and but or as cohesive devices in english written discouse - a contrastive analysis with vietnamese equivalents and implications for teaching writing skill at utehy

1 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES .o0o NGUYỄN THỊ NĂM AND/BUT/OR AS COHESIVE DEVICES IN ENGLISH WRITTEN DISCOURSE - A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS WITH VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS AND IMPLICATIONS FOR TEACHING WRITING SKILL AT UTEHY (And/But/Or phương tiện liên kết văn tiếng Anh – Phân tích đối chiếu với yếu tố tương đương tiếng Việt ứng dụng việc dạy kỹ viết trường Đại học Sư phạm Kỹ thuật Hưng Yên) M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 60 22 15 Hanoi, 2010 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES .o0o NGUYỄN THỊ NĂM AND/BUT/OR AS COHESIVE DEVICES IN ENGLISH WRITTEN DISCOURSE - A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS WITH VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS AND IMPLICATIONS FOR TEACHING WRITING SKILL AT UTEHY (And/But/Or phương tiện liên kết văn tiếng Anh – Phân tích đối chiếu với yếu tố tương đương tiếng Việt ứng dụng việc dạy kỹ viết trường Đại học Sư phạm Kỹ thuật Hưng Yên) M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 60 22 15 Supervisor: Dr Nguyễn Huy Kỷ Hanoi, 2010 TABLE OF CONTENTS Declaration i Acknowledgments ii Abstract iii Table of contents iv List of tables vi PART A: INTRODUCTION Rationale of the study Objectives of the study 3 Methods of the study Scope of the study Significance of the study Organization of the study PART B: DEVELOPMENT Chapter 1: Literature Review 1.1 Discourse 1.1.1 Discourse and Text 1.1.2 Spoken and Written Discourse 1.2 Cohesion 1.2.1 The Concept of Cohesion 1.2.2 Cohesion and Coherence in Discourse 10 1.2.3 Cohesion and Discourse Structure 10 1.2.4 Cohesive Devices 10 1.3 Conjunctions as Cohesive Devices 12 Chapter 2: AND/BUT/OR as cohesive devices in English written discourse 13 2.1 AND 15 2.2 BUT 19 2.3 OR 20 Chapter 3: AND/BUT/OR in English written discourse in a contrastive analysis with Vietnamese equivalents 24 3.1 AND vs VÀ 24 3.2 BUT vs NHƢNG 27 3.3 OR vs HAY/HOẶC 29 Chapter 4: Implications for teaching writing skill at UTEHY 31 4.1 Suggestions for teaching and materials 32 4.2 Suggested types of exercises 33 PART C: CONCLUSIONS The achievement of the objectives of the study 36 The effectiveness of the methods used 37 Limitations of the study 37 Suggestions for further study 38 REFERENCES 39 LIST OF TABLES Table 1: The Frequency of The Implications of AND Table 2: The Frequency of The Implications of BUT Table 3: The Frequency of The Implications of OR Table 4: The Frequency of The Implications of AND/BUT/OR Table 5: Vietnamese equivalents to AND denoting the examined implications Table 6: Vietnamese equivalents to BUT denoting the examined implications Table 7: Vietnamese equivalents to OR denoting the examined implications PART A: INTRODUCTION Rationale of the study No one denies the importance of the English language in the present time as a global language because it has become more dominant around the world than any other languages It is used as an official language in more than 44 countries and has played an important role in dealing with international relations especially in such fields as science and technology, business, commerce and diplomacy These reasons motivate people all over the world to learn English as a foreign language However, learning any foreign languages in general and English in particular is not easy It is a lengthy and effortful process to master English as a native speaker because of a variety of factors Linguistic knowledge of English accounts for learners‟ ability to combine phonemes into morphemes, morphemes into words, and words into sentences That means, when people speak or write they have to convey a certain message by organizing their thoughts and ideas into strings of words to produce sentences, and then combine sentences together to create higher units of discourse But how to combine sentences to each other and to the rest of the context has been a big question for linguists Communication is possible only when sentences which create discourse hang together so that discourse has its unity and the product of our creation would make sense In other words, knowledge of cohesion and coherence is essential in discourse construction and necessary for successful communication In discourse, cohesion has an interrelation with coherence; the former is a guide to and part of the latter in both spoken and written language Awareness of coherence as a quality that makes a text conform to a consistent world picture, to experiences, culture, and convention and cohesive devices as the linguistic means by which elements of a text are arranged and connected is vital for learners of English Up to now, there have been many studies by various linguists on this aspect Each discusses the issue from different angles Thus, they give out different ways of classifying and naming cohesion In English, Quirk (1972) primarily covers three main factors