A computer text analysis of four cohesion devices in english discourse by native and nonnative writers

Reid, Joy

doi:10.1016/1060-3743(92)90010-m

Cited by 80 publications

(57 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…Most of them focused on academic, argumentative, and expository writing (Johns 1984, Hinds 1990, Scollon 1991, Reid 1992.…”

Section: Chinese Esl Writingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Among these relevant studies, Reid (1992) examined the use of four cohesive devices -pronouns, coordinate conjunctions, subordinate conjunction openers, and prepositions -in English expository essays written by native English-speaking, Chinese-, and other language-speaking students. Some significant differences were found among the groups in the frequency with which cohesiveness was employed.…”

Section: Chinese Esl Writingmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Structure and Cohesion of English Narratives by Nordic and Chinese Students

Lee

2004

NLY

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As one of the most notable studies in discourse level of English as second/foreign language (ESL/EFL) in Nordic countries, NORDWRITE project (1985) succeeds in identifying important problems and suggesting solutions for students’ writing in terms of discourse-level properties such as cohesion and superstructures. Findings from NORDWRITE project were reported in several papers, such as Enkvist (1990), Evesen (1990), Lindeberg (1988), Linnarud (1986), Wikborg (1990). However, a comparative study of Nordic and other EFL/ESL writing has not been dealt with yet. In order to identify similarities and differences between English writing of two distinct first language (L1) groups, in this study, a number of Chinese ESL texts were collected and compared with the results obtained from NORDWRITE project. In this study, narrative was elicited by giving subjects a series of pictures which allows reliable comparison across texts produced by different subjects. A group of Hong Kong Chinese tertiary students was asked to write narratives in both English and Chinese. Meanwhile, a group of English students with similar age and education background wrote the narratives in English, and their texts serve as a reference for comparison. The areas for analysis cover narrative structure and cohesion. By examining the similarities and differences in Chinese ESL students’ and Nordic EFL students’ texts, we find that certain similarities between the two groups are due to the fact that English is their second/foreign language. On the other hand, differences may be attributed to the influence of their L1, as the two groups belong to two distinct language groups. The study also shows that certain writing problems of ESL/EFL students are originated from inadequate understanding of English discourse. The implications of L1 influences on discourse level for ESL/EFL writing were drawn as well.

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“…Most of them focused on academic, argumentative, and expository writing (Johns 1984, Hinds 1990, Scollon 1991, Reid 1992.…”

Section: Chinese Esl Writingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Chinese Esl Writingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Structure and Cohesion of English Narratives by Nordic and Chinese Students

Lee

2004

NLY

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“…L2 instruction associated with cohesion in academic texts has largely continued to focus on specific and limited types of devices, such as sentence transitions and coordinating conjunctions intended to conjoin ideas and sentences. For instance, Reid (1992) points out that in L2 writing instruction, the teaching of explicit cohesive devices, such as coordinators and sentence transitions, is common because ESL writers often employ various cohesion conventions differently than native speakers of English do and that L2 texts may sometimes appear incoherent to native readers. Reid emphasizes that text cohesion and issues in the coherence of ideas need to be taught to provide learners linguistic means of developing unified text.…”

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confidence: 99%

The Use of Transition Signals in Efl Academic Writing Context: A Corpus Study

Mahendra

Dewi

2017

JBLS

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“…Reid (1992) stated that "one of the most serious problems faced by NNSs of English in U.S. colleges and universities is the difficulty of writing adequate prose in English" (p. 79). One of the problems that learners of EFL encounter is to make a comprehensible text as unified whole through using connectives.…”

Section: Background Of the Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Locus of Adversative Conjunctions in the Research Articles

Shirazi

Nadoushani

2017

SAGE Open

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This study is an endeavor to find how English native and nonnative EFL/ESL (English as foreign language/English as second language) writers use adversative conjunctions to connect ideas together so that texts have both coherence and cohesion. Regarding the problems nonnative writers of EFL face when composing a piece of writing, we attempted a qualitative study through compiling a stack of 200 articles written by the two groups. The research design concerned the content analysis of research articles and descriptive statistics showing the frequency of occurrences of modals in the data. The findings indicated that the number of proper and correction adversatives exceeded those of contrastive and dismissal; the statistically significant difference between two groups lay in the use of proper and correction adversative conjunction, whereas the two groups showed little or no difference in the usage of contrastive or dismissal adversatives. These findings can help material writers, EFL/ESL teachers, and learners to appreciate the significant roles adversative conjunctions play in writing.

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A computer text analysis of four cohesion devices in english discourse by native and nonnative writers

Cited by 80 publications

References 26 publications

Structure and Cohesion of English Narratives by Nordic and Chinese Students

Structure and Cohesion of English Narratives by Nordic and Chinese Students

The Use of Transition Signals in Efl Academic Writing Context: A Corpus Study

The Locus of Adversative Conjunctions in the Research Articles

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