The use of conjunctive and lexical relations for elabaration in expository writing by intermediate level efl learners ma

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY – HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES FACULTY OF ENGLISH LINGUISTICS AND LITERATURE THE USE OF CONJUNCTIVE AND LEXICAL RELATIONS FOR ELABORATION IN EXPOSITORY WRITING BY INTERMEDIATE-LEVEL EFL LEARNERS A thesis submitted to the Faculty of English Linguistics & Literature in partial fulfillment of the Master‘s degree in TESOL By NGUYEN HOANG KHAM Supervised by DANG TAN TIN, Ph.D HO CHI MINH CITY, OCTOBER 2021 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY – HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES FACULTY OF ENGLISH LINGUISTICS AND LITERATURE THE USE OF CONJUNCTIVE AND LEXICAL RELATIONS FOR ELABORATION IN EXPOSITORY WRITING BY INTERMEDIATE-LEVEL EFL LEARNERS A thesis submitted to the Faculty of English Linguistics & Literature in partial fulfillment of the Master‘s degree in TESOL By NGUYEN HOANG KHAM Supervised by DANG TAN TIN, Ph.D HO CHI MINH CITY, OCTOBER 2021 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my gratitude to those who have helped and supported me during the hard time doing my research and completing this thesis First, my gratefulness goes to my respectful supervisor, Dr Dang Tan Tin, for encouraging me to continuously review literature, write up and revise my thesis and providing me with valuable feedback and precious guidance throughout the tiring stages of doing research and thesis writing I am thankful for the continuous support that the management of the Faculty of English Linguistics and Literature provided when I was working on my thesis My genuine appreciation also goes to my colleagues, for all the generous and enthusiastic support as well as the invaluable and professional advice they have given to help me better understand the issue under investigation Last but not least, I am very grateful to my incomparably caring and loving family for always being by my side to cheer me up when I suffered stress from my work and study Without the encouragement, support and guidance provided by those named or unlisted, I would not have completed this Master‘s Thesis I appreciate all i STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY I hereby certify my authorship of the thesis submitted today entitled: THE USE OF CONJUNCTIVE AND LEXICAL RELATIONS FOR ELABORATION IN EXPOSITORY WRITING BY INTERMEDIATELEVEL EFL LEARNERS In terms of the statement of Requirements for the Thesis in Master‘s Program issued by the Higher Degree Committee The thesis has not been submitted for the award of any degree or diploma in any other situations Ho Chi Minh City, Octorber 2021 Nguyen Hoang Kham ii RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS I hereby state that I, Nguyen Hoang Kham, being the candidate for the degree of Master in TESOL, accept the requirements of University of Social Sciences and Humanities relating to the retention and use of Master‘s Theses deposited in the library In terms of these conditions, I agree that the original of my thesis deposited in the library should be accessible for the purpose of study and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the library for the care, loan or reproduction of the thesis Ho Chi Minh City, October 2021 Nguyen Hoang Kham iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS i STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY ii RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS iii TABLE OF CONTENTS iv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS vii LIST OF TABLES viii LIST OF FIGURES ix ABSTRACT CHAPTER INTRODUCTION 1.1 BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY 1.2 AIM OF THE STUDY 1.3 RESEARCH QUESTIONS 1.4 SCOPE OF THE STUDY 1.5 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY 1.6 ORGANIZATION OF THE THESIS CHAPTER LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 EXPOSITORY WRITING 2.2 HALLIDAY AND MATTHIESSEN‘S MODEL OF ELABORATION 10 2.2.1 Terminology 10 2.2.2 Categories of elaboration 14 2.3 CONJUNCTIVE RELATIONS FOR ELABORATION 15 iv 2.3.1 Terminology 16 2.3.2 Categories of conjunctive relations 18 2.4 LEXICAL RELATIONS FOR ELABORATION 21 2.4.1 Terminology 