of sentence connection The first is the implication in the semantic content A reader normally 10 assumes that there is a relationship between sentences The second is lexical equivalence which means successive sentences are connected to some extent through their vocabulary or the equivalence in the lexical items or repetition of phrase The third is syntactic devices which are grouped under following entries: time and place relaters, logical relaters, substitution, discourse reference, comparison, ellipsis and structural parallelism In 1976, with the book Cohesion in English, Halliday and Hasan say that the concept of cohesion accounts for the essential semantic relations whereby any passage of speech or writing is enabled to function as text They discuss the cohesive relationships under five main headings: reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction and lexical cohesion And the most apparent type of explicitly marked cohesive relationships existing between one sentence or clause and another in discourse is indicated by conjunctions Unlike Quirk (1972), they treat time and place relaters, logical connectors, discourse reference, comparison as reference items Guy Cook (1989) on the other hand, includes also verb forms, parallelism, repetition and lexical chain as cohesive devices – formal links within the sentence or across the sentence boundaries What is more, Brown and Yule (1983) go into the study of how to interpret a text basing on cohesive devices especially reference in text They emphasize on types of reference They include endophora (anaphora and cataphora) and exphora The former means reference which can be interpreted depending on the context of the text itself The latter means reference which can be interpreted relying on textual context but on situation (the factor lies outside language elements) Winifred Crombie‟s investigation (1985), however, is fully concentrated on semantic relations in discourse and the study of which, for Crombie, involves the study of discourse values In Vietnamese, Tran Ngoc Them (1985) has written an insightful book about cohesion He discusses ten cohesive devices namely repetition, antithesis, synonymic substitution, association, linearity, pronoun substitution, weak ellipsis, loose conjunction, strong ellipsis and tight conjunction Diep Quang Ban (2004), however, states that reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction and lexical cohesion are five major cohesive devices Based on the knowledge, many MA theses about cohesive devices were also conducted Most of them made an analysis of cohesive devices in certain types of 11 discourse such as information and communication technology advertisements, letters of enquiry, job application letters and business contract discourse Although a number of theses on cohesive devices in different types of discourse were conducted, they didn‟t focus on any single word as a cohesive device in order to have a deeper analysis That has given the author of this study the idea to examine the uses of conjunctions as cohesive devices in English written discourse And the three conjunctions AND/BUT/OR are chosen as they are the most central coordinators Objectives of the study With the above mentioned background, this study is targeted at - Giving a systematic presentation of the uses of the three central coordinators AND/BUT/OR as cohesive devices and their frequency of occurrence in English written discourse - Making contrastive analysis of AND/BUT/OR as cohesive devices and their equivalent realizations in Vietnamese - Putting forward some suggestions as effort to help English-major students at HYUTE to overcome the consequences of interference when learning writing skill In order to achieve the objectives stated, the study is meant to find out the answer to the following research questions: How are the three coordinators AND/BUT/OR used as cohesive devices in English written discourse? Are VÀ/NHƢNG/HAY-HOẶC in Vietnamese the only equivalents of AND/BUT/OR in English as cohesive devices? Methods of the study This study of AND/BUT/OR as cohesive devices in English written discourse is based on the communicative view-point of language teaching and learning Therefore, the methods of descriptive and comparative analysis are used The study is presented in order from general theories to detailed descriptions, with theories presented first, then examples given to clarify the theories 12 For the data, I have chosen at random the samples from several written discourse types such as novels, short stories, magazines and newspapers The data are also selected from many different grammar books Firstly, the data are analyzed to identify discourse devices, their frequency of occurrence in English Then the contrastive analysis between AND/BUT/OR in English and their realizations in Vietnamese are made All of this will lead to the point of finding effective solutions to improve writing skill of students at Hung Yen University of Technology and Education (UTEHY) Scope of the study The scope of this study, however, allows a very limited