AWA: Academic Writing at Auckland
An Evaluation (also called a Critique) evaluates the worth or significance of an object of study (Nesi & Gardner, 2012, p.94). This requires an understanding of the object and a set of criteria by which to evaluate it. Objects evaluated can include books, films, articles, performances, theories, techniques, designs, businesses, products, materials, cultural artefacts etc.
Title: Analysis of cohesive elements
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Copyright: Youngsuk Jeoung
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Description: Select a text that you could use in teaching English as a second/foreign language. Analyse the text for elements making it cohesive and coherent. How and why might you use your analysis in teaching?
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Analysis of cohesive elements
Cohesion and coherence have been regarded as essential features of good writing. They, however, are considered as ambiguous and vague concepts to learn and to achieve in L2 learners’ writing. Halliday and Hasan (1976) regard cohesion as referring the semantic relations in a text, and treat it as a factor of coherence to create the quality of being a text. They suggest a variety of cohesive device such as grammatical ties and lexical ties in sentence-level connectedness. However, the concept of cohesive and coherence, and their relationship are not uncontroversial. It may be true cohesion bring to coherence by connecting with items between sentences and clausal units, whereas cohesion cannot always contribute to coherence. The inadequate or insufficient use of cohesive devices may affect and even break the coherence of the text. Therefore, coherence of a text lies not in the use of cohesive ties but in the content and the organization of ideas. (Morgan and Sellner, 1980 cited in Carrell, 1982; Connor, 1984 cited in McGee, 2009; Basturkmen, 2002) The development of studies in discourse analysis provides deep understanding about coherence and its role in texts. Coherence as a texture is a unity and harmony of a text in sentence level and discourse level. It functions as a unit to provide consistent and well-organized idea, and helps readers comprehend a text. It cannot be created without a wide variety of coherence-creating features such as information structure, propositional relations, macrostructure and metadiscoursal features. (Lee, 2002) To achieve cohesive and coherent in L2 writing, L2 learners should get knowledge about the significant features in writing through reading authentic materials as good models. (Lee, 1998) Thus, a text analysis approach can be exploited to raise L2 learners’ awareness of the coherence-creating devices in texts. The aim of this essay is to examine grammatical and lexical cohesive devices in an authentic text, to identify other elements to contribute to text coherence, and to suggest some instructional exercises designed to help L2 learners achieve cohesion and coherence in their writing. The research questions of this essay are:
2.1 Material I selected an authentic text from the American news magazine TIME, entitled ‘Domican Retreat’, which introduces one of the famous resorts in the eastern coast of the Dominican Republic. The author represents a revamped resort providing a wide variety of outings such as riding horses in the beach, eco-programs, and the golf. The text consists of 11 words in the title and 331 words in the content. The text can be used as a source of writing materials in general English class. The level of the text is for high-intermediate to advanced learners.
2.2 Data analysis The analysis of the text progressed in three main steps. The first step in the analysis was to set the categories of the cohesive devices. I followed Halliday & Hasan’s (1976) original cohesive framework of the grammatical cohesive devices such as reference, substitution, ellipsis and conjunction, and the lexical cohesive devices such as repetition, synonym and collocation. ‘Reference’ contains pronouns, demonstratives, comparatives, and the definite article, and the main patterns of references are composed of anaphoric, cataphoric, endophoric, and exophoric reference. ‘Conjunction’ consists of additive, adversative, causal, and temporal conjunction. ‘Synonym’ comprises synonym, hyponym, meronym, and general nouns, and the sub-category ‘synonym’ is made up of synonym and antonym. ‘Collocation’ accounts for verb phrases, noun phrases, verb + noun phrases, and preposition phrases. I then conducted a coding procedure with two levels. In Level 1, I set coding scheme in the combination of one capital letter and two small letters which usually derived from the first three letters of the each category. (e.g. pronouns- exophoric reference → Pex, additive conjunction → Add) In Level 2, I identified cohesive devices and coded them according to consistent categories. Some words were double-coded, for example, repetition and synonym (new), repetition and collocation (prepped for), meronym and collocation (swimming holes), and a few words were triple-coded, for instance, ‘eco-reserve’ was belong to synonym, hyponym, and meronym, and ‘golf courses’ was categorized into repetition, hyponym, and collocation. (See Appendix 2. Coding scheme) A recursive process was carried out. My next procedure was to separate the grammatical items and the lexical items from the data, to count frequencies of them, and to calculate the percentages of the cohesive items. My aim was to make a systematic analysis. I was helped by a student in LANGTCHG 721 to improve the reliability and validity of the analysis. She was given the text and asked to find cohesive devices. I decided a cohesive item if both of us identified it as a cohesive item.