21 2.4.2 Categories of lexical relations 22 2.4.3 Lexical relations and context 27 2.5 THE FRAMEWORK OF ANALYSIS IN THE PRESENT STUDY 30 2.6 SUMMARY 31 CHAPTER METHODOLOGY 32 3.1 RESEARCH DESIGN 32 3.2 RESEARCH SITE 33 3.3 PARTICIPANTS 34 3.4 ETHICS 35 3.5 WRITING TASK 35 3.6 PROCEDURE OF DATA COLLECTION 37 3.7 DATA ANALYSIS PROCEDURE 38 3.7.1 Segmentation 38 3.7.2 Identification of topic sentence 39 3.7.3 Analysis of elaboration 41 3.7.4 Analysis of conjunctive relations 43 3.7.5 Analysis of lexical relations 44 3.7.6 Statistical analysis 47 3.8 INTER-RATER RELIABILITY 48 3.9 SUMMARY 49 v CHAPTER RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS 49 4.1 RESULTS 50 4.1.1 Elaboration 50 4.1.2 Conjunctive relations for elaboration 52 4.1.3 Lexical relations for elaboration 54 4.2 DISCUSSION 55 4.2.1 Elaboration 55 4.2.2 Conjunctive relations for elaboration 57 4.2.3 Lexical relations for elaboration 58 CHAPTER CONCLUSIONS 61 5.1 SUMMARY OF RESULTS 61 5.2 LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY 62 5.3 IMPLICATIONS 63 5.3.1 Writing instruction 63 5.3.2 Future research 65 REFERENCES 66 APPENDIX A 71 APPENDIX B 74 APPENDIX C 75 APPENDIX D 76 vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS EFL English as a Foreign Language ELT English language teaching IB IELTS basic (the name of the IELTS course under study) IELTS International language testing system TOEFL Test of English as a foreign language CEFR Common European framework of reference for languages SFL Systemic Functional Linguistics RST Rhetorical Structural Theory GRI Get ready for IELTS vii LIST OF TABLES Table 2.1 Conjunctions in Halliday and Hasan (1976), Halliday and Matthiessen (2014), and the present study 29 Table 2.2 Lexical relations in Halliday and Hasan (1976), Tanskanen (2006), Martin (1992), Halliday and Matthiessen (2014), and the present study 30 Table 3.1 Assignment 36 Table 3.2 Conjunctions for elaboration 42 Table 3.3 Coding scheme for elaborating conjunctions 43 Table 3.4 Coding scheme for lexical relations 47 Table 4.1 Frequencies of elaboration across levels 51 Table 4.2 Effective and ineffective elaborations 52 Table 4.3 Frequencies of conjunctions for elaboration 53 Table 4.4 Conjunctions for effective and ineffective elaboration 53 Table 4.5 Lexical relations for elaboration 55 viii good was highly general The results of analysis should be restricted to the topic since there are many other topics that need exploring in terms of elaboration and lexical relations Related to topical subject matter is the domain of meaning According to Halliday and Hasan (1976, p 276), lexical relations carry both experiential meaning and interpersonal meaning, but this study concerned only experiential domain of meaning Thus, inappropriacy in interpersonal meaning by the use of vocabulary were deliberately left aside Finally, given the nature of lexical relations approached in the current study, the analysis could not totally avoid subjectivity This is because the issue of delicacy of lexical taxonomy was hard to be fully addressed Delicacy of lexical relations involves the number of steps between relational units (Martin, 1992, p 308), having no clear-cut boundary in the contextual variable—field (Martin, 1992) However, the matter of delicacy was dealt with by a list of lexical relations (Appendix D), which was built so that each lexical relation was considered with reference to the others This way contributed to consistent analysis of context-sensitive lexical relations in this present study 5.3 IMPLICATIONS 5.3.1 Writing instruction Studies that simply describe writers‘ text like the present one can benefit by informing teachers of areas in which a specific group of learner writers may need additional instruction (Polio, 2012) While Leki et al (2009) remarked that cohesion does not tying to EFL texts, this should not be surprising since mistakes with language use seem inherent part of the learning process; actually, the mistakes seem even more desirable for development since they can be seen as proof that learners step out of their comfort zone to trial newly learned language However, this does not mean such errors could be ignored and left for the learners to deal with themselves The findings provide useful insights for