still find problems with the additive ‘and’, which they
overused. This is to say that they try to make a sequence and refer to previous clauses,
as in:
“If you study hard, you can have a good job and you can help your family with your
own money and you will learn the skills that you will need in your life.”
It should be noted that coherence techniques and applications adopted by the two
groups are going to be analyzed later in this chapter.
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Problems of Cohesion and Coherence in Moroccan High School Students’ Writing
Substitution 3 0,43%
Ellipsis 1 0,14%
This group of students is not greatly different from the Math Sciences group. It can
be easily observed, based on the results, that these students did include in their
writings a significant variety of conjunctions, ranging from Additive (84 counts),
causal (30 counts), temporal (10 counts), to adversative conjunctions (27 counts), as
shown in the following table:
Table 4: Conjunctive ties in the Economics group
Conjunctive Ties
Additive Adversative Temporal Causal
Conjunctions Conjunctions Conjunctions Conjunctions
82 27 10 15
In fact, the number of additive and causal links was more than the number of
adversative and temporal ties, as in the following:
“On the other side, there are some people who are against. First they think that who
‘kill’ can change and ‘become’ a better person than he was. Second they prefer to
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Problems of Cohesion and Coherence in Moroccan High School Students’ Writing
punish him in order not to kill and give him another chance.”
The use of additive and causal ties in the above example explains the students’
intention to build a logical connection between what has been mentioned in previous
sequences. It is also a good technique that allows them to move from one sequence to
another.
Concerning synonyms, they were counted 6 times, while antonyms were scarcely used.
Here is an example:
There is a greater use of lexical ties, particularly reiteration. Connor posits that “The
ESL students have high percentages of lexical reiteration” (Connor, 1984, as cited in
Khalil, 1989). Indeed, the number of repeated words counted is extensively more than
other lexical cohesive items like relative pronouns, synonyms and antonyms. Besides,
comparative adjectives / adverbs are not commonly found. Let us consider the
following:
“Killing is forbidden in our religion and the person who kills must be killed too, and
“They can just begin to revise their lessons earlier and spend time on preparing
These two examples show that this student, like many others in his group, uses
repeated vocabulary to create a logical connection between his ideas. If repetition is
considerably present throughout students’ essays, antonyms and synonyms, even if
their number of occurrence is higher than Math Sciences, are hardly encountered, as in
the following:
“In our religion it’s stated that only god has the right to give and take life.”
The analysis of the corpus in Economics group illustrates that reference ties are more
than lexical ones. Students of Economics focus on personal pronouns and
demonstrative determiners more than other reference cohesive devices. Most of the
pronouns represent the distance between the anaphor and the referent (Al-Jarf, 2001),
as in the following examples:
“We mustn’t accept that because this is not something you can see or you can hear.”
“It’s unacceptable to kill a human no matter what his crime. That is totally against
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Problems of Cohesion and Coherence in Moroccan High School Students’ Writing
the human right, and especially if he has a family, because they will suffer too.”
As in Math Sciences, substitution and ellipsis are too limited. It is difficult to come
across some of them. Substitution was encountered only three times, while ellipsis was
almost absent:
“All the world is looking for peace. To get this one, we should stop killing each
other.”
Generally, it can be said that most Economics students fail to come up with
cohesive essays for they had little lexical variety. They relied more on reiteration and
repetition of whole sets of expressions. Their non-cohesive texts also result from their
inability to adhere to the coherence criteria set by Oshima and Hogue (2006).
4.2. Testing the correlation between students’ writing scores and the
cohesive ties used
The analysis of the corpus in this group of students shows that the number of
cohesive ties used by Math Science students does not match the given scores. There is
an extensive discrepancy among individual students in terms of the scores obtained
and the quantity of ties used.
In this regard, the correlation between the scores students obtained in the
administered written tests and their use of cohesion ties was tested by Pearson
correlation statistics. The number of cohesive ties identified in each of the students’
written texts was correlated with the respective grades given by their classroom
teachers. The following table summarizes students’ total number of ties and the scores
they had for each composition.
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Problems of Cohesion and Coherence in Moroccan High School Students’ Writing
2 60 7,00
3 68 6,00
4 48 5,00
5 72 5,00
6 97 5,00
7 84 5,00
8 67 7,00
9 71 5,00
10 86 6,00
11 43 5,00
12 36 6,00
13 68 7,00
14 90 7,00
15 38 5,00
After analyzing the figures above on the SPSS statistical package, the resulting
correlation coefficient is r = 0, 185, as shown in this table:
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Problems of Cohesion and Coherence in Moroccan High School Students’ Writing
This little figure explains that there is a very weak correlation between the two
variables. This denotes that a text that includes cohesive ties, regardless of their
quantity, cannot necessarily get high scoring. Let us consider some cases:
Student number 2 had a relatively high mark (7/10) even if he used only 60 cohesive
ties.
