Use of Cohesive Devices in Paragraph Writing by Efl Students at English Language Centers in Vietnam

Bibliographic Data

ID23038457
AuthorsNguyễn Quốc Tuấn (corresponding author), Nguyen Thi Bao Trang (0009-0003-1518-8333, University of Languages and International Studies, corresponding author), Nguyen Vu Quynh Nhu (University of Languages and International Studies, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume39
Issue3
Pages152-169
Publication date2023-06-30
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueVNU Journal of Foreign Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2525-2445 • E-ISSN: 2525-2445
PublisherVietnam National University of Languages and International Studies (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.63023/2525-2445/jfs.ulis.5099
OpenAlexW4396616658
LanguageDE
References cited8

This research explores Vietnamese EFL students’ use of cohesive devices in paragraph writing. Eighty Vietnamese EFL learners in four pre-intermediate English classes at two English centers in Vietnam each wrote five paragraphs about five different topics via learning blogs, yielding a corpus of 400 paragraphs. Halliday and Hasan’s (1976) cohesion taxonomy was employed to identify and analyse the cohesive devices used. The results of the study show that the learners employed a wide range of cohesive markers in their paragraphs and the large majority of them were grammatical in nature; lexical cohesive means were used to a much smaller extent and mainly involved repetition. Of the grammatical cohesive types, use of reference and conjunction was common while substitution and ellipsis were infrequently used. The study provides important pedagogical implications for EFL writing instruction in regard to the employment of cohesive devices in written language production.

English language · Linguistics · Mathematics education · Paragraph · Pedagogy · World Wide Web · Writing center · Computer Science · EFL/ESL Teaching and Learning · English Language Learning and Teaching · Philosophy · Psychology

Tools

Open DOIOpen Access