An investigation of the use of lexical cohesion in expository writing by chinese students

Abstract

The objectives of this study were 1) to examine whether or not the good and poor Chinese EFL undergraduates at Yuxi Normal University (YNU) significantly differed in their use of lexical cohesion devices in expository writing, 2) to find out the lexical cohesion devices that the two groups of Chinese EFL undergraduates at YNU used in expository writing, and 3) to investigate the strategies that the good and poor Chinese EFL undergraduates at YNU used when using lexical cohesion devices in expository writing. The population was 93 third-year undergraduates in the English Major Program at YNU which lies in Yunnan, China. The samples were 46 students from the population. They were grouped and labeled as good students and poor students based on the scores they obtained from Band 4 Test for English Majors in China. The research instruments included an expository writing test with an analytic rating scale, a questionnaire, and a semi-structured interview. The expository writing test was developed to collect expository compositions. The analytic rating scale, which measured content, organization, vocabulary, and language use, was made for scoring the expository compositions. The questionnaire, along with the semi-structured interview, was designed to obtain in-depth data about the strategies that the good and poor students used when using lexical cohesion devices in their expository writing. Quantitative data were analyzed through descriptive statistics including mean, minimum, maximum, standard deviation, and percentage. Content analyses were employed to analyze qualitative data. The findings revealed that 1) the good and poor Chinese EFL undergraduates significantly differed in their use of simple repetition, complex repetition, opposites, Type A closed collocation, and Type B activity-related collocation, 2) of all lexical cohesion subcategories, the good students did not use meronyms and Type A open collocation. However, the poor students used all subcategories in their writing. Similarities and differences in using each sub-category were found in the two groups of students' writing. For example, concerning the use of repetition, one similarity was that simple repetition occurred quite often in terms of the repetition of a pronoun. One difference was that simple repetition in the good students' writing involved more conjunctions, and 3) the good students used more lexical cohesion strategies, rhetorical strategies, cognitive strategies, communicative strategies, and social strategies than the poor students did in their writing. The findings about the use of lexical cohesion devices offered many details about the use of lexical cohesion in Chinese EFL students' expository writing, which could help researchers in the field of lexical cohesion know more about expository writing in Chinese EFL situation. Most importantly, teachers in EFL situations would be well inspired by these findings to get better ideas on how to teach expository writing in terms of the use of lexical cohesion. The findings about the strategies that the good and poor students used in their writing provided more insights into teaching expository writing in terms of lexical cohesion strategies and the other types of strategies, especially teaching expository writing to poor students in Chinese EFL situation.