Coherent Text Research Articles

الاتساق والانسجام النصی فی سورة المدثر

الملخص يهدف البحث إلى إثبات اتساق النص القرآني الکريم (سورة المدثر) وانسجامه، معتمدا التحليل النصي (اللساني) المعاصر. ويقصد بالاتساق النصي: التماسک بين أجزاء النص اللغوية، وهو يحيل إلى الأدوات التي تسهم في الربط بين أجزاء النص الداخلية من ناحية، وبين النص والبيئة المحيطة به من ناحية أخرى. وتحقق الاتساق النصي، من خلال جانبيه: الاتساق المعجمي، والاتساق النحوي. وتبين مدى الاتساق المعجمي ببروز عنصريه الرئيسين: التکرير والتضام. واتضح الاتساق النحوي بعدة فعاليات ترکيبية: الإحالة، والحذف، والعطف، والفصل، والإيقاع. وتبين کذلک تحقق الانسجام النصي، الذي يعنى بقياس مدى التماسک الدلالي للنص وترابطه. ومن آلياته: العنوان (المدثر)، والفکرة الجوهرية للنص، وهي الإعلام بالتوحيد، والموضوعات الرئيسة فيه، والعلاقات الدلالية الخاصة، وهي: التقابلية، والسبب والنتيجة، والتعميم والتخصيص، والإجمال والتفصيل، وإعادة الصياغة. وتوصل البحث إلى أن تجليات الاتساق والانسجام النصي في المدثر بلغت مدى بعيدا في التأثير الإيجابي على استيعاب المتلقي للنص، ولذلک نقول: إن السمات النصية قد تحققت تحققا کافيا يسوغ وصف سورة المدثر بالنصية. Abstract This study aimed at illustrating the consistency and harmony of the text of the Qur’an (Surat Al-Muddathir), relying on contemporary textual (linguistic) analysis methods. Textual consistency refers to: coherence between linguistic parts of the text; it also refers to the logical linksconnectingthe internal parts of the text, on one hand, and the text and the environment surrounding it, on the other. In this sense, it was found that textual consistency was achieved in the text of Surat Al-Muddathiron two levels: lexical consistency and grammatical consistency. Lexical consistency in the surat was manifested through using its two main components: repetition and alliteration. Whereas, grammatical consistency was manifested through using several synthetic means: referral, omission, conjunction, separation, and rhythm. Moreover, the study found that textual harmony, which refers to semantic and structural cohesion of the text and its interconnectedness, was achieved in Surat Al-Muddathir. The most important mechanisms of textual harmony used in the Surat include: the title (Al-Muddathir), the basic idea of the text, which is establishing monotheism, text’s main topics, and the special semantic relations used, including: contrast, cause and effect, generalization and specification, outlining and detailing, and rephrasing. The research concluded that the manifestations of textual consistency and harmony in Surat Al-Muddathir were highly effective in leaving a positive impact on recipient’s understandingof the text. Therefore, it can be said that: the textual features of Surat Al-Muddathir are sufficient to describe it as an extremely coherent text.

AN INVESTIGATION OF COHESIVE DEVICES ON READING COMPREHENSION TEXTS IN ONLINE MEDIA

The objective of this research is to analyze reading comprehension text's cohesion devices from online media. This research is descriptive qualitative research. The sample of this research is reading comprehension texts from ESL Lounge and British Council. The data were gathered using data and collection technique by Lodico (2006) and were analyzed using Halliday and Hasan's (1976) theory. The findings showed that the dominant grammatical cohesion devices of both websites are references. In contrast, the dominant lexical cohesion devices on both websites are repetition. Further, the dominant grammatical cohesion in ESL Lounge is to justify the writer's position and interact with their readers. Meanwhile, in the British Council, demonstrative references refer to the particular object. The lexical cohesion repetition aims to concentrate the ideas and avoid the readers becoming confused in recognizing the terms in the text.

An Analysis of Cohesion and Coherence in Written Text of Line Today about Wedding Kahiyang Ayu and Bobby Nasution

This research is about an analysis of cohesion and coherence in written text of line today about wedding Kahiyang Ayu and Bobby Nasution. It is aimed to analyze the term of cohesion and coherence in the following text. The descriptive analysis is used as the methodology. The data source is from Line Today. Through the text the researchers found the lexical cohesion, grammatical cohesion, and rhetorical cohesion in cohesion analysis. The text also involving the Micro-Level Coherence and Macro-Level Coherence. In conclusion, the result of analysis showed that the text is cohesive but not coherent enough.
 
