Cohesive devices in students' IELTS writing tasks Khadijeh Majdeddin, Kish International Campus, Iran The purpose of this

study is to determine if training courses in writing can cause a change in the learners' use of cohesion in their writing. 68 participants (32 male, 36 female) wrote two compositions on only one topic with a two-month interval (i.e., pre-test and post-test). In the mean time, they received overt instruction on cohesive ties (specifically on the use of reference, reiteration, synonyms, and superordinate words in their writing. Frequencies were counted and changed into percentages. Paired-samples t-tests were conducted. Results after analysis of the data indicated that overt instruction is a predictor of success in the use of cohesive ties in IELTS writing tasks. The greatest improvement was observed in the use of reference and superordinate words. Keywords: IELTS; Writing Tasks; Cohesion; Reference; Reiteration; Superordinates; Synonym 1. Introduction It has always been the concern of English teachers to help their students perform as well as the natives in listening, speaking, reading and writing skills. To come to this end, a lot of research has been done to find out some specific features which are used by native speakers and as a result help non natives to get as much closer as possible to native ones. In writing, the teaching and practice of cohesion has become a regular part of many teaching programs. It has been found that one of the characteristics of mature native speaker writing is that the writer's sentences will relate to each other in nonlinear ways. Writers who fail to connect what they are saying in any particular sentence to what they have said earlier are likely to be open to the shifting from one topic to another. We should therefore, encourage those who are learning to write, to think of their writing non-linearly, that is they need to make connections between what they are currently saying and what they have previously said and later intend to say. Cohesion is a semantic notion referring to relations of meaning between elements of a text (Halliday and Hasan, 1976). According to that definition, an analyst examines a range of phenomena which contribute to the cohesiveness of the text which might be grammatical or/and lexical. Normally, we can recognize a text as a sentence or a group of sentences because we can see a clear relationship of ideas unfolding. Yet how can we
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identify what makes a text cohere? What differentiates a cohesive grammatical unit from a random collection of sentences? The main theoretical basis for this teaching experiment is the cohesion theory of Halliday and Hasan(1976). Cohesive relationships between words and sentences have certain definable qualities that allow us to recognize the supersentence. These are: reference, substitution, ellipsis, and conjunction Since their theory is a complicated system containing a large number of contents, some of which are still controversial and are in fact ambiguous; some parts of their theory are not included as teaching contents and basis for statistical analysis, though. The purpose of this study is to determine if training courses in writing can cause a change in the learners' use of cohesion in their writing. To narrow down the research, only one aspect of grammatical cohesion in addition to the lexical cohesion was taken into consideration by comparing the differences between the pre- and the post-writing performance of the students taking an IELTS training course. 2. Background Lexical cohesion refers to the reader perceived unity of text achieved by the author's usage of words with related meaning (Halliday and Hassan, 1976). Grice (1975) argued that to make conversation move on smoothly, the participants should cooperate with each other to make themselves understood .Considering the lexical cohesion, we can think of repetition synonyms, Superordinates and general words. There is a traditional advice to avoid repetition, which can be harmful unless it is supplemented by something more. Instead of repeating the exact same word, a writer can use another word that means the same or almost the same; it is also possible to use the lexical cohesion devise of superordinate which is a more general term or an umbrella term of the specific lexica. The last form of lexical cohesion is the General word which is a higher level superordinate that can almost cover everything. Learners should not be encouraged to say the same thing over and over again but they should be advised to make a connection between what they are currently saying and what they said before (Cutting, 2002). There is always the possibility of cohesion between any pair of lexical items which are in some way associated with each other in the language (Halliday & Hasan, 1976). It is very common for long cohesive chains to be built up out of lexical relations of this kind (Halliday & Hasan, 1976). Xin-hong (2003) classified contextual meanings similarly into meanings of presupposition, meanings of situational context, and common knowledge of communication participants. Austin (1962) and Searle (1969) are among the first to make a difference between sentence meaning and utterance meaning. Sentence meaning is the surface meaning of the sentence, while

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utterance meaning is the real intention of the speaker. Grice (1975) argued that to make conversation move on smoothly, the participants should cooperate with each other to make themselves understood. 3. METHOD Having a look on the theories above, we come to this conclusion that it is somehow crucial to make the learners observe cohesion in their writing in order to write a native like piece of writing. So this study intends to investigate how the learners of writing skills are different from those who were not trained in using the cohesive devices, specially the lexical cohesion. It seems that learners who have passed some training courses in writing might be able to use more cohesive devices in their performance. The study, therefore, compares the writing tasks of a group of students who were being trained for the IELTS exam, prior to the course and later, in order to seek answer to the following question: Is there any significant difference between the writing tasks of the students who have passed IELTS training classes and those who have not in using cohesive devices?