choice of one aspect of discourse analysis, that is, cohesion in English Within a limited time and knowledge as well as shortage of reference materials, it is not the author‟s ambition to investigate various types of cohesive devices but discuss only the three conjunctions AND/BUT/OR – their performance as means of cohesion and their frequency of concurrence in English and in Vietnamese AND/BUT/OR will be discussed as cohesive devices within the sentence, in other words, between clauses in a sentence In the last part, implications, this study is limited to the first-year English-major students at Department of English, UTEHY and writing skill only Significances of the study Theoretical significance: This study contributes to verifying significance related to linguistic theories in discourse analysis by providing learners of English with some theoretical base and fundamental background for clarifying the relationships that are linguistically encoded by virtue of conjunctions in general and AND/BUT/OR in particular Practical significance: This study helps learners of English be more aware of the role of AND/BUT/OR as cohesive devices in creating discourse Thus, the study may help learners to avoid errors easily made by the negative interference of most non-native speakers Furthermore, this study can make a certain contribution to teaching and learning English as a foreign language owing to some suggested exercises in the last part 13 Organization of the study The study is divided into three parts The first part is the introduction, including rationale, objectives, methods, scope, significances and organization of the study The second part is the development, including four chapters Chapter 1: A presentation of some theoretical preliminaries needed for the study of coordinators AND/BUT/OR as cohesive devices in English written discourse Within the chapter, discourse will be studied to highlight the function of conjunctions in creating discourse There is a better focus on conjunctions and cohesive devices Chapter 2: A detailed description of the three coordinators AND/BUT/OR as cohesive devices Chapter 3: A comparative analysis between the coordinators AND/BUT/OR and Vietnamese equivalents in which Vietnamese is regarded as the compared language with English – the target one The purpose of the comparison is to identify the Vietnamese linking system equivalent to the implications by AND/BUT/OR Chapter 4: Some implications for teaching writing skill at UTEHY The final part is the conclusion This is to summarize the thesis by showing the achievement of the objectives of the study and the effectiveness of the methods used Then the limitations of the study are given Some suggestions for further study are also included at the end to promise the continuance of the author‟s future work \ 34 (5a) The subject was exhausted, and we began to talk of other things (Maugham, 1919) (5b) Khơng cịn để nói nữa, chúng tơi chuyển sang đề tài khác In these two samples, AND denotes “consequence” VÀ cannot be the completely equivalent of AND so it does not necessarily appear, but NÊN / DO ĐĨ / VÌ THẾ / VÌ VẬY can be used instead For the implication of “condition”, consider the following: (6a) Give me some money and I’ll help you escape (6b) Đưa tiền giúp anh chạy trốn (6c) Nếu anh đưa tơi tiền tơi giúp anh chạy trốn (6d) Anh đưa tơi tiền tơi giúp anh chạy trốn AND in these sentences joins one condition to a consequence However, VÀ in Vietnamese cannot denote this relation clearly enough Thus, we can say that NẾU…THÌ… / …THÌ… / VỚI ĐIỀU KIỆN…THÌ… are Vietnamese equivalents of AND denoting “condition” Let us consider the following samples with the implication of “contrast”: (7a) Robert is secretive and David is candid (7b) Robert hay giữ kẽ David bộc trực (7c) Robert hay giữ kẽ David bộc trực (7d) Robert hay giữ kẽ cịn David bộc trực The “contrast‟ of the two clauses is implied by AND in the way of using two antonyms „secretive” and “candid” In Vietnamese, NHƢNG appears to be the most frequent factor of “contrast” Thus, NHƢNG can be used as the Vietnamese equivalent of AND denoting “contrast” Finally, the implication of “purpose” can be transferred into Vietnamese as follows: (8a) Why not write and warn him? And that will be all right (8b) Tại không viết thư cảnh báo anh ta? (8c) Tại không viết thư để (mà) cảnh báo anh ta? (8b) is sometimes acceptable, but it does not denote the implication of “purpose” On the other hand, ĐỂ / ĐỂ MÀ are used more often and are certainly equivalent to AND denoting “purpose” Summary: 35 From the above comparison it can be concluded that both AND in English and VÀ in Vietnamese have some similar syntactic features which mainly affect the mechanism of the logical relation of „addition” Also, the comparison helps to prove that VÀ is not the only equivalent to AND in all relation In fact, for different meanings implied by AND, many other linkers besides VÀ are put into use, as shown in the following table: Table 5: Vietnamese equivalents to AND denoting the examined implications Implications Vietnamese equivalents