teaching the EFL learners to improve elaboration in expository paragraphs 63 Teachers should not equate the role of a lexical tie with conjunctions since each type realizes a different function Exemplificatory conjunctions turned out the most common but, at the same time, they were also the most ineffective Exemplificatory conjunctions tended to fail to signal elaboration in expository paragraphs Therefore, special attention should be paid to the exemplification since this was the most problematic As Cullen (2019) comments that examples written by second language learners are not examples at all Based on the results, teachers need not separate conjunctions from lexical uses, and these together need not be isolated from elaboration From the perspective of the cohesive resources, the results showed that the problems of conjunctions and lexical relations did not exist in themselves but in elaboration Conjunctions were not necessarily signaling elaboration The value of this study does not lie in confirming or arguing against previous findings on conjunctions but to find out why the cohesive devices not tie EFL texts By considering the conjunctions in relation to elaborating functions, the analysis was able to discern effective conjunctions from ineffective ones Based on the results, followup revision could improve the elaboration Therefore, teachers may demonstrate links among the three for learners so that they could see how to use linguistic resources to realize elaboration The analysis procedure itself could be used as a revision tool whereby a piece of text can be revised for better unity at the level of paragraph Given that elaboration is most important in expository writing (Zhang, 2000), elaborating segments could provide hints to the extent of textual unity Based on the elaboration, conjunctions and lexical relations could be considered for more coherent reading By attending to the use of lexical relations in elaborating the controlling ideas, learners could manage textual unity, even at certain distance from the topic sentence Thus, the teacher should help learners identify and evaluate lexical ties for elaborating the topic 64 sentence Then the learners continue to modify the use of lexical tie, perhaps to replace one lexical tie with another Finally, the present study has an implication for teaching vocabulary in writing instruction The practitioner may consider the learners‘ needs to understand how to use vocabulary to elaborate the controlling ideas properly This could be done by preteaching vocabulary from the perspective of lexical relations, including synonym, antonym, and inclusion This should not be limited to nouns but also a range of parts of speech As for lexical relations, a cloze test suggested by Celce-Murcia and Oshtain (2000, p 150) is likely very useful This activity is called Guided Creative Writing Through Cloze, which involves learner providing words without semantic clues The cloze is different from a usual cloze in that the learners need to pay attention the context when deciding to choose lexical items to fill in the blanks so that the following elaborate the previous 5.3.2 Future research On the one hand, the results confirm earlier findings problems faced by learners in using conjunctions and lexical relations On the other hand, it further detailed the problems with conjunctions and lexical relation by putting them in relation to elaboration Given that the present study focused on intermediate-level EFL learners, future studies may attend to more advanced learners to see whether there are differences in elaboration between the two levels of proficiency The present investigation into expository writing was conducted solely on a single topic, that is, family This choice of topic was rather limited while topical subject matter could be a potential factor that influences elaboration and lexical relations As Johnson (1992) concerned, topics for compositions may require different organization of content and language use Therefore, future studies may look into other topical areas that are familiar with EFL learners such as work, education, and travel to substantiate the research results 65 One of the starting points for this study was Halliday‘s model of elaboration, which is just a