Abstract:
The present study is an attempt to unveil the types of lexical reiteration that EFL first
year (LMD) students have, most frequently, recourse to when writing and the extent to
which they affect the quality of their written performance. To this end, a descriptive
small-scale research has been conducted with a group of 14 students enrolled in the
department of English at the University of Algiers 2. The procedure of the study
consists of undertaking an analysis of cohesion in the light of Halliday and Hasan’s
(1976) theory on lexical reiteration as a sub-type of lexical cohesion. The sampled
corpus involves one-paragraph compositions written by the subjects under two
different conditions. The first part of the written production is represented by a set of
paragraphs that learners have produced as part of an assigned homework while the
second consists of their second term writing examination papers.
Furthermore, as a follow-up to the results gained from students’ written
productions’ analysis, two questionnaires were devised in the present study, one to the
group of first year students and the other to teachers of writing. The students’
questionnaire has sought to unveil their perceptions, the reasons that underlie their use
of lexical ties and whether their perceptions of lexical ties match their productions.
The questionnaire to the teachers was meant to elicit the type of instruction they
advocate for cohesion, more precisely lexical cohesion.
Results of the analysis of cohesion have shown that the group of first year LMD
students have overused repetition of the same item. The instructors should, therefore,
pay more attention to the teaching of other lexical cohesive ties. Moreover, in the light
of the comparison between the high- and low-rated papers in terms of the most
preferred types of reiteration, the findings of the study indicate that good student
writers use more lexical cohesion ties than the poor writers. Equally, they tend to vary
their repetition via exploring the semantic relation of synonymy better than the writers
of poor papers who were found to rely mostly on repetition of the same item.
Also, the study has succeeded to demonstrate that little attention is, currently,
being paid to the cohesive effect of vocabulary by teachers of writing who exhibit a
tendency towards concentrating on the grammatical devices of cohesion as being the
sole crucial ingredient of cohesion in writing.
As a matter of fact and in the light of the obtained results, we hope we could
substantiate the fact that using the variety of lexical reiteration ties is a further
underlying characteristic of good written performance. Similarly, results could be
deemed insightful in improving the contents of the first year LMD writing course of
the University, and in making decisions about what classroom exercises could best be
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provided to the students to help them achieve a higher level of lexical cohesion in their
written performance.