Therefore, this study aims to encourage both learners and teachers to pay more attention to the cohesion in writing in case of proving the differences. 3.1. Participants The subjects of this study were 68 (N = 68) non-native English students including 32 male (n = 32) and 36 females (n = 36) who were getting prepared for the IELTS examination in one of the English Institutes in Shiraz, Iran. These participants were chosen randomly from among a group of participants in a placement test and they all attended a basic training course for two months. 3.2. Corpus and procedures In this study, the subjects were asked to write an essay on a topic (see Appendix A for an example), both in the placement test and at the end of the first training course. Both testing sessions were proctored by the teacher and they were not allowed to use a dictionary. The purpose of choosing the same topic for all participants was to find out their improvement in using the lexical cohesive devices before and after the course. Since this study sought the lexical cohesion in the writing of the participants, the frequencies of the key words in the writing, Synonyms, Superordinates or General words, and just one grammatical cohesion devise (i.e., Reference or singular and plural

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personal pronouns such as I, you, she, he, they, her, his, them ) were counted carefully. The pre-instruction writing was used as the pre-test in this experiment, the purpose of which is to obtain some information about the use of cohesive devices in their English writings before they received overt instructions on English cohesion. After receiving instruction for two months, the participants were asked to write on the same topic, and the same procedure for calculating the frequencies of cohesive ties was repeatred; the resulting frequencies were used as the post-test data. Paired sample t-tests were run for data analysis. 4. Results and Discussion A paired-samples t-test was conducted to evaluate the impact of the intervention (i.e., overt instruction) on participants use of cohesive ties in IELTS writing tasks. There was a statistically significant increase in the use of cohesive ties from pre-test (M = 7.70, SD = 2.76) to post-test (M = 13.19, SD = 2.38, t(67) = -11.388, p < .0005 (two-tailed), Eta2 = .66). The mean increase in the use of cohesive ties was 5.48. The eta squarred statistic indicated that there was a large effect size. This means that 66% of the observed development can be explained by this instructionthat is specific overt instruction had a large positive effect on the participants use of cohesive ties in their writing. The remaining variance percentage is under the control of other factors (e.g., carry-over effect, error, etc.). Table 1 displays the results for this analysis. Table 1. Paired-Samples t-Test for the use of Cohesive Across Time Mean Difference t df Sig. Cohesion 5.48529 -11.388 67 .000

Eta2 .66

Variance 66%

Another paired-samples t-test was conducted to evaluate the impact of the intervention (i.e., overt instruction) on participants use of reference in IELTS writing tasks. There was a statistically significant increase in the use of reference from pre-test (M = 1.97, SD = 1.05) to post-test (M = 3.44, SD = 1.02, t(67) = -7.592, p < .0005 (two-tailed), Eta2 = .46). The mean increase in the use of reference was 1.47. The eta squarred statistic indicated that there was a large effect size. This means that 46% of the observed development can be explained by this instructionthat is specific overt instruction had a large positive effect on the participants use of reference in their writing. Like above, the remaining variance percentage is under the control of other factors (e.g., carry-over effect, error, etc.). Table 2 displays the results for this analysis.

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Table 2. Paired-Samples t-Test for the use of Reference Across Time Mean Difference t df Sig. Eta2 Reference 1.47059 -7.592 67 .000 .46

Variance 46%

A third instance of paired-samples t-test was conducted to evaluate the impact of the intervention (i.e., overt instruction) on participants use of reiteration in IELTS writing tasks. There was a statistically significant increase in the use of reference from pre-test (M = 1.88, SD = 1.16) to posttest (M = 3.29, SD = .915, t(67) = -7.7176, p < .0005 (two-tailed), Eta2 = .47). The mean increase in the use of reiteration was 1.41. The eta squarred statistic indicated that there was a large effect size. This means that 47% of the observed development can be explained by this instruction. Table 3 displays the results for this analysis. Table 3. Paired-Samples t-Test for the use of Reiteration Across Time Mean Difference t df Sig. Eta2 Variance Reiteration 1.41176 -7.717 67 .000 .47 47% Another instance of paired-samples t-test was conducted to evaluate the impact of the intervention (i.e., overt instruction) on participants use of synonyms in IELTS writing tasks. There was a statistically significant increase in the use of synonyms from pre-test (M = 2.02, SD = .945) to post-test (M = 3.13, SD = ..912, t(67) = -7.43, p < .0005 (two-tailed), Eta2 = .45). The mean increase in the use of reiteration was 1.102. The eta squarred statistic indicated that there was a large effect size. This means that 45% of the observed development can be explained by this instruction. Table 4 displays the results for this analysis. Table 4. Paired-Samples t-Test for the use of Synonyms Across Time Mean Difference t df Sig. Synonyms 1.10294 -7.434 67 .000

