engleski

The Influence of Cohesion and Coherence on Text Quality: A Cross-Linguistic Study of Foreign Language Learners' Written Production

In the field of second language acquisition and testing, discourse competence has often been defined within theoretical models of communicative competence (Canale 1983 ; Van Ek 1986 ; Bachman 1990 ; CEFR 2001). Notwithstanding some evident definitional and terminological differences, it seems to be determined by coherence and cohesion, whose significance and influence on the overall quality of written production has been the subject of research (Palmer 1999 ; Chiang 2003 ; Dastjerdi and Talebinezhad 2006). The purpose of the present study is to explore the ways in which foreign language learners use cohesion and coherence in their written production. The sample comprises 90 assignments written by foreign language learners of English or German. Also, in order to identify a potential transfer of knowledge, learners who learn both languages are included as well. First, the number and type of cohesive devices is analysed, and the appropriateness of their usage is assessed along with their latent impact on the overall quality of learners’ writing. Then, topical structure analysis (Lautamatii 1987) is performed in order to clarify how topics in the sentences work through the text produced by learners to build meaning progressively. The following aspects are taken into account: a) which progressions (parallel, sequential, extended parallel progression and extended sequential progression) are used by participants in connecting ideas and thoughts within the paragraphs, and b) whether the number and type of progression correlate with the quality of the written composition. The results indicate that foreign language learners’ compositions are characterised by the dominant and ineffective use of simple cohesive devices, and that successful learners tend to use sequential progression more often than unsuccessful learners.

discourse competence, communicative competence, cohesion, coherence, topical structure

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