 Keyword: Analysis, Coherence, Cohesion, Written Text

Moving Beyond Decoding: Teaching Pronoun Resolution to Develop Reading Comprehension

Abstract"Little" Words often carry complex meanings. Pronoun resolution is an essential component of comprehension. Skilled readers work to maintain text cohesion (i.e., they resolve the pronouns as needed.) Less proficient readers often are not as proficient in resolving pronouns. Limited pronoun resolution limits comprehension. This article defines pronoun resolution as a comprehension task and offers instructional approaches to teaching students this oft‐neglected comprehension strategy.

Discourse Relations and Connectives in Higher Text Structure

The present article investigates possibilities and limits of local (shallow) analysis of discourse coherence with respect to the phenomena of global coherence and higher composition of texts. We study corpora annotated with local discourse relations in Czech and partly in English to try and find clues in the local annotation indicating a higher discourse structure. First, we classify patterns of subsequent or overlapping pairs of local relations, and hierarchies formed by nested local relations. Special attention is then given to relations crossing paragraph boundaries and their semantic types, and to paragraph-initial discourse connectives. In the third part, we examine situations in which annotators incline to marking a large argument (larger than one sentence) of a discourse relation even with a minimality principle annotation rule in place. Our analyses bring (i) new linguistic insights regarding coherence signals in local and higher contexts, e.g. detection and description of hierarchies of local discourse relations up to 5 levels in Czech and English, description of distribution differences in semantic types in cross-paragraph and other settings, identification of Czech connectives only typical for higher structures, or the detection of prevalence of large left-sided arguments in locally annotated data; (ii) as another type of contribution, some new reflections on methodologies of the approaches under scrutiny.

ARABIC: دور الاتساق المعجمي في تحقيق التماسك النصي دراسة تحليلية لآيات التوحيد

This paper discusses the issue of lexical consistency and its role in textual coherence through an analytical study of the verses of Monotheism , since lexical consistency is considered one of the most important and prominent element of textual coherence, and textual coherence is achieved by the lexical relationships between the vocabulary of the text , and these lexically connected elements lead to the continuity of meaning and the construction of the basic idea of the text.

Chasing Theory with Technology: A Quest to Understand Understanding

ABSTRACT An overarching motivation driving my research has been to further our theoretical understanding of how readers successfully comprehend challenging text. This article describes the theoretical origins of this research program and my quest to understand comprehension processes through the use of technology. Coh-Metrix was developed to measure, and in turn facilitate, manipulations of text cohesion and text ease. iSTART was developed to provide students with instruction and practice on how to explain text and more effectively make use of limited prior knowledge. In addition, we have developed technologies to measure and change writing quality, relations between ideas, and emerging text comprehension. More recently, our attention has turned to comprehension of multiple documents. Understanding relations between documents and how comprehension emerges when reading multiple sources is important educationally and socially, where the internet provides a continuous stream of reliable and unreliable sources. Across these topics, my collaborators and I have conducted numerous experimental studies, but a central theme to my work has been the use of technology. This article describes these technologies, including natural language processing, game-based tutoring systems, and computational simulations; how they were informed by theory; and how they have informed my theoretical and practical understandings of language, comprehension, social interactions, and cognition as multilayered and multidimensional within what I refer to as the M&M Framework.

Text Cohesion in English Scientific Texts Written by Saudi Undergraduate Dentistry Students: A Multimodal Discourse Analysis of Textual and Logical Relations in Oral Biology Texts

This qualitative study examined multimodal cohesive devices in English oral biology texts by eight high-achieving Saudi English-as-a-foreign-language students enrolled in a Bachelor of Science Dentistry program. A Systemic Functional Multimodal Discourse Analysis (SF-MDA) of the textual and logical cohesive devices in oral biology texts was conducted, employing Halliday and Hasan’s cohesion analysis scheme. The findings showed that students used varied cohesive devices: lexical cohesion, followed by reference and conjunctions. Although ellipsis was minimally employed in the oral biology texts, its discipline-specific uses emerged: the use of bullet points and numbered lists that facilitate recall. The SF-MDA of cohesion in multimodal semiotic resources highlighted the processes underlying construction of conceptual and linguistic knowledge of cohesive devices in oral biology texts. The results indicate that oral biology discourse is interdisciplinary, including a number of subfields in biology. The SF-MDA of pictorial oral biology representations indicates that they include instances of cohesive devices that illustrate and complement verbal texts. The results indicate that undergraduate students need to be provided with a variety of multimodal high-cohesion texts so that they can successfully extend underlying conceptual and logical meaning-making relations.

