Cohesive devices and academic writing quality of thai undergraduate students

Abstract

The current study aims to investigate (1) common cohesive devices used in the writing development of Thai undergraduate students majoring in English, (2) the frequency of cohesive devices used in the writing of Thai undergraduate students majoring in English, and (3) the relationship between the number and types of cohesive devices and the quality of the writing as rated by writing experts. Thirty junior students majoring in English contributed thirty academic essays as sample texts in the study, with a total number of 16,856 words. Halliday & Hasan’s (1976) taxonomy of cohesion was used as an analytical framework of cohesive devices, while a writing assessment rubric developed by Hogue & Oshima (2007) was used to determine students’ writing quality. His findings revealed four types of cohesive devices frequently used by Thai undergraduate students including reiteration, reference, conjunction, and ellipsis. A one-way ANOVA revealed significant difference numbers of cohesive devices used in the students’ writing. In addition, students’ writing scores positively correlated with the total number of words used in the writing task, the total number of cohesive devices used, and the number of references.