Student 6 used 97 ties, more than his classmate, but he got no more than 5/10.
The examples demonstrate that a student can obtain a high writing score although he
may have very few cohesive ties, and vice versa. This means that the number of
cohesive ties that students have in their essays does not affect writing scores.
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Problems of Cohesion and Coherence in Moroccan High School Students’ Writing
38
Problems of Cohesion and Coherence in Moroccan High School Students’ Writing
The next section highlights the relationship between the two groups under study: Math
Sciences and Economics students
Based on analyzing students’ use of different reference ties, it can be argued that
personal pronouns are the most widely present throughout their essays. Math Sciences
have the biggest number of personal pronouns, with a total number of 220 pronouns.
Let us see some examples from both groups:
“I think that the cause of cheating is the way we study, because you can find that
every class consists of at least 40 students and no one is interested, after that you
“I was worried when I read your letter. I’m sorry for your father. I know that he is
dead now and you have to work for your family. Your family is suffering of
course.”
It seems that anaphoric pronouns, which are consistent in many of the students’ essays,
outnumber ‘cataphoric’ ones. Students usually find it easier to refer to previous
sequences or expression using anaphoric pronouns.
Personal determiners, demonstrative determiners, and relative pronouns were also used
by all groups with precarious balance. Math sciences and Economics appear to be
similar in using relative pronouns (55 and 60 counts respectively).
What is common in most of the students’ essays is that comparative adjectives and
comparative adverbs are the least used namely in Economics. Math Sciences
respondents seem to be able to include some comparative adjectives, such as more,
better, older, etc.
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Problems of Cohesion and Coherence in Moroccan High School Students’ Writing
The students’ use of lexical ties is centered on reiteration. Although most of Math
Sciences’ compositions are better in quality and quantity, they have more reiteration
than the other group. Most of their repetitions revolve around personal and possessive
pronouns, which did not affect the general quality of their writing.
Equally important, Economics students used less repetition and redundancy. They had
more synonyms and antonyms, instead, than Math sciences. However, this did not help
them get better scores.
It should also be noted that the repetition of the additive ‘and’, along with a wide
range of conjunctions, constitute a major part of the groups’ lexical cohesive ties. As
for collocation and hyponymy, there were rare examples in both classes.
“I have tried to solve this bad habit but I found it very difficult and my parents
aren’t satisfied with this. Of course I don’t want to lose my relation with my parents
The analysis of the corpus illustrates that the additive ‘and’ is constantly used by
students in a bigger quantity. It is a common fact that is shared by all students:
Economics (59 counts) and Math Sciences (50 times). Adversative and causal
elements follow additives in quantity. Math students have more causal (22 counts) and
adversative (19 counts) conjunctions than their Economics counterparts (12 items).
Temporal ties are also used by both groups but in very few cases.
The following table summarizes the percentage of all cohesive ties used by Math
Sciences and Economics group:
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Problems of Cohesion and Coherence in Moroccan High School Students’ Writing
relationship with the number of cohesive devices used by students. Therefore, the use
of cohesive ties does not affect writing scores. There are other components that
contribute to that result and that have nothing to do with cohesion.
Although the respondents belonging to Math Sciences did not use enough
conjunctions and linking words, they got higher marks. Their essays are full of
referents (namely personal pronouns) and anaphoric elements, which are then repeated
extensively. Besides, they used very few synonyms and antonyms, let alone
substitution and ellipsis. This category of students is literally believed to have a high
level in almost all school subjects, which implies that they can correctly handle the
cohesive ties at their disposal even if those devices may not be sufficient. Moreover,
what is distinctive in most of their essays is the correct use of grammar and the smooth
flow of ideas, which appear to be logically connected to one another. The following is
an example from one of their essays:
“What’s the aim we all look for: being respected! Besides, if we all make up
excuses to drop out, the schools would be empty, so there is no convincing reason
Such an added value does not generally exist in most essays written by students in
Economics. They seem to have used more conjunctions and less repetition, and still
they got the least grades, though they included more vocabulary. The reason does not
have to do with their inability to make good use of existing conjunctions, but it has
more to do with their apparently weaker grammatical competence, as in the following:
“At second, there’s many criminals who killed innocent people, and they spend 15
or 20 years in gail, but when they get outside they revenge from the victim family.”