Using spatial contiguity and signaling to optimize visual feedback on students’ written explanations.

Writing cohesive texts is a crucial but challenging skill to master. Recently, cognitive tools that provide students with a graphical representation of their texts in the form of concept-maps have been shown to support students’ writing. Despite its beneficial effects, the addition of a graphical representation may have the disadvantage that students have to process multiple isolated representations (i.e., text, graphic), which may increase cognitive load. By applying principles of multimedia learning, in two experiments, we investigated whether interrepresentational signaling and spatial contiguity would have differential effects on students’ subsequent writing performance and on the processing of the graphical feedback. In Experiment 1, students wrote an expository text and either received conventional concept-map feedback, correspondence-enhanced concept-map feedback with interrepresentational signaling, spatially contiguous feedback, or no feedback during text revision. Regarding local cohesion, we found that students profited most when they received spatially contiguous feedback. Contrarily, correspondence-enhanced concept-map feedback was most effective for improving global cohesion. In Experiment 2, we examined the attentional processes while using correspondence-enhanced concept-map feedback versus conventional concept-map feedback by means of eye-tracking. Students receiving correspondence-enhanced concept-map feedback had longer fixation times on the concept-maps, more transitions between their text and the concept-map and were more efficient in improving their text for global cohesion than students receiving concept-maps without signaling. The findings suggest that interrepresentational signaling and spatial contiguity differentially contributed to students’ writing. Therefore, choosing the adequate format of instructional support plays a critical role in scaffolding students’ writing. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)

Modalizatory jako wielowymiarowe zagadnienie w nauce języka szwedzkiego

Sentence adverbials build a multidimensional constituent in many languages, i.e. they can, among others, modify the meaning of the entire sentence, emphasize a particular element in it, or build the coherence in texts. Due to the multifaced character of this linguistic phenomenon the acquisition of it in foreign language learners can be a complex process. The learner is not only faced with a variety of different words and phrases that can be used in order to deliver a complementary information in the text, but also, depending on the structural requirements of the specific language, has to learn to put this constituent in the correct place in the sentence. In present paper the use of sentence adverbials in Polish learners od Swedish will be presented. The data considered in the analysis comprises two types of texts: a summary of an expository text and a narrative. The results show that foreign language learners at the intermediate stage of the language use a broad repertoire of sentence adverbials and place them in appropriate contexts. In narratives modal expressions predominate, while in summaries connectives and intensifiers are used more often. The learners can place sentence adverbials correctly in the sentence, especially in main clauses. However, the word order in dependent clauses when other sentence adverbials occur, except for sentences with the negation inte, is still under development.

АНТОНИМИЯ В РЕКЛАМНОМ СЛОГАНЕ

The relevance of this work is due to the priority of such research areas as pragmalinguistics, the theory of persuasion, the theory of antonymy and the linguistics of creativity, as well as the need of further investigation of expressive potential of antonymy in extremely popular advertising texts. The purpose of this work is to analyze the types of lexical, morphological, syntactic and text-based antonyms involved in creating advertising slogans in Russian and English linguistic cultures. According to the results of the analysis of empirical material, these types include lexical systemic and individual author’s antonyms, antonymic postpositions, prepositions, grammatical forms representing categorical oppositions, inter-part-ofspeech antonyms, utterances based on antonymic models, words and phrases semantically equivalent to antonyms that form oppositions in a coherent text. Special attention is paid to the pragmatics of slogans with antonyms and to the language game performed with the help of antonyms of different types, as well as to the sources of creating individual author’s antonyms (words with peripheral antonymic semes, words with different spheres of use and emotional and expressive coloring, synonyms that turn into antonyms, precedent phenomena). The author comes to the conclusion that the creators of slogans try in every possible way to make unusual antonymic oppositions filled with a new meaning.

