Writing coherent essays is evidence of a university student's discourse
competence and is important in terms of academic success. An analytical
taxonomy of coherence breaks {both topic-related and cohesion-related), based
on Wikborg (1985; 1990), was used to determine the frequency of coherence
breaks in essays written by first-year English Second Language (ESL) students.
A subset of these essays was selected for assessment of their holistic coherence
(HCR) by raters. The major finding of the statistical tests is that there is a
significant relationship between the frequency of coherence breaks, particularly
topic-related coherence breaks, and holistic coherence. Furthermore, the
relationship between the coherence of essays and marks awarded them was
established. Tutor intervention was also found to have had a positive impact
when draft and final versions were compared: in general, there was a decrease
in the frequency of coherence breaks, and a greater perception of coherence in
the final versions. / Linguistics and Modern Languages / M.A. (Linguistics)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:unisa/oai:uir.unisa.ac.za:10500/17849 |
| Date | 01 1900 |
| Creators | Watkinson, Hawthorne Janice |
| Contributors | Hubbard, E. H. (Ernest Hilton), 1947- |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Dissertation |
| Format | 1 online resource (xi, 240 leaves) |
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