Abstract
Writing requires a suitable and strategic use of language with communicative potential and structural correctness. The use of coherence and cohesion helps create communicative potential and structural correctness in texts. This study aims to investigate the use of cohesive items in the abstracts of Pakistani research articles and thereby determine what type of cohesive items are frequently used by writers. In addition, the study aims to know what functions the said writers achieve through the most frequently used cohesive items. For this purpose, 50 abstracts were retrieved from two famous Pakistani research journals (25 articles per journal), which were developed into a corpus for the study and analysed through AntConc. 3.4.4.0. The results revealed that Pakistani research writers used reference items the most frequently to achieve “directive” as well as “referential” functions. On the basis of these findings, the study concluded that Pakistani research article writers organised information in abstracts using reference items the most frequently and they were mainly concerned with directive as well as referential functions of meaning. The results also showed that the said writers organised texts on a syntactic level only, which implied that they should organise texts on a semantic level also. This would be possible with the use of repetition devices.
Highlights
Writing requires a suitable and strategic use of language with communicative potential and structural correctness
The reason was that this study aimed to check organisational skills in abstracts written by Pakistani research article writers
The results of the study, which were obtained through an AntConc analysis of a corpus developed from 50 abstracts of research articles written by Pakistani research writers from the field of English linguistics and literature, are presented in the Tables 4 and 5
Summary
Writing requires a suitable and strategic use of language with communicative potential and structural correctness. It is for these reasons that writing is thought to be a difficult task in the L2 learning process (Hyland 2003). Kellogg (2001) regards it as a cognitive process that has the capacity to test human memory, thinking ability and oral power to convey ideas or thoughts. Good writing skills mean successful L2 learning (Hyland 2003; Nickerson et al 2014). In the last decades, writing skills, alongwith learning them, have become very significant due to two main factors: (1) the use of writing as a means to convey ideas and (2) researchers’ interest in exploring problems faced by L2 writers (Graham and Perin 2007). Significance of the Writing ofEnglish as a Foreign/Second Language
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