set of functional relationships in text Since coherence also depends on other functional relations, it should be useful for learners if future descriptive frameworks are developed in ways that other functional relations are aligned, especially with lexical relations The descriptive approach could help learners to produce coherent text based on linguistic resources rather than writing in their own ways REFERENCES Adiantika, H N (2015) Cohesive devices in EFL students' expository writing English Review: Journal of English Education, 4(1), 94-102 doi.org/10.25134/erjee.v4i1.316 Aish, F., Short, J., Snelling, R., Tomlinson, J., & Geyte, E V (2016) Get ready for IELTS London: Harper Collins Publishers Ltd Alarcon, J B (2013) Lexical cohesion in students' argumentative essay among a select group of Filipino college students Imanager’s Journal on English Language Teaching, Vol 31No 21 Retrieved from https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1068864 66 Allison, D., Varghese, S., & Wu, (1999) Local coherence and its limits: A second look at second sentences Journal of Second Language Writing Volume 8, Issue 1, pp 77-97 doi.org/10.1016/S1060-3743(99)80113-1 Ary, D., Jacobs, L C., Sorensen, C K., & Razavieh, A (2010) Introduction to Research in Education (8th ed.) Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning Bachman, L (1990) Fundamental considerations in language testing Hong Kong: Oxford University Press Bardovi-Harlig, K (1992) A second look at T-unit analysis: Reconsidering the sentence TESOL Quarterly, 26(2), 390-395 doi:10.2307/3587016 Berzlánovich, I., & Redeker, G (2012) Genre-dependent interaction of coherence and lexical cohesion in written discourse Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory, Volume Issue doi.org/10.1515/cllt-2012-0008 Biber, D (1989) A typology of English texts Linguistics, Volume 27, issue 1, 3–43 doi.org/10.1515/ling.1989.27.1.3 Biber, D., Connor, U., & Upton, T A (2007) Discourse on the move: Using corpus analysis to describe discourse structure Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins Publishing Company Celce-Murcia, M., & Oshtain, E (2000) Discourse and context in language teaching: A guide for language teachers Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Connor, U (1984) A study of cohesion and coherence in English as a second language students‘ writing Paper in Linguistics, 17:3, 301-316 doi.org/10.1080/08351818409389208 Concha, S., & Paratore, J R (2011) Local coherence in persuasive writing: An exploration of Chilean students‘ metalinguistic knowledge, writing process, and writing products Written Communication, 28(1), 34– 69 doi.org/10.1177/0741088310383383 Creswell, J W (2012) Educational research: planning, conducting, and evaluating quantitative and qualitative research (4th ed.) Boston, MA: Pearson Education 67 Crossley, S A., Kyle, K., & McNamara, D S (2016) The development and use of cohesive devices in L2 writing and their relations to judgments of essay quality Journal of Second Language Writing, Volume 32, 2016, pp 1-16, ISSN 10603743 doi.org/10.1016/j.jslw.2016.01.003 Crosson, A C., & Lesaux, N K (2013) Connectives: Fitting another piece of the vocabulary instruction puzzle The Reading Teacher, 67(3), 193-200 Crowhurst, M (1980) Cohesion in argumentative prose written by sixth-, tenth- and twelfth- graders Retrieved from https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED202023 Cullen, P (2019) The key to IELTS writing Task Retrieved from https://keytoielts.com/product/the-key-to-ielts-writing-task-2-course/ Author Flowerdew, J (2013) Discourse in English language education New York, NY: Routledge Gass, S., & Mackey, A (2011) Data elicitation for second and foreign language research New Jersey: Routledge Field, Y., & Lee, Y (1992) A comparison of internal conjunctive cohesion in the English essay writing of Cantonese speakers and native speakers of English RELC Journal, 23(1), 15-28 doi.org/10.1177/003368829202300102 Granger, S., & Tyson, S (1996) Connector usage in the English essay writing of native and non-native EFL speakers of English World Englishes VoI.15 No pp 17-21 doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-971X.1996.tb00089.x Halliday, M A K., & Hasan, R (1976) Cohesion in English