BINH DUONG PROVINCIAL PEOPLE’S COMMITTEE THU DAU MOT UNIVERSITY HUYNH TAN VIET COHESION ERRORS IN ESSAYS COMMITTED BY THIRD-YEAR ENGLISH-MAJORED STUDENTS AT THU DAU MOT UNIVERSITY MAJOR: ENGLISH LANGUAGE STUDIES MAJOR CODE: 8 22 02 01 MASTER THESIS IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE STUDIES BINH DUONG PROVINCE, AUGUST 2023 BINH DUONG PROVINCIAL PEOPLE’S COMMITTEE THU DAU MOT UNIVERSITY HUYNH TAN VIET COHESION ERRORS IN ESSAYS COMMITTED BY THIRD-YEAR ENGLISH-MAJORED STUDENTS AT THU DAU MOT UNIVERSITY MAJOR: ENGLISH LANGUAGE STUDIES MAJOR CODE: 8 22 02 01 MASTER THESIS IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE STUDIES SUPERVISED BY Assoc. HO THI KIEU OANH BINH DUONG PROVINCE, AUGUST 2023 STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY I certify that the intellectual content of the thesis "Cohesion errors in essays committed by third-year English-majored students at Thu Dau Mot University " is my own work, and it does not contain materials written or published by other people or other people's ideas, except for the information from the references. This thesis has not been submitted to any other tertiary institution for the award of a degree or diploma. Binh Duong Province, 2023 HUYNH TAN VIET i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First of all, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Assoc.
Ho Thi Kieu Oanh, who gave me insightful comments and devoted her valuable time to reading my thesis with great care. Especially, I am wholeheartedly grateful to her for her unchanging sympathy and unceasing encouragement, which she has given me so far. I wish to express my sincere and appreciation to the manager of the English Language Program Tran Thanh Du, Ph.D, who has inspired me to conduct this thesis with his warmly encouragement, enthusiastic guidance and interesting lectures. My special thanks go to my lecturers at Thu Dau Mot University, who gave me helpful advice.
Besides, they also accompanied me during my most challenging time. Furthermore, I am truly grateful to my colleagues at Nguyen Dinh Chieu High School because they took on much of my work, and I had more time to finish this thesis. Finally, I also want to thank my friends who have supported me. I am greatly indebted to my extended family, who have always been supportive and sympathizing, so that I could devote all my time to finishing my thesis.
ii ABSTRACT Writing skills, particularly essay writing skills, are critical for students majoring in English. Cohesion and coherence are two extremely important factors in producing a good essay. Therefore, mastering linking devices to connect ideas in an essay would assist students in avoiding errors of cohesive devices. The researcher of the current study discovers that students struggle with using connected devices in their writing.
Furthermore, there have not been many studies on cohesive devices. As a result, the researcher employs Halliday and Hasan's theory to identify errors in cohesive devices, classify them, and investigate the causes of these errors to make recommendations for learning and teaching essay writing. The study's data consists of 60 essays written by the third-year English-majored students (TYEMS) at Thu Dau Mot University (TDMU) in Binh Duong Province. The data on cohesion are quoted, described, and analyzed using qualitative and quantitative approach.
The current researcher attempts to discover and categorize them into two broad categories: cohesive lexical and grammatical errors. The current study's findings indicate that TYEMS' cohesive errors at TDMU are primarily caused by the learners' inability to make use of the target language's grammatical and lexical rules, as well as by the learners' negative transference of their mother tongue's rules. Based on these findings, this study offers some recommendations to lecturers, curriculum designers, and students at TDMU to reduce cohesive errors during the teaching and learning process. iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS Abbreviations Description TDMU Thu Dau Mot University TYEMS Third-year English-majored students Page p.
CD Cohesive devices N Number of errors F Frequency iv LIST OF TABLES Table 1.1: CTĐT 2022/TT17····························································· page 2 Table 2.1: Halliday and Hasan’s Cohesion Taxonomy (1976)··························· 21 Table 2.2: Halliday and Hasan’s Cohesion Taxonomy (1976)··························· 22 Table 4.1: Students’ thought about the importance of the writing skill at the University···········································································38 Table 4.2: Students’ thought about how hard the writing skill at the University is····39 Table 4.3: Students’ frequency of writing essays at home································ 39 Table 4.4: Students’ thought about how the teacher taught them the essay writing lesson······································································ 40 Table 4.5: Students’ frequency of their writing essays at home·························· 40 Table 4.6: Students’ suggestions to the lecturers and the university to improve their essay writing skill··························································· 40 Table 4.7: Students’ understanding about cohesive devices······························ 41 Table 4.8: Students’ frequency of using cohesive devices in their essays·············· 42 Table 4.9: Students’ types of errors they usually commit in their essays··············· 42 Table 4.10: Students’ types of errors they usually use incorrectly in their essays····· 43 Table 4.11: Students’ comments on the essay writing material·························· 44 Table 4.12: Students’ causes of cohesion errors in their essays·························· 44 Table 4.13: The frequency of grammatical cohesive devices·····························45 Table 4.14: The distribution of grammatical cohesive errors····························· 46 Table 4.15: The distribution of lexical cohesive errors···································· 49 Table 4.16: Interlingual errors of grammatical cohesion·································· 52 Table 4.17: Interlingual errors of lexical cohesion········································· 55 Table 4.18: Intralingual errors·································································58 v LIST OF CHARTS Chart Title Page Chart 4.1 Percentage of the lexical cohesive errors 49 Chart 4.2 Percentage of interlingual errors of grammatical cohesion 52 Chart 4.3 Percentage of intralingual errors 58 vi TABLE OF CONTENTS STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY.iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS. iv LIST OF TABLES.v LIST OF CHARTS. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS. Background of the Study.
