Investigating the use of cohesive devices by Chinese EFL learners

Abstract

This study investigated cohesive errors in expository compositions of People Republic of China (PRC) students, who were learning English as a foreign language in a university in Singapore. It was based upon an error analysis paradigm and Halliday and Hasan's (1976) cohesion framework and taxonomy. The purpose was to illuminate the students' difficulties in using cohesion by examining the cohesive errors quantitatively and qualitatively. The quantitative analysis investigated the frequency and percentage of (1) the cohesive errors in main and sub-categories of cohesion, and (2) the types of cohesive errors, committed by the students. Results show that they had the greatest difficulty in using reference cohesion, followed by conjunction and lexical cohesion. Generally, redundant repetition and misuse of cohesive devices posed the greatest challenge for them. The qualitative analysis consisted of a detailed linguistic description and explanation of the cohesive errors. It detailed how cohesion was used erroneously in their writing. The study concluded with a discussion and its limitations.