Eta2 .45

Variance 45%

The last instance of paired-samples t-test was conducted to evaluate the impact of the intervention (i.e., overt instruction) on participants use of superordinate words in IELTS writing tasks. There was a statistically significant increase in the use of superordinate words from pre-test (M = 1.82, SD = 1.01) to post-test (M = 3.32, SD = .99, t(67) = -8.02, p < .0005 (twotailed), Eta2 = .49). The mean increase in the use of superordinate words was

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1.5. The eta squarred statistic indicated that there was a large effect size. This means that 49% of the observed development can be explained by this instruction. Table 5 displays the results for this analysis. Table 5. Paired-Samples t-Test for the use of Superordinate Words Across Time Mean Difference t df Sig. Eta2 Variance Superordinate words 1.50000 -8.029 67 .000 .49 49% 5. Conclusions We can conclude from the above analysis that the teaching of cohesive devices is helpful in improving the use of cohesion in the compositions of EFL students. Reference, which is an example of grammatical cohesion, is the area that is affected most significantly by such overt instruction. Synonyms, superordinates or general words, and reiteration, too, are affected positively; the impact of overt instruction in this case, however, is not as significant as for reference. Acknowledgment I would like to thank Dr Reza Ghafar Samar who inspired this research. My special thanks also go to Dr Salmani Nodoushan for his help in writing this paper. I would also like to dedicate this paper to Dr Zargham, the revered Dean of Kish International Campus for his fatherly support and caring. Author Bio Khadijeh Majdeddin has received her MA degree in Applied Linguistics from the Kish International Campus of the University of Tehran, Iran. She is currently an adjunct instructor of English at Kish International Campus as well as Sharif University of Technology at Kish. She has been teaching English in institutes in Shiraz and Kish for over a decade. Her major area of interest is learning style research. References: Austin, J. L. 1962. How to do things with words. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press Cutting, J. (2002). Pragmatics and discourse. London and New York Grice, H. P. 1975. Logic and conversation. In: Cole, P. & Morgan, J. L. (Eds.), Syntax and semantics 3: Speech acts. New York

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Halliday, M. A. K. & R. Hasan. (1976). Cohesion in English. London: US-China Education Review, ISSN1548-6613, USA, Jul. 2007, Volume 4, No.7 (Serial No.32) Searle, J. R. (1969). Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Xin-hong . (2007). Application of English cohesion theory in the teaching of writing to Chinese graduate students.US-China Education Review, 4,3137. Appendix A: Composition Sample The position of women has been changed in the society. Do you agree or disagree? (pre-test essay) I am agree with this opinion . I think now in information age women believe themselves .women believe that they can do everything they wants without any limited. Now women can be a president and do this job as well as men. If women know themselves and they can do everything they wants they can change everythings. In the last 20 years women in the world tried so hard to change ideas about themselves .They try because they believe that they can ,women changes many things because they wants to changes their way of life. I think internet helps women to take information about another countries, another cultures and another women . They know that life is not only care for their children .They knows that life has so many faces not one. Now women should help each other to changes many things .Women wants to show that everyone are equal. Men and women. Women should changes many laws about themselves .women wants to have freedom in their life and the fight for this goal. Now women work hard to show that they can do so many things. (post-test essay) I agree with these sentences that the position of women has been changed in the society. In my opining women believe themselves nowadays so they've changed their position. Women believe their power to have better life without any limited .They know that limited doesn't let them have an enjoyable life that they want. I think fighting with wrong thoughts about women and the ways they should behave that happens with women who love their life is admirable.

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In this time women can be a president of a country so they know their abilities and believe in them and this is a great change in women's life. Not only the women shows that they aren't the second sex to the society , but also they show that in many situations they think and do better than others. So they want to say that they are equal with men in every rights and I think they've been successful since present. Appendix B: Key words, synonyms, superordinates or general words Superordinates or general words Keywords synonyms Position Situation, condition Circumstances status ,level Woman Girls ,female Gender, sex society community The world group Change Modify, alter, vary Replace, substitute Education Knowledge -------------Understand See, recognize , Gather perceive agree, believe