cohesive devices in reading texts in the book tiếng anh 12-ban cơ bản = phương tiện liên kết trong các bài đọc trong sách giáo khoa tiếng anh 12 – ban cơ bản

This research spends a large part looking closely at grammatical and lexical cohesive devices, under the theory of cohesion by Halliday and Hasan 1976, used in the textbook for grade-12

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Declaration page……… i

Acknowledgements………ii

Abstract.………iii

Table of contents……… iv

Abbreviation ……… vi

List of tables and charts………vii

PART A: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale 1

2 Aims of the study 2

3 Scope of the study 2

4 Significance of the study 2

5 Method of the study 3

6 Design of the study 3

PART B: DEVELOPMENT 5

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 5

1.1 Discourse 5

1.1.1 The concept of discourse 5

1.1.2 Discourse and text 5

1.1.3 Spoken and written discourse 6

1.1.4 Discourse analysis 7

1.1.5 Context in discourse analysis 8

1.1.5.1 Context of situation 8

1.1.5.2 Context of culture 8

1.1.6 Register and genre in discourse analysis 8

1.2 Cohesion 9

1 2.1 Definition of cohesion 9

1.2.2 Cohesion vs Coherence 9

1.2.3 Aspects of cohesion 10

1.2.3.1 Topical cohesion 10

1.2.3.2 Logical cohesion 10

1.2.4 Types of coheison 10

1.2.4.1 Grammatical cohesion 11

1.2.4.1.1 Reference 11

1.2.4.1.2 Substitution 12

1.2.4.1.3 Ellipsis 13

1.2.4.1.4 Conjunction 13

1.2.4.2 Lexical cohesion 14

1.2.4.2.1 Reiteration 14

1.2.4.2.2 Collocation 14

1.3 Textbook and the book for grade 12 in gerneral throughout Vietnam 15

CHAPTER 2: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 17

2.1 Grammatical cohesion 17

2.1.1 Reference 17

2.1.1.1 Anaphoric reference 17

2.1.1.2 Cataphoric reference 20

2.1.1.3 Exophoric reference 21

2.1.2 Conjunctions 22

2.1.2.1 Additive 23

2.1.2.2 Temporal conjunction 24

2.1.2.3 Adversative conjunction 24

2.1.2.4 Causal conjunction 24

2.1.3 Substitution 25

2.1.4 Ellipsis 26

2.2 Lexical cohesion 28

2.2.1 Reiteration 28

2.2.2 Collocation 30

2.2.2.1 Lexical collocation 31

2.2.2.2 Grammatical collocation 33

2.3 Summary of cohesive devices in the textbook 34

CHAPTER 3: IMPLICATION FOR TEACHING ENGLISH 36

3.1 Teaching cohesion through teaching reading 36

3.1.1 In terms of grammatical cohesion 36

3.1.1.1 Teaching conjunctions through teaching reading 36

3.1.1.2 Teaching reference through teaching reading 37

3.1.1.3 Teaching collocation 37

3.1.1.4 Teaching reiteration through teaching reading 38

3.1.2 Teaching cohesion through teaching writing 39

3.1.2.1 Teaching grammatical cohesion through teaching writing 39

3.1.2.2 Teaching lexical cohesion through teaching writing 39

PART C: CONCLUSION 40

1 Major findings 40

2 Suggestions for further study 41

REFERENCE 42

SOURCES OF DATA……… 44 APPENDIX I:……… ……… I

APPENDIX II: VI APPENDIX III: VII

APPENDIX IV……… X

APPENDIX V: XI APPENDIX VI: XII APPENDIX VII: XIV APPENDIX VIII: XV APPENDIX IX XXI APPENDIX X: XXII APPENDIX XI XL APPENDIX XII: XLI APPENDIX XIII: XLII APPENDIX XIV: XLIII APPENDIX XV: XLIV APPENDIX XVI: XLV APPENDIX XVII: XLVI

ABBREVIATION GCSE: General Certificate of Secondary Education DA: Discourse Analysis

ELT: English Language Teaching

ESL: English as a Second Language

EFL: English as a Foreign Language

WTO: World Trade Organization

MOET: Ministry Of Education and Training

LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS

Table 1.1: Types of cohesion……….10

Table 1.2: Grammatical and lexical cohesion……… 11

Table 2.1: Different types of reference words for anaphoric ties……… 17

Table 2.2: Different types of reference words for cataphoric ties……….20

Table 2.3: Different types of reference words for exophoric ties……… 21

Chart 2.1: The percentage of conjunctions in the textbook………23

Chart 2.2: The percentage of substitutions in the textbook……… 25

Chart 2.3: The percentage of ellipsis in the textbook……… 26

Chart 2.4: The percentage of reiteration in the textbook……… 28

Chart 2.5: The percentage of collocation in the textbook……… 31

Table 2 4: Different patterns of lexical collocation……….31

Table 2.5: Different patterns of grammatical collocation……… 33

Chart 2.6: A comparison of grammatical and lexical cohesion in the textbook 35

Table 2.6: Different types of grammatical cohesion ……… 35

Table 2.7: Different types of lexical cohesion……… 35

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

In the interconnected and globalized world nowadays, knowing English is of great importance That forces students, especially high school students, to have to equip themselves with the basics of English, so that they can enter the world more easily, and to some extent, better their future life To grade 12 students, this is more essential Not only do they need English in the future, but in the nearer view English is one of the core subjects in the GCSE examination, and the entrance examination to university

Tracing back to these two national examinations recently, the high occurrence proportion of cohesive devices can not be denied In my observation, except for phonetic parts, cohesive devices, along with their usage and meaning, are useful tools in both reading texts, and

many sentences in such parts as writing, mistake correction, and multiple choice questions