The Importance of Writing Skills. The Importance of Cohesion in Writing. Statement of the Problem. Scope of the Study.
Aims and Objectives. Significance of the Study. Organization of the Study. Previous Related Studies.
Studies in Vietnam. Definitions of Text. Definitions of Essay. Definitions of Cohesion in Essays.
Cohesive Devices Used in Essays. Definitions of Error and Error Analysis. Studies of Error Analysis. Classification of Cohesion Errors in English Essays and Causes.
Research Participants and Subjects. Data Collection Procedure. Data Analysis Procedure. Reliability and Validity.
FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION. Findings from the Questionnaire Analysis. Students’ Attitude Towards the Importance of the Writing Skill at the University. Students’ Thought on Teachers’ Teaching of Writing Essays and Students’ Frequency of Their Writing Essays at Home.
Findings Related to Students’ Understanding of Cohesive Devices and their Cohesive Errors. Students’ Comments on Essay Writing Materials. Causes for Cohesive Errors. Results from Essay Analysis.
The Use of Cohesive Devices. Grammatical Cohesive Errors. Lexical Cohesive Errors. Sources of Errors.
CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS. Limitations of the Study and Recommendations for Further Research. INTRODUCTION Writing is a necessary and difficult language skill to master. When writing any text, learners frequently make cohesive grammatical and lexical errors.
Especially, cohesion errors have a negative impact on writing quality because they cause readers to misinterpret the writing message if the text contains unrelated components. The purpose of this study is therefore to describe the most common cohesion errors in the essays committed by the TYEMS at TDMU, identify their causes in the process of writing English essays, and provide solutions for teaching and learning English essay writing to TDMU students. This chapter provides an overview of the problem. In addition, the research aims, objectives, scope and research questions are presented in detail.
Furthermore, it indicates the significance and organization of the study. Background of the Study 1. The Importance of Writing Skills In recent years, the teaching and learning of English in Vietnam in general and Binh Duong Province in particular has made significant progress. Teaching English is oriented towards the development of four skills such as Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing.
In the syllabus of the experimental English textbooks for Grades 10,11,12 published by the Vietnam Educational publishing house in 2013, paragraph writing is scheduled to be taught from Grade10 and it is compulsory for students from grade 10 to 12 to write a paragraph as a compulsory part in the end-term test to check their writing skill. In each test, these students are required to write a paragraph of 120 - 200 words about the topics taught in the school textbooks. Students who major in English continue to learn how to write longer texts such as essays or articles in universities. However, their university essay writing faces various challenges.
According to the language training program at Thu Dau Mot University, the curriculum was first designed in 2010 and revised every 2 years. The program applied to the 2022 course includes 120 credits, of which 95 are compulsory and 25 are elective. After graduating with a bachelor's degree in English, students majoring in English can work as teachers of English, office workers, interpreters/translators. at foreign companies, joint ventures, or any companies that need English.
1 The language training program at Thu Dau Mot University in 2022 (CTĐT 2022/TT17) also indicates the number or periods of Writing skills as followed: Table 1. CTĐT 2022/TT17 Number of Required Pre-prerequisites credits (Re)/ Terms Course name (Pre)/ Elective Theory Practice Parallel (Pa) (El) Essential Reading 1 3 Pre, Pa Re and Writing Reading & Writing 2 2 Pre, Pa Re strategies Academic Reading 3 2 Pre, Pa Re & Writing Critical Reading and 4 2 Pre, Pa Re Writing Reading and Writing 5 for Business 2 Pre, Pa Re Communication Essay Writing in 6 3 Pre Re English 7 Academic Writing 3 - El Fundamentals of 8 2 Pre El Translation Approaches to 9 2 Pre El Translation British and 10 3 - Re American Literature Report Writing in 11 2 Pre Re English 12 Graduation Report 5 Pre, Pa Re 2 As shown in the table 1.1 above, writing skills are usually required for the majority of students studying at university, with 31 credits distributed over four years, and Essay Writing in English is required for all TYEMS at TDMU. Prior to that, students have been taught writing skills in five subjects: Essential Reading and Writing, Reading and Writing Strategies, Academic Reading and Writing, Critical Reading and Writing, and Reading and Writing for Business Communication. Students hereby may not be fully provided with cohesive devices to use for Essay Writing in English, and cohesion errors in their essays are unavoidable.
Furthermore, failing to master cohesive devices can have a negative impact on students' later academic articles with higher academic writing requirements. As a result, the analysis of cohesive errors in essays could be highly demanding and vital for university students, and teachers in that it could help to assist students and teachers in identifying and classifying them. However, the systematic and scientific analysis of the errors of this kind in student essays have received little attention. The Importance of Cohesion in Writing Cohesion is regarded as "an essential textual component" by Ghasemi (2013, p.
1615), both in the construction of ordered texts and in making the material understandable to the reader. Cohesion appears to be in charge of ensuring that our words, ideas, and paragraphs fit together. It connects a string of sentences to produce a text instead of a series of statements that are unrelated to one another. In addition, cohesion is an important aspect of academic writing because it directly influences our writing style.
A cohesive essay, according to Min (2014), is not limited to "grammatically correct" sentences; rather, it refers to the linkage of ideas at both the sentence and paragraph levels. The content of sentences in the text must be consistent. That is, they must be organized logically and in proper order. Without cohesive devices, the reader has the impression that they are reading a long list of disconnected thoughts.
They may frequently have difficulty recalling what they have read. Moreover, they have difficulty understanding the relationships between concepts, which may indicate that they cannot understand the main point of the essays. 3 Many researchers have studied the relationship between the use of cohesive devices and writing quality. A text is meaningful when its components refer to one another and establish a logical link.