Grammatical Cohesion in Teacher Trainees’ Argument Essay: A Linguistics Analysis of Argument essay of a Private College of Education in Ghana

Abstract

This study examines grammatical cohesion in teacher trainees’ argument essay. Twenty scripts of teacher trainees’ argument essay were purposely selected from a total of hundred essays which were assessed by two inter-raters and used as data for the study. The study basically applied a qualitative method of analysis to the data. The theoretical framework that underpins the study is Halliday and Hasan’s (1976) influential theory of cohesion in English. Three major findings were made. First, teacher trainees frequently use reference and conjunctions to achieve coherence in their argument essay. Second, a good quality essay cannot be judged on the number of cohesive markers present, linguistic features such as grammatical rules of concord and verb tense are equally important. The study further showed that the least used cohesive devices are substitution and ellipsis. The findings of this study have implications for pedagogy and further research.