abstract: Many researchers have pointed out that sentence complexity plays an important role in language maturity. Using cohesive devices is a critical method to composing complicated sentences. Several grammatical researchers give cohesive devices different definitions and categories in the perspective of pure linguistics, yet little is known about the Chinese learners' acquisition situations of cohesive devices in the field of Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language (TCFL). Combined with these definitions and pedagogical theories, the acquisition situations of four grammatical features of cohesive devices and eleven logical relations are discussed in this thesis. This thesis expects that through discovering different features of cohesive devices among different student levels, educators of Chinese will gain a more comprehensive understanding of the acquisition orders and features of conjunctive devices. In this study, I examine the teaching orders of cohesive devices in selected textbooks from first-year Chinese through fourth-year Chinese. Three groups of students were required to complete two essays based on the same topics and prompts. Twenty-eight valid writing samples are examined in total, including ten writing samples from fourth-year students, another ten from third-year students, and eight from second-year students. The results show that there are no obvious differences among the three levels of students in their use of certain grammatical features and logical relations of cohesive devices. Students in these three levels have difficulty understanding how to connect paragraphs together fluently and accurately in their compositions. Pedagogical implications include some suggestions about designing instructional writing assignments in order to give more clearly pedagogical instructions for teaching cohesive devices. In addition, comprehensible directions that explain which logical relations should be taught every academic year are proposed. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. East Asian Languages and Civilizations 2013

This study compared cohesive devices in texts written by Japanese second-year junior high school learners with those in texts that appeared in the textbook they were studying. The purpose of the study was to determine which cohesive devices were being used in the textbook and which were used in the learners’ writing. The study used both quantitative and qualitative analysis. The quantitative analysis began by determining whether there was any significant difference between the textbook readings and the learners’ writing in terms of the frequency of cohesive devices. It then examined the kinds of devices that were used by both groups of texts. The qualitative analysis compared the patterns of reiteration in two textbook readings with those in a sample of six student texts of different levels of success. The results showed no significant differences between the student texts and the textbooks in terms of the overall frequency of cohesive devices. Among the individual devices, however, there was a significantly higher frequency of ellipsis and synonyms in the textbook readings than in the student texts. There was also a significantly higher frequency of conjunction and reference in the student texts relative to the textbook readings. In all other devices, there was no significant difference between the textbook readings and the student texts. The qualitative study revealed the importance of strong opening sentences, reinforcement of the main topic through repetition, as well as of linking new topics with the main topic in the textbook readings. However, the presence of these features varied in the selected student texts. Accordingly, stronger texts contained all these features, average texts contained some of them, and weaker texts contained few or none. This study consequently supports other studies that have shown that the way in which cohesive devices are used is far more important in determining text quality than the number of devices used. The findings of this study showed the strengths and weaknesses in the students’ writing, and highlighted the need for a greater awareness of cohesion by focusing more on sentence building, and the use of a greater variety of cohesive devices / English Studies

Writing plays an important role in people's daily communication. But for Chinese university students, writing an English composition constitutes a tough task, in which the use of cohesive devices is one of the major problems. Though cohesion has a lot to do with the quality of a composition, the empirical study of their relationship from the perspective of quantitative research is rarely done.