Table 1 shows the numbers and percentages of the subcategories of the grammatical and the lexical cohesive devices identified in the text. This table presents all of cohesive devices in Halliday and Hasan (1976) were occurred, and 219 words including double-coded and triple-coded items out of 342 words in the text were used as the cohesive devices in the text. The lexical devices (79%) were exploited approximately four times than the grammatical ones (21%). Synonyms occupied over a third of cohesive devices (37%), followed by repetition (25.5%), collocation (16.5%), reference (12.3%), and conjunction (7.3%). Substitution and ellipsis were the least used cohesive ties, 0.5%, and 0.9% respectively.
Table1. The numbers and percentages of the cohesive devices
3.1 Grammatical cohesive devices Table 2 represents the numbers and percentages of the four subcategories of the grammatical ties and cohesive items. This table shows reference had the highest percentage (58.7%) among the grammatical devices, and followed by the conjunction (34.7%). Substitution had the least percentage of use (2.2%), and ellipsis was the second least percentage of use (4.4%) in this category.
Table2. The grammatical cohesive devices used in the text
As for ‘reference’, the definitive article ‘the’ was used as anaphoric (15.2%) and endophoric reference (17.4%), and the demonstrative pronoun ‘its’ and ‘this’ were used as anaphoric reference (13%) and as cataphoric reference (2.2%) respectively. Pronoun ‘you’ (2.2%) was used as exophoric reference pointing to readers, and comparative adverbs ‘more than, more, the more, and equally’ (8.7%) were occurred in the text. Regarding ‘conjunction’, additive conjunction ‘and’ was used dominantly (26%). Adversative conjunctions ‘but, yet’, and temporal conjunctions ‘long before, after’ had low percentages (4.4% respectively), but any causal conjunctions were not used in the text. Considering substitution and ellipsis, ‘one’ was used as substitution instead of ‘golf course’, and ‘start’ was deleted. The result presents the text used a wide variety of the grammatical cohesive devices. The uses of cataphoric demonstrative pronoun reference ‘this’ and exophoric pronoun reference ‘you’ appear to draw readers’ attention to the information in the text. Also, even though substitution and ellipsis are rarely used in written discourse (Connor, 1984 cited in McGee, 2009: p.220), they were exploited in the text because it is an informal advertisement. To provide a lot of information and to increase the effect of the advertisement, a great deal of additive conjunctions and comparative adverbs were used in the text, but the advertisement does not need to give causes or results and causal conjunctions were not occurred. As a sequence, the use of the cohesive devices seems to show the characteristics of the text as the advertisement.
3.2 Lexical cohesive devices Table 3 presents the numbers and percentages of the three sub-categories of the lexical ties and cohesive items. Synonym had the highest percentage (47%) among the lexical devices, and repetition (32%) and collocation (21%) followed. Among sub-category of synonym, synonyms were used over one fifth of the lexical ties, and followed by meronyms (13%) and hyponyms (11%).
Table3. The lexical cohesive devices used in the text
Regarding synonym, a variety of nouns were used as the synonyms of ‘the Puntacana Resort & Club’ such as ‘retreat, getaway, the resort, hotel, and foundation’, and a wide range of words such as ‘beach’, ‘outings’, ‘eco-reserved’, ‘hotel’ and ‘retreat’ had synonyms. ‘The ocean’, ‘distraction’, ‘golf’, and ‘bird’ were used as ‘hyponyms’, and ‘eco-reserve’, ‘eco-programs’, ‘resort’, ‘dinner options’, ‘hotel rates’, and ‘unique new voluntourism outings’ were identified to ‘meronyms’. (See Appendix 3. 2. Synonym) Considering repetition, the majority of the frequently used repetition were nouns belong to semantic field of ‘tourism’, for example, ‘the Dominican Republic’ – ‘Puntacana, P.B. Dye, the Tortuga Bay, and Caribbean’, ‘the resort’ - ‘resortwide, getaway, room, casitas, and suites’, and ‘beach’ - ‘beachfront, beachside, ocean, and ocean-view’. (See Appendix 3. 1. Repetition) As for collocation, 36 collocations were used in the text, for example, ‘verb phrases’ (e.g. has a reputation, repopulate with), ‘noun phrases’ (e.g. ecological foundation, the past decade, main hotel), ‘verb + noun phrases’ (e.g. rides horses, hang with hawks, revamped the room), and ‘preposition phrases’ (e.g. in the form of, on account of). (See Appendix 3. 3. collocation) The result shows nearly all of the lexical cohesive items in the text belong to the same semantic field. (Halliday and hasan, 1995 cited in Morley, 2006: p.266) Also, the words in the title and the subtitle indicate the semantic field ‘tourism’ and are closely related to the topic of the text. The repetitions and synonyms may stimulate readers’ attention and provide them with a lot of useful information. Although repetition seems to be redundant in writing (McGee, 2009), the repeated usages of the nouns closely related to the topic might be a standard and effective way to draw readers’ attention in the genre of advertisement.