It can be deduced from the analysis and the results of the corpus that students in Math
Sciences and Economics have the following common problems in cohesion:
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Problems of Cohesion and Coherence in Moroccan High School Students’ Writing
4.4.1. They excessively used and misused the conjunctive additive ‘and’
In both groups of students, there are a lot of cases where students exaggerated and
misused ‘and’. Here are two instances from the data:
“You don’t have any reason to give up studying, and you know your future better if
you don’t complete your study. Don’t forget that your family counts on you, and
‘she waiting’ the end of the year to see the result of your and their effort.”
“The death penalty is an order ‘who’ came from the judge and is actually said this
‘order for a man or a woman who killed somebody and the death penalty is a
The examples include situations where students transfer the application of ‘and’ from
Arabic into English. In addition to this, instead of using other connectives, they kept
repeating the coordinator ‘and’ over and over, making their sentences look awkward.
Reiteration is a constant issue in students’ writings. In his study about cohesion and
coherence in Arab EFL College students’ writings, Khalil (1989) found that repetition
of the same word is highly overused. The two groups under study have similarly
produced the same problem, especially Economics students. A lot of their reiteration
involves similar words, as in the following:
“The death penalty is something that many people do not have a clear decision on.
Many people support the death penalty, while others wish for the death penalty to
be abolished, and there are some that support the death penalty.”
‘Death penalty’ is repeated above four times. Such a problem occurs as a result of
students carrying over their L1 linguistic conventions into English. They negatively
transfer repetition, which is one of the main features of Arabic rhetoric, into English
writing.
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Problems of Cohesion and Coherence in Moroccan High School Students’ Writing
The two groups have encountered problems of references, which in turn created non-
cohesive and incoherent sentences and ideas. Most of the weaknesses in this area came
from Math Sciences group. Some examples of wrong reference are given below:
Don’t forget that your family counts on you, and she waiting... .
In the first example, instead of using the correct plural pronoun ‘they’ that refers to
languages, the student wrongly used the third person singular ‘it’. In the second
example, it is the same thing happened.
There were also examples where students did have the presupposing items, but with no
presupposed ones:
The student did not include the presupposed item ‘it’ that should normally follow verb
‘think about’; therefore it will look like this:
Introduction
Following Oshima and Hogue’s (2006) conventions of coherence achievement, it is
observed that students in the two groups seem to have substantial differences in
building coherent texts. A lot of them successfully followed and properly managed to
apply the criteria under study, while others did not.
To start with, key pronouns should be repeated and have a clear relation to the same
person and number in text. There should also be transitions that are well included and
that link ideas together meaningfully. Finally, another important technique is to
construct logically connected ideas that flow from one to another without interruption.
In this part, the researcher provides detailed and exemplified analysis of the
Economics and Math Sciences’ uses of the coherence techniques that are proposed by
Oshima and Hogue (2006).
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Problems of Cohesion and Coherence in Moroccan High School Students’ Writing
The group of respondents who apply coherence techniques better are Math Sciences
students. Obviously, more than half of their written tests are in line with Oshima and
Hogue’s coherence elements. Most of the pronouns they used are consistent and they
are appropriately used as referents, as in the following:
“I know you have a big problem with study, but every problem ‘have’ a solution,
that’s why you should think a lot before taking this bad decision.”
Furthermore, many students in this group succeeded in smoothly moving from one
idea to another through several transition signals, as shown in this example:
“The first thing you should know, without education you can’t be successful in your
44
Problems of Cohesion and Coherence in Moroccan High School Students’ Writing
The student here has two transitions: the ‘first thing’ and ‘another thing’. He managed
then to give meaning to his idea and establish transition between various sequences.
“Well you told me that you wanted to drop out of school just to have a new life and
leave all problems of school, but I’m sure you don’t know the value of education
The student repeated the key pronoun school, used a consistent one you, used exact
and adequate conjunctions, and found no difficulty moving from a sentence to another.
4.5.2. Testing the correlation between students’ number of cohesive ties and
coherence scores in the Math Sciences group
Analyzing Pearson correlation between students’ number of cohesive ties and their
corresponding coherence scores show a negative correlation between the two variables
(r = - 0, 272) as in this table:
Such a result, in fact, suggests that the coherence scores students have are not in
harmony with the number of cohesive devices they used in their compositions. As
shown in the following table, student number 15 had fewer linkers (38), but a higher
coherence grade (4 out of 4), while composition No. 7 had 84 devices, but received a
minor grade, 3 out of 4.