英文作文教學在英語學習上是不可或缺的一環，而實際上在台灣，英文作文教學仍是透過分析文法和句型來進行的，但這樣的方式忽略了英文寫作能夠成功的主要關鍵——連貫性。由於連貫性的晦澀難解，教師與學生皆會認為在教授和學習寫出有連貫性的文章是很複雜的。本文藉由教導學生如何於寫作時運用連繫功能詞(cohesive devices)和主題推進(thematic progression)兩種策略來探究作文中的連貫性，以研究其增進高中生英文寫作表現的可能性。本研究在不影響正常教學進度的前提下進行，研究者的39位臺北市高二學生首先接受如何分析課本文章連貫性的指導，並接著應用和檢視連繫功能詞以及主題推進於他們的寫作中。其中有兩位低成就者進一步地被挑選出來，藉由寫作會談(writing conference)以瞭解受試者在寫作時，如何利用以上兩種連貫性的策略於其英文寫作中；同時也透過訪談和日記撰寫的方式，來探討學生的學習連貫性策略的歷程。 由相關的量化和質性資料可看出，本研究的結果顯示受試者在作文整體表現與作文連貫性上的分數明顯偏高；他們也被證明能夠和其他研究中的高成就者一般，運用相同的連繫功能詞(指稱、連接與重述)和主題推進(線性推進與主題連續推進)種類。在這歷時五個月的研究中，受試者也在連繫功能詞與主題推進的協助下，培養出更注意作文內容以及進行適當修改的能力。此外，也由於受試者對於學習連繫功能詞與主題推進抱持著正面的態度，本研究建議應結合連繫功能詞和主題推進，並將其融入台灣現存的正規作文教學之中，藉著分析作文中的連繫功能詞與主題推進，協助學生理解抽象的連貫性進而使作文表現更進步。 / As an indispensable element in English learning, writing instruction in Taiwan actually has been given through the analysis of grammar and sentence patterns. This however ignores another primary key to successful writing—coherence. Due to its obscurity, teachers and students both find it complicated to teach and acquire the ability to organize a written text logically and coherently. The current study investigated the possibility to improve the high school students’ writing by instructing them how to apply the coherence strategies to their writing—cohesive devices (CD) and thematic progression (TP). In this study, with the teaching schedule unaffected, the researcher’s 39 second-graders in one Taipei senior high school were first taught how to analyze the coherence of the reading passages in the textbooks. Then they were required to apply and examine CD and TP when writing. Two low achievers of these students were further selected to investigate their writing development by examining their written texts with CD and TP applied in writing conferences, having interviews with the researcher and keeping journals between classes and writing conferences. Concluded from the quantitative and qualitative data collected, the results revealed that the two low-proficiency students were able to get high grades in the holistic writing performance and coherence of writing. They were meanwhile found to be able to apply the same categories of CD (reference, conjunction and reiteration) and types of TP (simple linear TP type and TP with a constant theme) as the ones used by the high-proficiency learners in previous studies. During the five-month study, the participants also cultivated the ability to focus more on content level and to revise properly in their writing with the help of CD and TP. Besides, since the participants held positive attitudes toward the learning of CD and TP, the researcher recommends that the combination of CD and TP should be integrated into the writing instruction in current normal English writing class in Taiwan to help students comprehend the abstract coherence and to improve their writing by analyzing CD and TP in the written texts.