Effects of Task Complexity on Text Easibility and Coherence of EFL Learners’ Narrative Writing

This study was carried out to examine the effects of task complexity on text easibility and coherence in narrative writing of EFL learners. Data were collected from 41 Turkish EFL learners during a writing course. Task complexity was operationalized at two levels as a complex and simple task based on the resource-dispersing variables of Robinson’s the Triadic Componential Framework, +/- task structure. Accordingly, a colorful picture was first illustrated on the board, and students were asked to examine the picture for five minutes (complex task /-TS). They were then asked to write a story based on the picture they had seen (simple task /+TS). Two weeks later, they were given a sheet involving 16 pictures designed in an order and asked to narrate a story based on these pictures. Their essays were analyzed by the researcher and another rater in terms of coherence through an analytic rubric. An automated program was used to evaluate the essays for text easibility indices involving the indices of narrativity, syntactic simplicity, word concreteness, referential cohesion, and deep cohesion. The results analyzed with a Wilcoxon signed-rank test showed that complexity of the task had a statistically significant effect on some indices of text easibility such as word concreteness, and referential cohesion, whereas other indices, narrativity, syntactic simplicity, and deep cohesion, and coherence in their writing production were not affected by the complexity of the task at a significant level. However, it can be concluded that students’ texts produced in simple tasks are easier to comprehend.

The Use of Cohesive Devices and Factors Influence Unsuccessful Coherence in Community-Based Tourism Text

As a complex process, writing is always interesting to be discussed. One of the students' biggest problems in writing is in maintaining coherence. Coherence is a systemic model to unify some elements to become good writing. This article aims to identify the most cohesion type used by the students and factors that influence the unsuccessful coherence of the text. This is a descriptive qualitative research. The data were obtained by collecting descriptive text written by thirteen English Diploma Program students. The unit of analysis in this study is a community –based tourism text which describes tourism villages in Banyumas Regency, Indonesia. The writers take Community-Based Tourism (CBT) as the unit of analysis because the government right now is developing CBT in many areas in Indonesia. As an important stakeholder, the University must prepare the students to write good descriptions of CBT. The result of this study shows most of the students use reference, reiteration, and conjunction in their writing but they have very minimal use of ellipsis, substitution, and collocation. The writers found that some of the students' sentences have successful integration, but some have not successful integration. There are several factors influence unsuccessful integration. Those are students' prior knowledge, inappropriate use of cohesive devices, and illogical sequence. Finally, we can conclude that the students need more guidance and knowledge of using effective writing, cohesive devices and logical sequence.

THE EFFECTS OF LEXICAL COHESION IN MAINTAINING COHERENCE IN THE EFL JORDANIAN STUDENTS’ WRITING

Lexical cohesion is one of the key issues that has received much attention from linguists due to its importance in maintaining coherence in discourse. However, many researchers claim that EFL Jordanian students could not write coherent pieces of writing because of their limited awareness of lexical cohesion. Therefore, this article investigates lexical cohesion’s role in creating coherence in the EFL Jordanian students’ writing. To achieve this goal, 20 written pieces have been analyzed based on Hoey’s (1991, 2005) model of lexical cohesion. Importantly, the article highlights how lexical bonds emerge and hold relations between the sentences in writing. It, more specifically, underlines the significant sentences and how the reader can apprehend them. As for coherence in the Jordanian students’ writing, the article indicates that the students can still not write fully coherent texts due to their poor knowledge of lexical items and training.

New Tasks of Translation Teachers: the Challenge of Mosaic Thinking

The research is aimed to determine how the mosaic thinking of the younger generation affects the process of translator training. Development of the mosaic thinking results in the need to solve new tasks by translation teachers. They include: to teach students how to determine the communicative task of the source text, or ST; to teach students how to analyze the logical structure of the ST; to teach students how to determine the relevance of specific linguistic units used in the ST with due account of the text’s logical structure; to teach students to doubt their interpretation of the ST; to teach students to produce a logically coherent text in the target language. To solve the tasks, a comprehensive system of actions must be designed. The aim of the system is to make students’ thinking more professional, i.e. to transform the mosaic thinking into the professional translator’s mentality. The conclusions are based on the analysis of the provisions voiced in the research of the mosaic thinking from the philosophical, psychological and pedagogical perspective as well as on observations of how translation is taught in Russian universities. The present investigation is innovative since it highlights the factors that make it especially difficult to form professional translators’ mentality now.