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Problems of Cohesion and Coherence in Moroccan High School Students’ Writing
Table 11: Number of cohesive ties and coherence scores in Math Sciences
Coherence Scores
3,00 4,00 Total
Number of 36,00 0 1 1
Ties 38,00 0 1 1
43,00 0 1 1
48,00 0 2 2
60,00 0 1 1
67,00 0 1 1
68,00 0 2 2
71,00 0 1 1
72,00 1 0 1
84,00 1 0 1
86,00 0 1 1
90,00 0 1 1
97,00 0 1 1
Total 2 13 15
So, it can be confirmed that the application of cohesive ties does not always contribute
to coherence in writing.
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Problems of Cohesion and Coherence in Moroccan High School Students’ Writing
This group’s essays are less coherent. 7 essays out of 15 are less coherent, while 1 is
totally incoherent. The number or type of cohesive ties used has nothing to do with the
scores obtained. Despite the fact that their conjunctions outnumber those of Math
Sciences in quantity and variety, they failed to get the expected results. So, this does
not always lead to cohesion.
Indeed, the improper application of a number of conjunctions did not allow students to
come up with effective transitions between ideas, as in this example:
“The death penalty is firstly an order that came from the judge. And is actually said
this order for a man or a woman who killed somebody. And the death penalty is
47
Problems of Cohesion and Coherence in Moroccan High School Students’ Writing
The above example shows that the incorrect use of the conjunction ‘and’ did not allow
the student to meaningfully link between his ideas, therefore, he failed to arrange them
in order.
Actually, there are several cases where students were unable to properly create logical
connection between their sentences. Here is another example:
“This is the only way we didn’t try before. For this reason, the totality of countries
killed.”
4.5.4. Testing the correlation between students’ number of cohesive ties and
coherence scores in Economics
The table below shows the number of cohesive ties that each student has in his / her
essay and the score they received in coherence. Grading coherence follows Oshima
and Hogue’s four criteria for achieving coherence (repeating key nouns, using
consistent pronouns, using transition signals, arranging ideas in logical order); so
grading is limited to 4/4.
Table13: Number of cohesive ties and coherence scores in Economics
Coherence Scores
1,00 1,90 2,00 2,15 2,75 3,15 3,75 4,00 Total
Number 31,00 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1
of Ties 33,00 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1
36,00 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 2
41,00 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1
45,00 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 3
46,00 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1
47,00 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1
49,00 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1
52,00 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1
54,00 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
64,00 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1
70,00 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1
Total 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 7 15
The table demonstrates many differences between the two variables. In considering
one of the most coherent essays (No. 4), it can be noticed that the student used 33
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Problems of Cohesion and Coherence in Moroccan High School Students’ Writing
cohesive ties only, whereas one of the least coherent (No. 13) had 54 cohesive devices.
This implies that cohesion does not always lead to coherence, and that the number of
ties that exist in compositions may have little to do with coherence. Consequently, the
correlation between the two variables seems to be very weak, as it is confirmed by the
resulting correlation coefficient (r= 0,213) in the table below:
Yet, there are other students whose written texts were both cohesive and coherent, as
in numbers 10, 11, and 12. However, the above results indicate that the use of cohesive
ties in writing does not strongly affect coherence.
Summary
This chapter has analyzed and discussed the problem of cohesive ties and coherence
techniques in students’ essays. It has tested the relationship between the number of
cohesion and coherence linkers in each composition and the respective score given to
students by their teachers. There was also a correlation testing between the number of
cohesive devices and coherence scoring. The chapter additionally compared between
the two groups under study in order to fully answer the research questions and
ultimately confirm or disconfirm its hypotheses.
It was discovered, in this regard, that the type and quantity of cohesive devices
employed by second year baccalaureate EFL learners have weak correlation with the
grades they got in their English written tests. The relationship between the number of
cohesive elements and coherence grades was also tested, showing weak correlation
between the two variables. The results were confirmed by the SPSS multiple
correlation statistic.
49
Problems of Cohesion and Coherence in Moroccan High School Students’ Writing
General Conclusion
50
Problems of Cohesion and Coherence in Moroccan High School Students’ Writing
This chapter summarizes the findings that were discovered in this study, and suggests
some pedagogical implications and recommendations for EFl teachers on how to boost
students’ knowledge of cohesion and coherence in writing.