Pure addition …và… …và còn… …hơn còn… Chronological sequence …rồi… …và sau đó… …tiếp theo… Similarity / Comment …và… …hay nói cách khác… Consequence (result) …nên… …do đó… …vì /vì vậy… Condition Nếu…thì… …thì… Với điều kiện…thì… Contrast …nhƣng… …còn… Purpose …để (mà)… 3.2 BUT vs NHƯNG First of all, for the implication of “contrast” introduced by Quirk (1973), let‟s consider the following samples: (9a) She was not pretty, but her face was pleasing (Maugham, 1919) (9b) Chị khơng đẹp (mà) có mặt ưa nhìn 36 (10a) I watched his face for some change of expression, but it remained impassive (Maugham, 1919) (10b) Tôi ngắm nhìn mặt để xem có thay đổi khơng (mà) bình thản In these above sentences, NHƢNG helps readers understand exactly the meaning of BUT Once again, it is proved that NHƢNG is the most frequently used equivalent of BUT denoting “contrast” For the implication of “condition”, examined the following sample: (11a) You are allowed to stay at home, but you are always in bed (11b) Con phép nhà luôn giường (11b) Con phép nhà với điều kiện luôn giường With this implication, NHƢNG cannot transfer the meaning of BUT correctly Thus, we have to use other Vietnamese expressions denoting “condition” so that we can understand sufficiently the relation BUT makes between clauses Those expressions are NẾU / VỚI ĐIỀU KIỆN Summary: It can be concluded from the above analysis that the pair BUT – NHƢNG are most frequently and equivalently used implying “contrast” Nonetheless, as analyzed above, BUT can denote another implication rather than “contrast”, that is “condition” which is likely to express in Vietnamese by some link word as NẾU / VỚI ĐIỀU KIỆN In short, Vietnamese equivalents of BUT to denote different implications can be seen in the following table Table 6: Vietnamese equivalents to BUT denoting the examined implications Implications Vietnamese equivalents Contrast …nhƣng… …nhƣng mà… …song…vẫn… Condition …nếu… …với điều kiện… 37 …chỉ khi… 3.3 OR vs HAY/HOẶC Firstly, let us have a look at the implication of OR as “exclusive alternative” in the following samples: (12a) We can go to the cinema or we can stay at home (12b) Chúng ta xem phim nhà With the use of HOẶC in Vietnamese equivalent sentence, the content of some conjoining excludes the possibility of both alternatives Even with the implication of “inclusive alternative”, the use of HAY / HOẶC as equivalents of OR also help readers understand sufficiently the meaning of OR in English: (13a) You can boil yourself an egg or make you some cakes or you can both (13b) Bạn luộc trứng làm bánh làm hai In addition, HAY and HOẶC are completely equivalent to OR when denoting a restatement or a correction of what is said in the first conjoin (14a) They are enjoying themselves, or at least they appear to be enjoying themselves (14b) Họ vui vẻ, hay họ tỏ vui vẻ For the implication of “negative condition”, HAY and HOẶC cannot be able to transfer the meaning of OR correctly Instead, we have to use other equivalent expressions in Vietnamese as in the following sample: (15a) Give me some money or I’ll shoot (15b) Nếu khơng đưa tơi tiền tơi bắn (15c) Đưa tơi tiền khơng tơi bắn However, “condition” by OR might also be equivalent to the correlative “hoặc…hoặc…” as follows: (15d) Hoặc đưa tiền, bắn Finally, “deduction” by OR is equivalent to HAY LÀ / HOẶC LÀ in Vietnamese Examine the samples below: (16a) She loves him or is it that she chooses the man she can handle (16b) Cô yêu anh ta, cô chọn anh chàng mà dắt mũi 38 Summary: Once again, the comparison above shows that HAY / HOẶC is not the only equivalent of OR In other words, OR has different Vietnamese equivalents when expressing different relation Table 7: Vietnamese equivalents to OR denoting the examined implications Implications Vietnamese equivalents Alternative (exclusive) …hay… …hoặc… Alternative (inclusive) Hoặc…hoặc Correction statement …hoặc… …hay… Negative condition Nếu khơng…thì… …nếu khơng thì… Hoặc…hoặc… Deduction …hay là… 39 CHAPTER IMPLICATIONS FOR TEACHING WRITING SKILL AT UTEHY To meet the demand of all learners of English in general and of English major students in particular, teachers of English in Vietnam have been trying to find out the most suitable and effective methods of teaching English The methods being worked out can be for the four English skills, of which writing should be most paid attention to Writing is not only an important form of communication in day-to-day life but it is even more necessary for students who are preparing for further study This is because academic writing is one of the most important aspects of academic literacy that every scholar should possess in order to get socialized in their disciplinary communities However, writing for academic purposes is really a challenging task for students who are studying English as a foreign language This is because the skills involved in writing are highly complex on the one hand, and the students‟ own culture has its own styles for organizing academic writings which are not always compatible to the English academic conventions, on the other For