Considering the first research question, a wide range of cohesive device contributes to coherence in the text. The lexical ties are the pervasive and main elements of the cohesive devices to make the text be a texture. Moreover, not only the cohesive devices but also topical structures such as sequential progression and extended parallel progression play an important role in the coherence of the text. The discourse topic is “the Puntacana resort”. The text follows a typical macro structure such as ‘situation – problem – solution – evaluation’. For example, the first paragraph presents the ‘situation’ of the Dominica Republic having many resorts on its beaches, the ‘problem’ of their cookie-cutter all-inclusives, and the ‘solution’ to the problem which is the unique new Puntacana Resort & Club. The next three paragraphs then evaluate the resort by providing the information for ‘a fashioned distraction, revamped rooms, diverse eco-programs, various dinner option, and reasonable hotel rates’. In addition, the text has a connected sequence within and between sentences in terms of the topical structure analysis. For instance, the coherence of the second paragraph consisted with three sentences can be considered as the ‘sequential progression’ (Hoenisch, 2009: p.6), the structure of ‘<a, b>, <b, c>, <c, d>’. Even though the topics of consecutive sentences are different, the comment of prior sentence becomes the topic of the following sentence. Regarding the second research question, even high-intermediate or advanced L2 learners may have difficulties in recognizing and producing the lexical cohesive devices in their L2 writing. Although lexical ties are the most considerably used category of cohesive devices, they seem to be an area that needs improvement in L2 writing in that L2 learners misuse or underuse lexical devices, and show a significant gap comparing natives’ writing. (Liu, 2000; Liu and Braine, 2005; Morley, 2006) To improve L2 learners’ awareness of cohesive and coherence, the analyzed text can be exploited as a good source of a series of exercises. First, a series of “lexical cohesive awareness-raising tasks” can be helpful. A teacher groups two or three students in a team and provide each group with a copy of the text. Then, the teacher asks students to read the title ‘Dominican Retreat’ and to find synonyms of each word ‘Dominican’ and ‘retreat’ as many as they can in one minute. Next, s/he asks them to find the topic of the text and sub-topic of each paragragh, and then to find the synonyms, hyponyms and meronyms of the topic and sub-topics in five minutes. After that s/he invites each group to write their findings on the blackboard, and encourages them to find the collocations of each word in the text, which may help L2 learners’ to raise awareness of their main problem in lexical ties. (Flowderdew, 2006) The exercises may help the students to pay attention to the synonyms, hyponyms, meronyms, and collocations related to the topic of the text. Second, “fill in the blank” and “summary of the text” may be used in the next step. The teacher provides a summary of the text with blanks in the position of some lexical cohesive items, and asks the students to fill the blanks by paraphrasing lexical cohesive words in the text. After that s/he gives task for summary of each paragragh for 3-5 minutes, which should contain more than one synonyms, hyponyms, meronyms or collocations in the text. The tasks can train the students to paraphrase words or phrases by using the lexical cohesive items in the text. Third, “writing an advertisement of travel site” may be useful to enhance the students’ coherence in their L2 writing. The teacher asks them to write an advertisement of the travel site where they have been to or a famous place in their country for 15 minutes. Their advertisements should follow a macro structure of the text such as ‘situation – problem – solution – evaluation’, and also include the lexical cohesive items in the text. And s/he asks them to check their writing with a peer, and talk about the content and the organization of the idea and the use of the use of the lexical cohesive items. This study has a few limitations. Although a peer check with identifying cohesive items was conducted to improve the reliability and validity of the analysis, the process of determining cohesive items may be subjective. Also, the numbers and percentages of the cohesive items were under the circumstance in permitting double-coded. The result of the analysis can be different under other conditions. (None of the grammatical items was double-coded, whereas a great deal of the lexical items was double-coded or triple-coded.)
