Coherence is an inherent element of all effective written communication and, hence, this study purports to investigate the manifestation of textual coherence types in a corpus of fifty answer sheets produced by Sudanese English majors at a large public university. The methodological underpinnings are based on Halliday's (1994) conception of the clause as comprising an information structure and a theme-rheme organization representing the topical constituents, while at the macro-textual level, Fahnestock's (1983) elaboration of continuative clauses was utilized. The analysis of the clausal and textual coherence was undertaken on the syntactic, lexical and discoursal errors embodied in students' texts, accompanied by a detailed study highlighting instances of coherence breaks. It was revealed that the overall coherence of the corpus was negatively affected by the innumerable errors committed at the syntactic and lexical levels. Intra-sentential clausal coherence, for example, was compromised by the incapacity to unambiguously distinguish between given and new information, due to the subjects' countless errors in using definite, indefinite articles and pronominalization processes. Equally, the information structure was often disrupted by faulty use of the passivization function. Regarding inter-sentential textual coherence, it was generally vitiated by such factors as students' poor handling of conjunctions, as reflected in confusion of the basic rhetorical typologies such as cause-result and conditional-consequence, a situation aggravated by the students' verbose writing style and their inattention to textual boundaries and macro-structure. The prevalence of the two major error categories has ultimately resulted in low interpretability, semantic ambiguity and textual opacity.
A substantial body of research has revealed that EFL students conceive of a monolingual dictionary primarily as a repository of definitions to the almost utter neglect of the other entry components. Since existing lexicographical Sudanese literature has uncovered an even more subsidiary role for monolingual dictionaries, further investigations were needed to verify whether knowledge and skills to tap the inexhaustible resources of the dictionary can be enhanced through direct teaching regiments. Hence, the aim of the current study is to empirically gauge the efficacy of integrating these reference skills within a conventional Enhancement Course. A dictionary pre-test was administered to two homogeneous groups attending a Study Skills Course at The University of Khartoum, Sudan. The performance was measured against a slightly modified version of the test following a tailor-made structured module presented to the experimental group. The results of both groups in the pre-test were unsatisfactory and generally congruent with the findings of the original study. Yet, statistically significant differences were registered in the performance of the experimental group regarding overall and individual entry components. In view of the importance and increasing sophistication of monolingual dictionaries, this study is yet one more proof of the pedagogical usefulness of equipping students with dictionary training as part of their syllabuses. Thus, entry composites such as definitions, phonetic and grammatical information, and diatonic and diaphasic labels shall constitute an integral part of teaching strategies in the phonology, syntax, semantic, and sociolinguistic domains.
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