The analysis of the data has clarified that Moroccan 2nd year baccalaureate students
have significant imperfections in the use of cohesive ties and coherence techniques, as
suggested by both Halliday & Hasan (1976) and Oshima & Hogue (2006) respectively.
The analysis has also shown that the type and quantity of cohesive ties used by
students do not strongly affect the scores they receive in writing. In coherence, it was
discovered that students’ application of coherence linkers do not necessarily lead to
cohesion.
As seen in chapter three, Math Science and Economics students used various cohesive
devices, but obtained different writing scores. They mainly had lexical, reference, and
conjunctive ties in their essays. In both groups, reference ties were the dominant type:
45 % in Math Sciences and 40 % in Economics group. The second mostly used type
was lexical devices: 36 % in Math Sciences and 29,74 % In Economics group.
Conjunctions came in the third place with 17 % and 29, 31 % in Math Sciences and
Economics group respectively. The least cohesive techniques used were substitution,
whereas ellipsis ties were rarely encountered in students’ essays.
Given the fact that students used such cohesive linkers, it might presumably be
believed that they would get good scores in writing. However, that was not the case.
There were a lot of examples where students used fewer cohesive devices than others,
but scored higher. There were also examples where some students had many cohesive
ties, but scored lower than others who had fewer ties. These results prove that the
relationship between the use of cohesive devices and writing scores is not systematic;
meaning that cohesive techniques cannot strongly affect writing scores.
Concerning coherence, the two groups (Math Sciences and Economics) made use of a
number of coherence techniques, such as repeating key nouns, using consistent
pronouns, using transition signals, and arranging ideas in a logical order. Following
the application of these linkers, students received scores that were different from a
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Problems of Cohesion and Coherence in Moroccan High School Students’ Writing
student to another. The students who properly had all these techniques obtained good
coherence scores: 4/4. Such a correct use of coherence techniques was believed to
correlate with the number of cohesive devices used in students’ essays, but it was
found out that coherent essays are not always cohesive. Many students had 4/4 as a
coherence score, but their writings included fewer cohesive ties. Thus, it can be
confirmed that cohesion does not always contribute to coherence.
From another perspective, Math Science students are considered high level classroom
learners. This implies that they were able to use a wider variety of cohesive devices.
They had more reference ties and a wider range of lexical ties. As for the second
group, although most of them used more conjunctions, more synonyms and
collocations, they did get good scores, because they had fewer lexical devices and a
generally improper application of coherence techniques.
In this study, Math Science students used a considerable number of lexical ties. They
could effectively manipulate various lexical items and avoid repetition. In the other
group, the situation is, to some extent, different. The added value they have is the
percentage of conjunctions they employed that is apparently higher in number and
type; that is to say, they varied their use of conjunctions.
Besides, the analysis of the corpus has shown that both groups face considerable
cohesion problems. Both of them used a lot of reiteration and repetition of similar
words, had various wrong references, repeated ‘and ‘quite substantially, and misused
several conjunctions.
Regarding the application of coherence devices, the study discovered that Math
Science students’ essays were more coherent than their counterparts’. Their coherent
texts outnumber those of Economic students. The former made fewer mistakes in
linking between sentences and paragraphs. Their ideas were more arranged in logical
order than their counterparts. Yet, the differences between the two groups in achieving
coherence were very slight. Economic students have also produced well coherent
essays, in which they managed to follow the criteria of coherence achievement set by
Oshima and Hogue.
It should be acknowledged that there are plenty of key elements that contributed to
the imbalanced scores of the two groups under analysis, such as grammatical
incompetence, lack of vocabulary, and lack of training in and understanding of
cohesive and coherence skills. It should also be emphasized that the application of
cohesive ties, regardless of their type and quantity, does not always help students come
up with coherent essays. In addition, the use of cohesive ties in writing does not, again,
guarantee high wiring scores.
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Problems of Cohesion and Coherence in Moroccan High School Students’ Writing
The findings of the current study provide EFL teachers and instructors with valuable
insights into the type of written texts that Moroccan 2nd year baccalaureate students
create. These findings also outline crucial details about cohesive and coherence
problems encountered by students. Such information helps practicing teachers and
educators to think and look for ways on how to enhance students’ knowledge of
cohesion and coherence in written discourse.