The aim of this paper was to analyze the impact of the genre on the use of cohesive devices in the literary and legal texts. To achieve the aim the following objectives were specified: to determine the typical patterns of the use of cohesive devices in literary and legal texts and to identify similarities and differences of the use of cohesive devices in the texts of different genres under investigation. The approaches to the research were quantitative and qualitative as well as content analysis method was chosen for the analysis. The research demonstrated that the genre has an evident influence on the density and distribution of cohesive devices. It also demonstrated that most often used cohesive devices in fiction belong to the group of reference and in legal documents to the group of lexical cohesion. The amassed data showed that the literary genre demonstrates all possible types of substitution and ellipsis whereas in the legal genre this type of cohesive devices has very low frequency. In addition, conjunction was identified as the least commonly employed type of cohesive devices in fiction as well as in the legal documents. Cohesive devices are important in all types of communication as they signal to the addressee the connections between the sentences of the text; therefore, the further studies are required to determine the influence of textual genre on the choice of cohesive devices in the genres that were not thoroughly investigated before. / Tyrimo tikslas yra panagrinėti, kokią įtaką teksto žanras turi renkantis tarpfrazinio ryšio priemones literatūriniame ir teisiniame žanruose. Suformuluoti šie tyrimo uždaviniai: apibrėžti tipiškus tarpfrazinio ryšio priemonių vartojimo literatūriniame ir teisiniame tekstuose modelius ir identifikuoti tarpfrazinio ryšio priemonių vartojimo panašumus ir skirtumus tirtuose skirtinguose žanruose. Tarpfrazinio ryšio priemonių vartojimo dažnumui ištirti buvo taikytas kiekybinis požiūris. Žanro įtaka tarpfrazinio ryšio priemonių pasirinkimui buvo vertinta kokybiniu požiūriu. Tarpfrazinio ryšio priemonėms tekstuose išskirti buvo panaudotas turinio analizės metodas. Tyrimas parodė, kad teksto žanras iš esmės nulemia tarpfrazinio ryšio priemonių vartojimo dažnumą ir jų pasiskirstymą tekste. Dažniausiai vartojamos tarpfrazinio ryšio priemonės literatūriniame tekste priklauso referencijos tipui, o teisiniuose dokumentuose – leksinio tarpfrazinio ryšio priemonių tipui. Literatūrinio žanro tekste sutinkami visi substitucijos ir elipsės tipai, tuo tarpu kai teisinio žanro tekste šis tarpfrazinio ryšio tipas yra vienas iš rečiausiai vartojamų. Jungtukinis ryšys ir literatūrinio, ir teisinio žanrų tekstuose yra rečiausias. Tarpfrazinio ryšio priemonės yra svarbios visoms komunikacijos formoms, nes jos signalizuoja adresatui jungtis tarp sakinių. Siekiant apibrėžti teksto žanro įtaką tarpfrazinio ryšio priemonių pasirinkimui žanruose, kurie iki šiol nėra pakankamai ištirti, yra reikalingos... [toliau žr. visą tekstą]

e Abstract (in English): The aim of the present thesis is to investigate the differences in cohesive devices use in selected Japanese texts of different genes. The English conception of cohesion (based on Halliday and Hasan's "Cohesion in English") is applied to Japanese with several slight modifications and the following devices and their sub-types are examined: reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction and lexical cohesion. Using three texts of different genres- book review, newspaper article and a fictional narrative- the assumption of genre-conditioned variation of cohesive devices employment is scrutinized and the distinctions and similitudes are described. The first, general theory part of the thesis presents the basic concepts related to cohesion. In the second part, both English and Japanese perspectives on cohesion are presented. Subsequently, the English (Halliday and Hasan's) concept is evaluated as a more pertinent one and applied in the Japanese textual environment. Subsequent parts of the paper present research questions as well as supporting arguments to the examined underlying assumption and provide an overview of methodology applied in analysis of the selected texts. In the final part, the results concerning cohesion articulation in various genres in Japanese obtained from the analysed...

