Coherence breaks in first-year essays written by English second language (ESL) university students
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Authors
Watkinson, Hawthorne Janice
Issue Date
1998-01
Type
Dissertation
Language
en
Keywords
Coherence , Cohesion , Reader-based , Text-based , Coherence breaks , Topic-related , Cohesion-related , Topic control , Unspecified introduction , Topic drift , English Second Language(ESL) , Process approach
Alternative Title
Abstract
Writing coherent essays is evidence of a university student's discourse
competence and is important in terms of academic success. An analytical
taxonomy of coherence breaks {both topic-related and cohesion-related), based
on Wikborg (1985; 1990), was used to determine the frequency of coherence
breaks in essays written by first-year English Second Language (ESL) students.
A subset of these essays was selected for assessment of their holistic coherence
(HCR) by raters. The major finding of the statistical tests is that there is a
significant relationship between the frequency of coherence breaks, particularly
topic-related coherence breaks, and holistic coherence. Furthermore, the
relationship between the coherence of essays and marks awarded them was
established. Tutor intervention was also found to have had a positive impact
when draft and final versions were compared: in general, there was a decrease
in the frequency of coherence breaks, and a greater perception of coherence in
the final versions.
Description
Citation
Watkinson, Hawthorne Janice (1998) Coherence breaks in first-year essays written by English second language (ESL) university students, University of South Africa, Pretoria, <http://hdl.handle.net/10500/17849>