Hong Kong: Longman Group Ltd Halliday, M A K., & Matthiessen, C (2014) Introduction to Functional Grammar (4th ed.) New York, NY: Routledge Howitt, D., & Cramer, D (2005) First steps in research and statistics: A practical workbook for psychology students Philadelphia, PA: Routledge Hurford, J R., Heasley, B & Smith, M B (2007) Semantics: A course book (2nd ed.) New York, NY: Cambridge University Press 68 Hyland, K (2009) Teaching and researching writing (2nd ed.) The UK: Pearson Education Limited Johnson, P (1992) Cohesion and coherence in compositions in Malay and English RELC Journal, 23(2), 1–17 doi.org/10.1177/003368829202300201 Khalil, A (1990) A study of cohesion and coherence in Arab EFL college students‘ writing System, Vol 17, No 3, pp 359-371 doi.org/10.1016/0346251X(89)90008-0 Kuo, C.-H (1995) Cohesion and coherence in academic writing: From lexical choice to organization RELC Journal 1995; 26(1): 47-62 doi:10.1177/003368829502600103 Leki, I., Cumming, A., & Silva, T (2008) A synthesis of research on second language writing in English The UK: Routledge Liu, M., & Braine, G (2005) Cohesive features in argumentative writing produced by Chinese undergraduates System, Volume 33, Issue 4, pp 623-636 doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2005.02.002 Mann, W C., & Thompson, S A (1988) Rhetorical Structure Theory: Toward a functional theory of text organization Text-Interdisciplinary Journal for the Study of Discourse, vol 8, no 3, pp 243- 281 doi.org/10.1515/text.1.1988.8.3.243 Martin, J R (1992) English text: System and structure Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins Publishing Company McCarthy, M (1991) Discourse analysis for language teachers The UK: Cambridge University Press Morley, J (2006) Lexical cohesion and rhetorical structure International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, Volume 11, Issue 3, pp 265 - 282 doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.11.3.03mor Murphy, L M (2003) Semantic relations and the lexicon: Antonymy, synonymy, and other paradigms The USA: Cambridge University Press 69 Oshima, A., & Hogue, A (2006) Writing academic English (4th ed.) New York, Addison Wesley: Longman Polio, C (2012) How to Research Second Language Writing In A Mackey & S M Gass (Eds.), Research methods in second language acquisition: a practical guide (pp 139–157) Blackwell Publishing Ltd Reid, J (1982) The process of composition The USA: Prentice Hall Reid, J (1996) U.S academic readers, ESL writers, and second sentences Journal of Second Language Writing, Volume 5, Issue 2, pp 129-161 doi.org/10.1016/S1060-3743(96)90022-3 Richards, J C., & Schmidt, R (2010) Longman dictionary of language teaching and applied linguistics (4th ed.) Great Britain: Pearson Education limited Riley, P (1980) When communication breaks down: Levels of coherence in discourse Applied Linguistics, Volume I, Issue 3, Autumn 1980, pp 201–216, doi.org/10.1093/applin/I.3.201 Stotsky, S (1983) Types of lexical cohesion in expository writing: Implications for developing the vocabulary of academic discourse College Composition and Communication, Vol 34, No 4, Coherence and Cohesion: What Are They and How Are They Achieved? (Dec., 1983), pp 430-446 Taboada, M., & Mann, W C (2006) Rhetorical Structure Theory: Looking back and moving ahead Discourse Studies, 8(3), 423– 459 doi.org/10.1177/1461445606061881 Tanskanen, S.-K (2006) Collaborating towards coherence: Lexical cohesion in English discourse Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins Publishing Company Tran, T B T (2011) An investigation into cohesion in argumentative essays by English-majored students at Quy Nhon university (Unpublished Master‘s thesis) University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Ho Chi Minh City 70 Zhang, M (2000) Cohesive features in the expository writing of undergraduates in two Chinese universities RELC Journal, 31(1), 61– 95 doi.org/10.1177/003368820003100104 APPENDIX A CONSENT FORM 71 INSTITUTION: University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vietnam National University, Ho Chi Minh City PROJECT: The use of conjunctive and lexical relations for elaboration in expository writing by intermediate-level EFL learners INVITATION You are being asked