Investigating EFL Learners’ Use of Lexical Cohesive Devices in Writing

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 se provided to the students to help them achieve a higher level of lexical cohesion in their written performance.