The role of spatial separation of two talkers’ auditory stimuli in the listener’s memory of running speech: listening effort in a non-noisy conversational setting

Objective To investigate the role of the spatial position of conversing talkers, that is, spatially separated or co-located, in the listener’s short-term memory of running speech and listening effort. Design In two experiments (between-subject), participants underwent a dual-task paradigm, including a listening (primary) task wherein male and female talkers spoke coherent texts. Talkers were either spatially separated or co-located (within-subject). As a secondary task, visually presented tasks were used. Experiment I involved a number-judgement task, and Experiment II entailed switching between number and letter-judgement task. Study sample Twenty-four young adults who reported normal hearing and normal or corrected to normal vision participated in each experiment. They were all students from the RWTH Aachen University. Results In both experiments, similar short-term memory performance of running speech was found independently of talkers being spatially separated or co-located. Performance in the secondary tasks, however, differed between these two talkers’ auditory stimuli conditions, indicating that spatially separated talkers imposed reduced listening effort compared to their co-location. Conclusion The findings indicated that auditory-perceptive information, such as the spatial position of talkers, plays a role in higher-level auditory cognition, that is, short-term memory of running speech, even when listening in quiet.

The Academic Writing Performance of Novice EFL Student Teachers

Academic writing is an important skill that university students need to develop in order to be successful in their study and career after graduation. This article reports descriptive qualitative information about the performance of academic writing of novice EFL student teachers at an Indonesian private university. Thirteen students at the beginning semesters were involved in the study to constitute the sample. In collecting the data, IELTS writing test along with its assessment analysis and interviews were used. The study revealed that the mean of the students’ overall scores in the IELTS writing test is 5.0, which is equivalent to B1 level according to Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). Learners at B1 level are considered as independent users of English or intermediate in using the language. In general, they can produce simple and coherent texts, but only on the topics they are familiar with. The study also unveiled the major issues and challenges faced by the students that include lack of vocabulary and knowledge of grammar in use as well as finding ideas and organizing them in communicativeparagraphs. Unfamiliarity about the test is also another issue hindering the students in writing. These findings resonate some related theories and other empirical studies especially on the issues of communicative competence. This article finally suggests a new upcoming paradigm in the teaching of academic writing particularly when preparing students to take the IELTS test for the sake of their education and career success

Literal is not always easier

Abstract “Literal translation” is a popular construct in Translation Studies. Research from computational approaches has consistently shown that non-literal translations, i.e., renderings semantically and syntactically different or not close to the source text, are more difficult or effortful to produce than literal ones. This paper researches whether literal translations are systematically less effortful to process than non-literal ones using comparable corpus data. The effort incurred in processing literal translations from a parallel corpus is compared to that of processing the most frequent non-literal renderings found in previous comparable corpus studies. Ten professional translators edited a text using a mock translation environment setup using the keylogger Inputlog. The task was presented as a regular editing process with a full cohesive text presented segment pair by segment pair. Time served as a proxy for overall cognitive effort. We analyzed time from presentation to type (TTP) and time to completion of segment edit (TC), or complete editing events. Results showed that processing efforts are indistinguishable between categories, suggesting that cognitive effort to edit non-literal default translation candidates is not always higher when compared to the most frequent literal translations from a parallel corpus.

Procedural generation of problems for elementary math education

Mathematics education plays an essential role in children’s development, and there are many online applications aimed at supporting this process. However, manually creating math problems with a variety of textual and visual content is very time-consuming and expensive. This article presents a generic approach for procedural generation of mathematical problems, including their corresponding textual representations. The content generation process consists of two phases: abstract math problem generation and text generation. For the generation of abstract math problems, we propose a generic template-based method that operates across a variety of difficulty-levels and domains, including arithmetic, comparison, ordering, mathematical relationships, measurement, and geometry. Subsequently, we propose a multi-language adaptive textual content generation pipeline to realize the generated abstract math problems into semantically coherent text questions in natural language. A workflow time gain evaluation shows that the system yields an average time saving of 56%. Further, human expert evaluation of this approach indicates that the content it generates is sensible and solvable for primary school students.

Hierarchical Coherence Modeling for Document Quality Assessment

Text coherence plays a key role in document quality assessment. Most existing text coherence methods only focus on similarity of adjacent sentences. However, local coherence exists in sentences with broader contexts and diverse rhetoric relations, rather than just adjacent sentences similarity. Besides, the highlevel text coherence is also an important aspect of document quality. To this end, we propose a hierarchical coherence model for document quality assessment. In our model, we implement a local attention mechanism to capture the location semantics, bilinear tensor layer for measure coherence and max-coherence pooling for acquiring high-level coherence. We evaluate the proposed method on two realistic tasks: news quality judgement and automated essay scoring. Experimental results demonstrate the validity and superiority of our work.