In this concern, the following suggestions, exercises, and activities need to be taken
into account:
a- Teachers can train their students on how to use different ties by providing some
model paragraphs that have numerous cohesive ties.
b- They can make up activities and design exercises in which there are various
sentences and paragraphs that need to be joined by cohesive devices or coherent
links. This is because students rely mostly on very few and limited
conjunctions, such as ‘and’ and ‘also. So, they should heavily work on
exercises that present them with a wide range of conjunctions and transition
signals. According to Khalil (1989), students should be encouraged to use other
coordinating and subordinating conjunctions, along with substitution and
ellipsis ties. Khalil also reports in his study about coherence and cohesion EFL
problems (1989) that writing instructors should have sufficient understanding of
grammatical and lexical repetition devices in Arabic so that they can deal with
Arab students’ problems in English written discourse. In this regard, they are
likely to tell their students that transferring Arabic rhetorical conventions of
repetition from Arabic to English may result in redundant ideas and texts.
c- Teachers are advised to spend as much time teaching cohesion and coherence as
they do with grammar in order to help students develop writing skills.
d- Teachers are also encouraged to make students aware of the existing types of
cohesive ties and their sub-categories by supplying them with short texts with a
lot of cohesive devices. Students will be asked to classify those ties into given
categories. Then, they will be assigned exercises to practice the cohesive linkers
in communicative context.
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Problems of Cohesion and Coherence in Moroccan High School Students’ Writing
f- Teacher can give students a text that does not have cohesive or coherence ties,
and ask them how each sentence is linked o the previous one? Are ideas clear
and consistent? Is the text meaningful? Then, the teacher can give students the
same text with proper cohesion and coherence techniques included in it in order
for them to compare between the two texts. As a follow up, the teacher may
well give student another text that they should link between its sentences and
paragraphs.
g- Teacher can provide students with reading texts that have plenty of cohesive
and coherence linkers. He can then ask students to classify them into their
corresponding types and use them in written sentences and paragraphs.
h- Instead of writing, teachers can ask their students to use cohesive or coherence
devices communicatively in real life role plays and discussions.
Still, it can be strongly argued that the sampling population does indeed represent,
to a higher extent, the overall population of 2nd year baccalaureate students in
Morocco. This is because High Schools are generally located in populated areas,
where students come from different backgrounds with distinctive levels of
achievement.
From another point of view, the errors of cohesion and coherence found in students’
essays may be a result of the rhetorical discourse of written English used by students.
Other modes (descriptive, expository, etc) might have displayed other patterns of
cohesion and coherence devices that cannot found in the study.
54
Problems of Cohesion and Coherence in Moroccan High School Students’ Writing
Since the present study is limited to the scope of cohesion and coherence problems that
are encountered by High School students in writing, it will be equally important to
investigate High School students’ problems in other areas that affect students’
composition, such as grammar, punctuation, vocabulary, spelling, to name but a few.
These areas have been substantially studied at the tertiary level, but certainly lack
adequate research at the Moroccan High School level.
Conclusion
Hopefully this study will be a reliable source of information about the problems that
Moroccan second-year baccalaureate learners encounter in written discourse. It is
hoped that it will also serve as a reference to understand the concepts of cohesion and
coherence in writing.
In addition, this study aims at helping language teachers pay more attention to the
wide variety of cohesion and coherence devices and shift their focus from teaching
writing at the sentence level to the discourse level.
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Problems of Cohesion and Coherence in Moroccan High School Students’ Writing
References
AL-Jarf, R. Sado. (2001). Processing of Cohesive Ties by EFL Arab College Students.
Foreign Language Annuals, l2, (2), 141-151.
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41(4), 112-118.
Brown, G. & Yule, G. (1983). Discourse Analysis. New York: Cambridge University
Press.
Hang, N. (2012). A Study on students’ perception of coherence and its use in essays
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Problems of Cohesion and Coherence in Moroccan High School Students’ Writing
Khalil, A. (1989). A study of cohesion and coherence in Arab EFL students' writing.
System, 17(3), 359-371.*
McClure, E. & Steffensen, M. (1980). A study of the use of conjunctions across grades
and ethnic groups. Centre for the Study of Reading, 19(3), 1-33.
Neuuner, J. L. (1987). Cohesive ties and chains in good and poor freshman essays.
Research in the Teaching of English, 21(1), 92-105.
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Problems of Cohesion and Coherence in Moroccan High School Students’ Writing
Appendices
Appendix A: Cohesion scoring scale:
is 1.
mark is 1.
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Problems of Cohesion and Coherence in Moroccan High School Students’ Writing
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