The improvement of coherence in EFL low achievers' writing through the instruction of cohesive devices and thematic progression

• Main Authors: Lin, Su Yu, 林舒悠
• Other Authors: Yu, Ming Chung
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2011
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/98852974046136256668

碩士 === 國立政治大學 === 英語教學碩士在職專班 === 100 === As an indispensable element in English learning, writing instruction in Taiwan actually has been given through the analysis of grammar and sentence patterns. This however ignores another primary key to successful writing—coherence. Due to its obscurity, teachers and students both find it complicated to teach and acquire the ability to organize a written text logically and coherently. The current study investigated the possibility to improve the high school students’ writing by instructing them how to apply the coherence strategies to their writing—cohesive devices (CD) and thematic progression (TP). In this study, with the teaching schedule unaffected, the researcher’s 39 second-graders in one Taipei senior high school were first taught how to analyze the coherence of the reading passages in the textbooks. Then they were required to apply and examine CD and TP when writing. Two low achievers of these students were further selected to investigate their writing development by examining their written texts with CD and TP applied in writing conferences, having interviews with the researcher and keeping journals between classes and writing conferences. Concluded from the quantitative and qualitative data collected, the results revealed that the two low-proficiency students were able to get high grades in the holistic writing performance and coherence of writing. They were meanwhile found to be able to apply the same categories of CD (reference, conjunction and reiteration) and types of TP (simple linear TP type and TP with a constant theme) as the ones used by the high-proficiency learners in previous studies. During the five-month study, the participants also cultivated the ability to focus more on content level and to revise properly in their writing with the help of CD and TP. Besides, since the participants held positive attitudes toward the learning of CD and TP, the researcher recommends that the combination of CD and TP should be integrated into the writing instruction in current normal English writing class in Taiwan to help students comprehend the abstract coherence and to improve their writing by analyzing CD and TP in the written texts.