to take part in a research project on the use of conjunctions and lexical relations for elaboration in expository writing for intermediate EFL learners The use of conjunctions and lexical relations for elaboration is essential in that they could contribute to the cohesion and coherence of expository paragraphs To help students use conjunctions and lexical relations effectively, it is important to consider their functions of elaboration in expository paragraphs The present study aims to explore the use of conjunctions and lexical relations in expository writing by intermediate EFL learners By investigating different types of conjunctions and lexical relations used in expository paragraphs, recommendations on how to help the learners improve elaboration in expository paragraphs could be offered As part of the research, 35 intermediate learners who were taking part in three IB classes will be invited to take part in an expository writing task WHAT WILL HAPPEN If you agree to take part in this study, you will be asked to write an at-least-80word paragraph PARTICIPANTS’ RIGHTS Participants have the right to withdraw from the present study at any time Participants could ask the researcher to destroy any data that has been supplied Upon reading this consent form, participants could ask the researcher if they have any questions regarding the content of the form COST, REIMBURSEMENT AND COMPENSATION The participation in the present study is voluntary CONFIDENTIALITY/ ANONYMITY 72 It is pledged that the participants‘ identities would remain anonymous, and all the responses provided by the research participants will be kept confidential FOR FURTHER INFORMATION In case there are any questions about this study, please contact the researcher on nguyenhoangkham.e@gmail.com Please sign this consent form You are signing it with full knowledge of the nature and purpose of the procedures A copy of this form will be given to you to keep Signature Date Thank you for your kind help 73 APPENDIX B SCHEDULE OF ADMINISTRATING THE WRITING TASK Class code Course start and end dates Week/ date of administration IB1 22/2/2021–17/5/2021 W8–16/4/2021 IB2 22/2/2021–17/5/2021 W8–16/4/2021 IB3 23/2/2021–18/5/2021 W8–17/4/2021 74 APPENDIX C A SAMPLE OF STUDENT’S WRITING 75 APPENDIX D THE LIST OF LEXICAL RELATIONS FOR ELABORATION Controlling [+good] [-good] idea Repetitions good (1); good (3); good (5); good + good not good (2); not good (6); (7); good (9); good (11); good (12); good not good (15); not good (18); (13); good + good (14); good + danger not good (27); not good (35) (20); good (21); good (22); good + best + best (24); good (29); good + good (33) Synonyms correct + positive (1); benefit (5); useful bad + unsuitable + bad (23); (9); useful (12); right + valued (14); bad Antonyms (25); bad (30); beneficial (31) unsuitable (32); troubles (35) wrong (20); fail (33) suitable (8); should (16); suitable (17); succeed (18); beneficial (34) Inclusions avoid mistake (1); learn how to handle lose chances to develop their problem + avoid dangers such as staying talent + not fully match the away from electrical equipment (3); desire of their children + minimize unnecessary mistakes in life, inactive (6); rely on family especially communication + respect all (8); lazier and lazier + elders + behave well to the younger + dependent on parents + avoid bad words (5); knows how to regret + stressed (19); lazy to express their gratefulness (7); learn how to think (23); uncomfortable behave (9); avoid misbehaviors such as (28); cannot take care of telling a lie, laziness, naughtiness (11); themselves + not know how confident (14); prevent children from bad to survive without parents 76 influence of beer, and cigarettes + protect (30) their children from dangers such as electricity, oil, gas, hot water and so on (20); stay away from strangers (21); easier for children to contact parents (24); balance between study and work + manage life + take responsibility (31) Note: The digits in brackets denote the papers from which the lexical relations were used For example, the synonym correct for good belonged to Paper 20 The sign ‘+’ is used to separate lexical units within the same paper The semicolons are used to separate lexical units from different papers 77