本篇論文藉由探討主題推進類型 (thematic progression patterns)與凝結關係 (cohesive ties) 在高中英文教科書課文的呈現以及在英文大學入學考試試題 (綜合測驗，文意選填，篇章結構) 上的應用，來提倡篇章結構的閱讀方法；希望在英文閱讀方面能有啟發的功效。首先，高中英文教科書中敘述文和說明文類型的文章被挑選出來作分析。為了解釋文章的主題發展，功能語法觀點 (Functional Sentence Perspective) 的語言學家Daneš提出四個主題推進類型，分別為Type 1: Simple Linear TP，Type 2: TP with a continuous (constant) theme，Type 3: TP with derived T’s，Type 4: Exposition of a Split Rheme。Cloran另外建議兩個主題推進類型Type 5: Theme > Rheme 和Type 6: Rheme > Rheme。這六種主題推進類型再加上由Halliday and Hasan所提出的五種凝結關係 (cohesive ties, i.e. reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction, and lexical cohesion) 被用來分析上述的文章並且應用在英文大學入學考試試題的解題。研究發現除了上述六種預設的主題推進類型之外，第七種類型被歸為Referential Type，涉及指稱詞 this和that 的使用。其他的發現敘述如下：在高中英文教科書文章分析方面，Type 1和Type 2出現的頻率最多，第二多是Type 5 and Type 6；Referential Type排名出現頻率的第三名，而Type 4少見，Type 3最罕見.。另外，在英文大學入學考試試題的應用方面，結果亦大致符合上述。至於凝結關係 (cohesive ties) 的頻率，指稱詞 (reference)，尤其是人稱代名詞出現最多次，字彙 (lexicon) 次之，然而大部份都是相同字 (same word or repetition) 的一再重複出現；其他字彙的呈現，如同義詞 (synonym)、反義詞 (antonym)、搭配詞 (collocation)、統領詞 (superordinate) 等稍嫌不足。 / Because little attention has been paid to the explicit teaching of text structure in local senior high schools, this present study analyzes the reading texts to explore how students are exposed to expositive and narrative text types and how the text is structured. Reading texts are selected from textbooks for senior high school students and then theme categories, thematic progression types and cohesive devices are analyzed. Combined Daneš’s theory with Cloran’s suggestion, the following six types of thematic progression (TP) are identified: Type 1, Rheme>Theme pattern (> means ‘followed by’); Type 2, Theme>Theme pattern; Type 3, Split Theme; Type 4, Split Rheme; Type 5, Theme>Rheme pattern; and Type 6, Rheme>Rheme pattern. Besides, five cohesive ties (i.e. reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction, and lexical cohesion) proposed by Halliday and Hasan are identified as clue to trace the progression. Next, evidence is found to decode gapped passages in Integrative Test (綜合測驗, i.e. Cloze Test), Semantic Choice (文意選填), and Discourse Structure (篇章結構). Besides the presupposed six progression patterns mentioned above, one more type is found and categorized as Referential Type. The progression of Referential Type involves the use of cohesive device this or that. The findings are presented as follows: In the analysis of reading texts in EFL textbooks, thematic progression of Type 1 R>T and Type 2 T>T predominates the frequency of occurrence, while thematic progression of Type 5 T>R and Type 6 R>R follows behind, and Referential Type ranks third in terms of frequency, followed by Type 4 Split R outnumbering Type 3 Split T. Furthermore, while applying to the analysis of test passages, the outcome of progression types is roughly correspondent with what is mentioned above. As for cohesive ties, reference predominates the frequency of occurrence, followed by lexicon. Of all the cohesive devices, items of personal reference are found to appear most frequently, and then the second most are items of the same word. Through the exploration and analysis of thematic progression and cohesive devices, it is hoped that students’ awareness of textual organization will be enhanced and thus help activate efficient reading.

This study compared cohesive devices in texts written by Japanese second-year junior high school learners with those in texts that appeared in the textbook they were studying. The purpose of the study was to determine which cohesive devices were being used in the textbook and which were used in the learners’ writing. The study used both quantitative and qualitative analysis. The quantitative analysis began by determining whether there was any significant difference between the textbook readings and the learners’ writing in terms of the frequency of cohesive devices. It then examined the kinds of devices that were used by both groups of texts. The qualitative analysis compared the patterns of reiteration in two textbook readings with those in a sample of six student texts of different levels of success. The results showed no significant differences between the student texts and the textbooks in terms of the overall frequency of cohesive devices. Among the individual devices, however, there was a significantly higher frequency of ellipsis and synonyms in the textbook readings than in the student texts. There was also a significantly higher frequency of conjunction and reference in the student texts relative to the textbook readings. In all other devices, there was no significant difference between the textbook readings and the student texts. The qualitative study revealed the importance of strong opening sentences, reinforcement of the main topic through repetition, as well as of linking new topics with the main topic in the textbook readings. However, the presence of these features varied in the selected student texts. Accordingly, stronger texts contained all these features, average texts contained some of them, and weaker texts contained few or none. This study consequently supports other studies that have shown that the way in which cohesive devices are used is far more important in determining text quality than the number of devices used. The findings of this study showed the strengths and weaknesses in the students’ writing, and highlighted the need for a greater awareness of cohesion by focusing more on sentence building, and the use of a greater variety of cohesive devices / English Studies / M. A. (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages)