The study analyzed the cohesive devices, identified the elements to contribute to coherence in the authentic text, and suggested some useful activities to enhance L2 learners’ cohesive and coherence in their L2 writing. Further research is needed to examine more advertisements of various topics to provide L2 learners with wide and deep semantic knowledge. The other issue for further examination is to investigate a wide variety of genre to help L2 learners understand the typical patterns of various genres. It is essential for L2 learners to have clear concept of cohesive and coherence to improve their L2 writing.
(2,446 words)
References The analyzed text Ozaist, L. (2010). Dominican Retreat. TIME, p.46-47.
Other references Basturkmen, H. (2002). Clause relations and macro patterns: Cohesion, coherence and the writing of advanced ESOL students. English Teaching Forum, 40, 1:50-56. Carrell, P. (1982). Cohesion is not coherence. TESOL Quarterly, 16, 479-488. Flowerdew, J. (2006). Use of signaling nouns in a learner corpus, International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 11, 3: 345-362. Halliday, M. A. K., and Hasan, R. (1976). Cohesion in English. London: Longman. Hoenisch, S. (2009). Topical Structure Analysis English prose. Unpublished masters thesis, The City University of New York, Retrieved 18 August 2010 from http://www.criticism.com/da/Topical-Structure-Analysis-of-Accomplished-English-Prose.pdf Lee, I. (1998). Enhancing ESL students’ awareness of coherence-creating mechanisms in writing. TESL Canada Journal, 15, 2: 36-49. Lee, I. (2002). Teaching coherence to ESL students: a classroom enquiry. Journal of Second Language Writing, 11, 135-159. Liu, D. (2000). Writing cohesion: Using content lexical ties in ESOL. English Teaching Forum, 38, 1: 28-33. Liu, M. and Braine, G. (2005). Cohesive features in the argumentative writing produced by Chinese undergraduates, System, 33, 4: 623-636. McGee, I. (2009). Traversing the lexical cohesion minefield. English Language Teaching Journal, 63, 3: 212-220. Morley, J. (2006). Lexical cohesion and rhetorical structure. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 11, 3: 265-282.
Appendix 2) Coding Scheme
1) Repetition – Rep 2) Synonym
3) Collocation – Col
Dominican (Rep) (Syn) (Hyp) Retreat (Syn) Find heavenly bliss at this (Dmc) recently (Syn) revamped (Rep) (Syn) Caribbean (Rep) getaway (Rep) (Syn) The (Dan) Dominican Republic (Rep) (Syn) has a reputation (Col) for being a wallet-friendly island (Mer) getaway (Rep) (Col). But (Adv) like many Caribbean (Rep) outposts (Hyp) (Col), plenty of cookie-cutter (Syn) all-inclusives (Syn) have set up on (Col) its (Dma) beaches (Rep) in the past decade (Col), particularly along (Rep) Punta Cana's (Rep) sandy white eastern coast (Syn) (Col). Yet (Adv) long before (Tem) there were Iberostars and (Add) RIUs, there was the (Dan) Puntacana (Rep) Resort (Rep) & Club (Rep), which marked its (Dma) big four-oh last (Syn) year (Rep) (Col) with resortwide (Rep) room (Rep) refurbs (Syn) and (Add) unique (Syn) new (Rep) (Syn) voluntourism outings (Syn) (Mer) (Col). Translation: you (Pex) get to (Col) hang with hawks (Rep) (Mer) (Col). Encompassing an epic 67 sq km, the (Daa) resort (Rep) has a distraction (Hyp) (Col) for just about anyone: there's a ranch (Hyp) with horses prepped for (Rep) (Col) beach (Rep) rides (Col), an eco-reserve (Syn) (Hyp) (Mer) composed of (Col) a dozen aquamarine (Syn) freshwater (Syn) swimming holes (Mer) (Col) and (Add) more than (Can) 80 types of birds (Rep) (Mer), a Six Senses Spa (Hyp) overlooking (Syn) the (Daa) ocean (Syn) and (Add) P.B. Dye (Rep) (Hyp) – and (Add) Tom Fazio (Hyp) – fashioned golf (Mer) courses (Rep) (Hyp) (Col) (some tees (Hyp) sit just meters from the spray of the (Daa) surf (Hyp)) with a new (Rep) (Syn) one (Sub) debuting next (Syn) year (Rep) (Col). On Dye's (Rep) La Cana course (Rep), the (Dan) pièce de résistance comes in the form of (Col) the (Dan) Hecklebirnie hole (Mer), which Dye (Rep) has affectionately christened a "golfer's (Hyp) purgatory" on account of (Col) its (Dma) 21 traps (Hyp). To prep for (Rep) (Col) its (Dma) momentous birthday (Col), the (Daa) resort (Rep) revamped (Rep) (Syn) the (Dan) rooms (Rep) (Col) at its (Dma) main hotel (Syn) (Col), its (Dma) 21 ocean-view (Syn) and (Add) beachfront (Syn) casitas (Rep) (Col) and (Add) the (Dan) upscale suites (Rep) (Col) at the (Dan) Tortuga Bay (Rep) villas (Syn), where power couple (Col) Bill and (Add) Hillary Clinton like to unwind (Syn). Equally (Can) progressive are the (Daa) resort's (Rep) eco-programs (Syn) (Mer): guests (Syn) conduct bird (Rep) counts (Col) alongside (Rep) ornithologists (Mer) and (Add) replant endangered staghorn coral (Col) (Mer). The more (Can) intrepid visitor (Syn) (Col) can even feed a Ridgway's hawk (Rep) (Col), which the (Daa) on-site ecological (Syn) foundation (Syn) (Col) is working to repopulate the (Dan) Dominican Republic (Rep) (Syn) with (Col). After (Tem) a day of do-gooding (Syn), dinner options (Mer) (Col) include the (Dan) new (Rep) beachside (Syn) Playa Blanca (Mer), Tortuga Bay's (Rep) Bamboo restaurant (Mer) (the sweet-corn gazpacho is delicious), and (Add) the (Dan) thatched-roof La Yola (Mer), with views (Syn) of the (Daa) marina (Syn) and (Add) a trio of musicians who travel table (Rep) to table (Rep) strumming local (Syn) love songs (Col) (Col). Hotel (Rep) rates (Mer) start (Syn) at $96 (Mer), two-bedroom (Rep) beach (Rep) casitas (Rep) (Col) from (Ell) (Rep) $280 (Mer) and (Add) Tortuga Bay (Rep) suites (Rep) from (Ell) (Rep) $495 (Mer). For more (Can) information, go to www.puntacana (Rep) .com.
- By Liz Ozaist
Appendix 3) Lexical items
1) Proper Nouns (5 – 14) Dominican (3) – The Dominican Republic – the Dominican Republic Punta Cana’s (3) - the Putacana Resort & Club –- putacana The Tortuga Bay (3) – Tortuga Bay’s – Tortuga Bay P.B. Dye (3) – Dye’s – Dye, Caribbean (2) – Caribbean
2) Nouns (14 items – 35 frequencies) the Putacana Resort & Club (5) - resortwide – the resort – the resort – the resort’s beaches (5) – beach – beachfront – beachside – beach, ocean (2) – ocean-view room (3) – rooms – two-bedroom, casitas (2) – casitas, suites (2) – suites birds (2) – bird counts, hawks (2) – hawk golf (2) – golfers, courses (2) – course getaway (2) – getaway, year (2) – year, table (2) – table, from (2) – from
3) Verbs (2 items – 4 frequencies) revamped (2) – revamped prepped for (2) – prepped for
4) Adjectives (1 item – 3 frequencies) new (3) – new – new
2.1 Synonym (15 – 40) 1) Synonym (12 – 34) Retreat – getaway – all-inclusives - resort – hotel - foundation Aquamarine – the ocean –oceanview – beachfront - the marina revamped – new – refurbs, retreat – getaway - unwind Guest – visitor, eco-reserve - eco-programs – ecological Outings – do-gooding, overlooking the ocean – views of the marina Hotel – villas Dominican – local New - recently Along - alongside
2) Antonym (3 – 6) Cookie-cutter – unique, last year – next year, freshwater – the ocean
2.2 Hyponym (19) 1) the ocean: the spray of the surf 2) distraction – a ranch, an eco-reserve, a Six Senses Spa, P.B. Dye, Tom Fazio 3) golf: golf courses, hole, tees, golfer’s, traps 4) bird: hawk, ornithologists 5) Dominican: Caribbean outposts
2.3 Meronym (22)
2.4 General nouns
has a reputation, has a distraction, have set up on, prepped for (2), composed of, repopulate with, get to
a wallet-friendly island getaway, ecological foundation, momentous birthday, power couple, dinner option, love songs, the past decade, eastern coast, swimming holes, fashioned golf courses, main hotel, upscale suites, Caribbean outposts, beachfront casitas, intrepid visitor, beach casitas, new voluntourism outings, last year, next year
rides - horses, hang with hawks, feed a Ridgway’s hawk, revamped - the rooms, conduct bird counts, replant coral, strumming local love songs
in the form of, on account of
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