Abstract
This study is aimed to assess the students’ use of cohesion and coherence in their descriptive and narrative essays. It was conducted at Sodo Preparatory School on grade 11 students. The descriptive research design was employed to achieve the intended aim of the study. In this study, 30 grade eleven students were selected as participants through simple random sampling technique. Document analysis was used to collect data from the sample students. The data collected through document analysis was analyzed qualitatively based on the analysis parameters of cohesive devices; such as, substitution ellipsis, reference, conjunction and lexical cohesion to determine meaningfully (coherently) written students’ essays. The findings revealed that students’ used a variety of cohesive devices in each genre of writing except ellipsis and they employed all the other sub categories of cohesive devices in their (descriptive and narrative) essays. However, among the frequently used cohesive devices, the largest numbers of connectors were inappropriately instanced regarding the total use of devices. The students’ inappropriate use of cohesive devices mainly appeared with conjunction, followed by reference, lexical cohesion, and substitution signals. As a result, the essays lacked consistent key expressions, clear purpose of the statement, and the logical shift from one sentence to the other. Based these findings, conclusions and recommendations were made.
Highlights
Writing is one of the four language skills that people learn in English language like listening, speaking and reading
Atkins et al express writing as a valuable tool for communication and self-expression, so a writer should consider who the reader is, what he knows, and how he will understand and react to what is written [2]. As students learn their preparatory education level, they have to consider the use of cohesion and coherence in writing to produce logically connected ideas or expressions in certain place and time to a reader
Richards and Renandya point out writing skills consists of many constituent parts; such as, content, organization, unity, cohesion, coherence, fluency, accuracy or using appropriate rhetorical forms of discourse [3]
Summary
Writing is one of the four language skills that people learn in English language like listening, speaking and reading. Atkins et al express writing as a valuable tool for communication and self-expression, so a writer should consider who the reader is, what he knows, and how he will understand and react to what is written [2]. As students learn their preparatory education level, they have to consider the use of cohesion and coherence in writing to produce logically connected ideas or expressions in certain place and time to a reader. Understanding the fundamental parts of writing skills provide the preparatory education level students to convey their ideas in coherent way to produce appropriate essays
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
