Coherence breaks in first-year essays written by English second language (ESL) university students
Year: 1998
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Writing coherent essays is evidence of a university student's discourse \ncompetence and is important in terms of academic success. An analytical \ntaxonomy of coherence breaks {both topic-related and cohesion-related), based \non Wikborg (1985; 1990), was used to determine the frequency of coherence \nbreaks in essays written by first-year English Second Language (ESL) students. \nA subset of these essays was selected for assessment of their holistic coherence \n(HCR) by raters. The major finding of the statistical tests is that there is a \nsignificant relationship between the frequency of coherence breaks, particularly \ntopic-related coherence breaks, and holistic coherence. Furthermore, the \nrelationship between the coherence of essays and marks awarded them was \nestablished. Tutor intervention was also found to have had a positive impact \nwhen draft and final versions were compared: in general, there was a decrease \nin the frequency of coherence breaks, and a greater perception of coherence in \nthe final versions.
Author: Hawthorne Janice Watkinson
Language: English
Subfield: Linguistics and Language
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W312863104