students at UTEHY, the situation seems to be more difficult As you know, the university is in Hung Yen province, which is about 50 kilometers from Hanoi, but the section of English-major is in Hai Duong city which is even twice as far from Hanoi This can be considered a disadvantageous place for study as it is difficult for both teachers and students to get enough materials for references Moreover, there is a library in the university but it lacks of many good references especially English books, newspapers and magazines The difficulty also comes from the level of the students themselves There are more than 360 students at Department of Foreign Languages, UTEHY and 120 of them are firstyear students Both male and female students‟ ages are from 18 to 20 Most of them come from Hung Yen province, the rest come from other provinces in the North of Vietnam Their level of English proficiency does not vary a lot In addition, it is rather low It cannot 40 be compared with that of students at some other universities such as University of Languages and International Studies, VNU or Hanoi University because being Englishmajor students at UTEHY was not the first choice for most of them but the second choice for them when they failed to enter their dreamed university UTEHY University still gives a chance for students who wish to study at this university even though many of them have less than for English In other words, the students‟ level of English proficiency is rather low The method of teaching English at UTEHY, thus, cannot be the same as that of other universities The teachers at UTEHY have been trying their best to find the most suitable and effective ways to help their students overcome the difficulties to catch up with other English-major students at other university Especially, in writing skill, the teachers not only teach the necessary techniques in writing a good paragraph or essay, but also review necessary grammar points in their lesson to help improve their level of English proficiently and thus, write better In the next part of this study, some implications for teaching writing skill are introduced by the author to improve the situation at HYUTE 4.1 Suggestions for teaching and materials It is the fact that cohesive devices play a very important role in writing a paragraph or an essay because they produce cohesion, which is of vital importance in writing Therefore, it is the job of the teacher to raise students‟ awareness of cohesive devices in general and coordinators in particular AND/BUT/OR are the most central coordinators, thus, they should be taught thoroughly The degree of student‟s acquisition of these three English coordinators depends, to a large extent, on the teacher‟s presentation The teacher should know how to present them and their usage in a comprehensible way to students A good presentation is supposed to provide all necessary information Therefore, it is advisable for the teacher to follow the following steps The teacher should, first of all, provide students with some general ideas about the meanings of the three coordinators AND/BUT/OR Then, the variety of semantic implications by each coordinator is introduced However, it is not a good idea to teach all of them mechanically at one time as students may get confused In addition, the teacher 41 should familiarize the students with various possible semantic relations in specific contexts or situations, which can help students avoid ambiguity and uncertainty when facing these cases Next, it is suggested that a brief explanation of the cross-cultural differences in the usage of AND/BUT/OR and their equivalents in Vietnamese be mentioned Finally, the teacher should design many types of exercises for the learners to until they are proficient enough in using these coordinators The teaching materials are also as important as the teaching method The materials chosen should ensure the clear explanation and the description of the coordinators in consideration For illustration, pairs of discourse should be given to contrast the good ones with those considered to be a failure due to the inappropriate use of coordinators Furthermore, the teaching materials should be aimed at communicative purpose of language teaching, so situations set should be familiar and understandable to the learners Sample discourses with detailed knowledge about science, technology or a certain technical process should be avoided Last but not less, bilingual materials should be encouraged to ensure the exact use by the learners and to avoid pitiful interference In conclusion, the teaching of reading has often focused on the sentence level Vocabulary and grammar have received a great deal of attention However, we also need to help students look at relations which exist between sentences and between paragraphs Teaching cohesion in general and coordinators in particular is a key way of increasing students‟ awareness of how texts function Therefore, some types of exercises are suggested in the hope of helping students avoid making mistakes in using these three English coordinators 4.2 