This study sought to investigate and to record any recurring patterns in the form and communicative impact of Shona advertisements. Motivation to carry out the study came from a realisation of a growing interest in using the Shona language for advertising and the fact that very few studies have been done on Shona advertisements. For methodology, examples of Shona advertisements were qualitatively analysed using some communications and discourse analysis approaches of the speech act theory and text linguistics. A structured interview with advertising agencies randomly selected and a questionnaire on the impact of advertisements were also used. The findings of the research included that Shona was used in advertisements in order to reach out to the majority of the Zimbabwean population. In addition, Shona was also found to have been developed enough to handle formal issues like advertisements. This finding further shows that Shona advertisements reflect an instance of diglossia leakage from Shona L(ow) to Shona H(igh). Another finding is that Shona advertisements reflect some characteristics of the Shona speech community in form. These include code-switching, slang and word- division problems. An innovation in code-switching noted in some Shona advertisements is the use of three languages, namely, English, Shona and Ndebele in one advertisement. It was also established that everything about the elements of Shona advertisements communicate. For instance, the message may be visual, tactile and olfactory. It also emerged that the Shona commercial advertisements had a presenting and a hidden agenda at the same time. To achieve this the advertisements used persuasive techniques such as advertising claims, cultural hooks and personalities as spokespersons. It was also noted that most readers of advertisements do not interpret them up to the hidden persuaders but end with the direct meaning. On the other hand the Shona advertisements that gave information such as health issues have no hidden agenda. One recommendation made is that advertisements be read and studied to raise the level of awareness about the persuasive techniques used in order to distinguish between misleading advertising and those that give useful information. Some recommendations were made for future research such as carrying out similar studies of informal Shona advertisements, advertisements by n'angas/inyangas (traditional healers), prophets and political campaigns. / African Languages / M.A. (African Languages)

This study sought to investigate and to record any recurring patterns in the form and communicative impact of Shona advertisements. Motivation to carry out the study came from a realisation of a growing interest in using the Shona language for advertising and the fact that very few studies have been done on Shona advertisements. For methodology, examples of Shona advertisements were qualitatively analysed using some communications and discourse analysis approaches of the speech act theory and text linguistics. A structured interview with advertising agencies randomly selected and a questionnaire on the impact of advertisements were also used. The findings of the research included that Shona was used in advertisements in order to reach out to the majority of the Zimbabwean population. In addition, Shona was also found to have been developed enough to handle formal issues like advertisements. This finding further shows that Shona advertisements reflect an instance of diglossia leakage from Shona L(ow) to Shona H(igh). Another finding is that Shona advertisements reflect some characteristics of the Shona speech community in form. These include code-switching, slang and word- division problems. An innovation in code-switching noted in some Shona advertisements is the use of three languages, namely, English, Shona and Ndebele in one advertisement. It was also established that everything about the elements of Shona advertisements communicate. For instance, the message may be visual, tactile and olfactory. It also emerged that the Shona commercial advertisements had a presenting and a hidden agenda at the same time. To achieve this the advertisements used persuasive techniques such as advertising claims, cultural hooks and personalities as spokespersons. It was also noted that most readers of advertisements do not interpret them up to the hidden persuaders but end with the direct meaning. On the other hand the Shona advertisements that gave information such as health issues have no hidden agenda. One recommendation made is that advertisements be read and studied to raise the level of awareness about the persuasive techniques used in order to distinguish between misleading advertising and those that give useful information. Some recommendations were made for future research such as carrying out similar studies of informal Shona advertisements, advertisements by n'angas/inyangas (traditional healers), prophets and political campaigns. / African Languages / M.A. (African Languages)