Suggested types of exercises  Type 1: Combine the following pairs of sentences using the coordinators AND/BUT/OR: My family has gone to the movies I was at home alone I bought a bottle of wine We drank it together You can it right now You can leave it until tomorrow 42  Type 2: Match a sentence in column A with another in column B using appropriate coordinators AND/BUT/OR A B My family has gone to the movies AND I was at home alone I bought a bottle of wine BUT We drank it together You can it right now OR You can leave it until tomorrow  Type 3: Fill in the gaps with appropriate coordinators AND/BUT/OR: Maria tried to read a novel in French, ……….it was too difficult The waiter was very nice, ……… the food was delicious You can stay here, ……… you can go home These three types of exercise is rather simple but it helps to establish the logical thinking of students by organizing ideas with the use of AND to denote addition, BUT to express contrast and OR to show alternative  Type 4: Complete the sentences using the suggested coordinator Jane is lovely (but) She is beautiful (and) You have to go tight now (or) This type of exercise may be helpful in arousing the students‟ interest in using these coordinators to signal logical relations between ideas It also helps improve the students‟ reproductive skill  Type 5: Identify the semantic implications between the coordinated clauses of the following sentences: Maria tried to read a novel in French, but it was too difficult I bought a bottle of wine, and we drank it together You can it right now, or you can leave it until tomorrow They disliked John – and this is not surprising Give me some money, or I‟ll shoot you 43 The purpose of this exercise is to help students recognize that these three coordinators AND/BUT/OR can denote several other implications besides the logical relationships commonly used and understood Therefore, it is important for teachers to make the situations clear when designing this type of exercise so that the students cannot get confused when identifying the semantic relationships between the coordinated clauses  Type 6: a Translate the following sentences into Vietnamese Pay much attention to Vietnamese equivalent linkers to the coordinators given Maria tried to read a novel in French, but it was too difficult I bought a bottle of wine, and we drank it together You can it right now, or you can leave it until tomorrow He tried hard and he failed There‟s nothing attractive at all, but I have to accept it b Translate into English the following sentences Use only AND/BUT/OR as linking devices equivalent to the underlined words Tôi yêu cô nhƣng cô lại yêu Anh khơng đến, định hủy hôn nhân Tôi giúp anh với điều kiện anh phải cố gắng The aim of these exercises is to remind the students of the flexibility in meaning of the coordinators AND/BUT/OR And it also aims to make the students be aware of the different Vietnamese equivalent linkers of these coordinators Hopefully, these types of exercises would be appreciated and exploited by teachers and students in order to help students become better writers 44 PART C: CONCLUSIONS The achievement of the objectives of the study In general, the results gained from the research give the researcher enough confidence to say that the thesis has finally succeeded in completing the objectives which had been mentioned in the introduction The author has been able to give a systematic presentation of the ways the three coordinators AND/BUT/OR work in context A contrastive analysis of these coordinators as cohesive devices and their equivalent realizations in Vietnamese has already been done and some suggested exercises to help students at UTEHY have also been given Within the scope of this study, the research questions at the very beginning of the thesis have finally been answered through the different methods used Some major findings can be found out as follows: Firstly, as cohesive devices in English written discourse, the three coordinators AND/BUT/OR appear to be more flexible than their semantic syntactic and logical meanings because these coordinators can function in discourse to create possible implications for the effect of communication We have implications by AND, by BUT and by OR, and the frequency of occurrence of these implications is different from each others However, AND/BUT/OR have some implications in common In general, AND is commonly used to denote ADDITION, BUT shows CONTRAST and OR implies ALTERNATIVE Secondly, AND/BUT/OR in English and VÀ/NHƢNG/HAY-HOẶC in Vietnamese have some similar syntactic features which mainly affect the mechanism of their logical relation However, VÀ/NHƢNG/HAY-HOẶC are not the only equivalents to AND/BUT/OR in all relation respectively In fact, for different meanings implied by AND/BUT/OR many other linkers or expressions are found as Vietnamese equivalents of these three coordinators 45 The effectiveness of the methods used The methods of descriptive and comparative analysis used in this thesis have been proved to be effective The study is presented conductively from general theories to detailed descriptions, with theories presented first, then examples given to clarify the theories The methods used have help the author to give a systematic presentation of the uses of the three central coordinators AND/BUT/OR as cohesive devices and their frequency of occurrence in English written discourse as well as made a contrastive analysis of AND/BUT/OR as cohesive devices and their equivalent realizations in Vietnamese Limitations of the study Due to the limited time and unsustainable knowledge of the author, some limitations are unavoidable Firstly, the number of samples is not large enough In other words, with only 100 samples for each coordinator the samples for the research were not really large to allow many generalizations about the performance of coordinators examined Hopefully, in the future research, more samples will be analyzed to have a more satisfactory result Secondly, the data collection method of the author should be improved The samples of this study have been chosen at random from several written discourse types such as novels, short stories, magazines and newspapers However, most of the samples come from some novels where the performance of coordinators AND/BUT/OR in context may be affected by the writer‟s writing style Therefore, it is likely to cause some effects when putting the semantic implications of each coordinator in the order of their frequency of occurrence In spite of these limitations, the study has generally been successful in providing Vietnamese learners of English in general and the students at UTEHY in particular with something useful for better understanding of cohesion in written discourse and thus, improve their writing skill 46 Suggestions for further study Honesty speaking, this study is a very small aspect of English coordinators as a whole because of the limited time and scope of the thesis as well as the unsustainable knowledge of the author This study only deals with coordinators as cohesive devices in English written discourse within the sentence level only But discourses are not always long stretches of sentences There are public notices, proverbs, advertising slogans, etc, where one sentence by itself comprises a complete text And discourses are not always limited within written form For the varieties of discourse form and length, it is suggested further research about coordinators AND/OR/BUT should be in: - Coordinators AND/BUT/OR as cohesive devices in English spoken discourse - Coordinators AND/BUT/OR above the sentence level - Coordinators AND/BUT/OR as cohesive devices in a certain type of discourse (application letters, business contracts, etc) A full research on different sides of coordinator AND/BUT/OR will gives us an allsided insight into the field and we will find that the work deserves our investigation Due to the constraint in time, the framework of a minor M.A thesis as well as the limited knowledge of the author, mistakes are inevitable Any further comments and criticism that can go toward improving this study are, therefore, would be highly appreciated 47 REFERENCES In Vietnamese: Diệp Quang Ban (1998) Văn liên kết tiếng Việt Hà Nội: NXB Giáo Dục Hà Nội Diệp Quang Ban (2004) Ngữ pháp tiếng Việt Hanoi: Education Publishing House Nguyễn Chí Hịa (2005) Các phương tiện liên kết tổ chức văn Hà Nội: NXB Đại học Quốc Gia Hà Nội Nguyễn Hịa (2003) Phân tích diễn ngôn: Một số vấn đề lý luận phương pháp Hà Nội: NXB Đại học Quốc Gia Hà Nội Trần Ngọc Thêm (1985) Hệ thống liên kết văn tiếng Việt Hà Nội: NXB Khoa học Xã hội Hà Nội In English: Ball, W.J (1989) Dictionary of Link Words in English Discourse London: Macmillan Publishers Ltd Brown, G & Yule, G (1983) Discourse Analysis Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Crystal, D (1992) Introducing Linguistics London: Penguin Crombie, Winifred (1985) Process and Relation in Discourse and Language Learning London: Oxford 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Linguistics London: Longman 21 Swan, M (1995) Basic English Usage Oxford: Oxford University Press 22 Taboada, M.T (2004) Building Coherence and Cohesion Philadelphia: John Benjamin Publishing Company 23 Van, Hoang Van (2006) Introducing discourse analysis Hanoi: Educational Publisher 24 Widdowson, H.G (1979) Explorations in Applied Linguistics Oxford: Oxford University Press From the Internet: 25 http://en.wikipedia.org 26 http://www.better-english.com 27 http://www.englishclub.com/ 28 http://www.eslgold.com/ ... conjunctions and cohesive devices Chapter 2: A detailed description of the three coordinators AND/ BUT/ OR as cohesive devices Chapter 3: A comparative analysis between the coordinators AND/ BUT/ OR and Vietnamese. .. central coordinators AND/ BUT/ OR as cohesive devices and their frequency of occurrence in English written discourse - Making contrastive analysis of AND/ BUT/ OR as cohesive devices and their equivalent... has been able to give a systematic presentation of the ways the three coordinators AND/ BUT/ OR work in context A contrastive analysis of these coordinators as cohesive devices and their equivalent