That is to say, the teaching of cohesive devices is essential to grade 12 students

Moreover, on the process of mastering language in general, English in particular, to Vietnamese secondary students, reading is seen as the crucial tool that aids the learning of the other skills However, it is a fact that, these days, many high school students do not have adequate linguistic knowledge to read and understand a whole written text in English During my process of teaching high school students, I come to realize that one of the foremost reasons for which students often make errors at sentence and discourse levels is due to their inattention to the cohesive devices used in the context of texts What they do is

to try to look up new words, and then translate the texts into Vietnamese As a result, students find it hard to understand the text or express their answers in the comprehension check questions even though they know most of the words Those who are given in advance unfamiliar words still show their inability in recognizing sentences, and word relations, which leads to the misunderstanding or misinterpretation of the meaning of the texts

In addition, according to my past experience of being a final-year student at high school, as well as during my observation at my working place, most of the teachers, both my former ones and my present colleagues, do not teach students how to realize word relations through the cohesive devices

Apart from a variety of mentioned things, many people have done researches on linguistics and discourse analysis; yet, no suggestions have been given to high school teachers and students so that they can do tasks relating to cohesion more successfully Consequently, the decisive motivation in doing this research derives from the extremely important role of cohesion in the text and also the difficulties of my students who lack the ability to make

proper recognition of cohesive devices in written texts in their textbooks This research spends a large part looking closely at grammatical and lexical cohesive devices, under the theory of cohesion by Halliday and Hasan (1976), used in the textbook for grade-12 students

in general in terms of the frequency of occurrence

2 Aims of the study

While carrying out this research, the researcher, firstly, attempts to describe and analyze cohesive devices in the English textbook for grade 12 students in general throughout Vietnam in term of grammar and lexis Then, the research aims at giving some implications for teaching cohesion, as well as certain sample cohesive exercises for designing material for the revision of GSCE examination and the entrance examination to university Finally,

by doing this study, the researcher hopes to indicate striking features of cohesive devices so

as to help students understand the reading texts more effectively

The following research questions are raised for exploration while carrying out the study:

1 What are the cohesive devices used in the textbook “Tiếng Anh 12 – Ban Cơ Bản” for grade - 12 students general throughout Vietnam?

2 How can the findings help teachers and their students in the teaching and learning the textbook for grade 12 students?

3 Scope of the study

Within the limited time and knowledge, only grammatical and lexical cohesion in the textbook “Tiếng Anh 12” for grade - 12 students general throughout Vietnam edited by Hoang, V.V et al (2010), Education Publication House are observed Furthermore, the study does not propose all the possible solutions to teaching and learning cohesion but only some implications that are directly drawn from the textbook observation and the observation of the tests for GSCE examination and the entrance examination to university over the past few years Only two skills, reading and writing, are chosen to present

4 Significance of the study

 Theoretical significance: The study brings with it the task to verify the correctness and significance of linguistic theory by working on the discourses of different issues in social life mentioned in the researched textbook It is hoped to prove the existing ideas on cohesion to satisfy the individual’s question and, to some extent, hopefully to open a new way of revising and preparing for candidates of the GCSE examination and the entrance examination to university

 Practical significance: This research gives out some practical applications, such as combining linguistic theory and practice in analyzing written English discourses in the

researched textbook In addition, the researcher hopes to give teachers and students a hand

with teaching and learning cohesion through reading and writing skills

5 Method of the study

 Approaches and methods

The study can not reach its final page without a logical system of approaches and methods Both qualitative and quantitative approaches are applied However, the latter is exploited most of the time The tackling methods are statistic and descriptive (getting the statistics from the texts in the chosen textbook), analytical and synthetic (drawing striking features from the book observation) Firstly, a number of materials on discourse analysis are discovered to give the research a theoretical base Then, it is ensured that none of the most noticeable cohesive devices in the reading texts in the textbook for intermediate students at grade 12 is missed their analysis and induction Finally, the results are drawn out so that the author can suggest some implications

 Data collection and analysis

The grammatical and lexical cohesive devices to be studied will be taken from the textbook

“Tiếng Anh 12” for grade 12 students at intermediate level edited by Hoang,V.V et al (2010), Education Publication House

6 Design of the study

The thesis capacity is within 40 pages, structured as follows:

Part A: Introduction introduces the rationale, objectives, scope, significance, methodology

and the design of the study

Part B: Development

Chapter 1: Literature review deals with the theories related to Discourse and Discourse

Analysis, cohesion, and the textbook

Chapter 2: Findings and discussion of textbook observation analyses cohesive devices

in the reading texts in the textbook for intermediate grade 12 students, basing on the view of Halliday and Hasan (1976)

Chapter 3: Pedagogical implication of the study gives implications for teaching and

learning cohesion basing on reading and writing skills

Part C: Conclusion aims at summarizing the thesis by showing the study results and giving

concluding remarks Some suggestions for further studies are also included to promise the continuance of the author’s future work

PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 Discourse

1.1.1 The concept of discourse

The term “discourse” has been given a numerous definitions to throughout the history of linguistics Widdowson (1979:98) defines discourse as follows:

“Discourse is a use of sentences to perform acts of communication which cohere into larger communicative units, ultimately establishing rhetorical pattern which characterizes the pieces of language as a whole as a kind of communication.”

According to Halliday and Hasan (1989:38), discourse is seen differently in the simplest

way as a text and that “it is language that is functional.” McCarthy (1991: 5), on the other

hands, puts discourse in the relationship between language and the contexts in which it is used One year later, Crystal, in the book “Introduction to linguistics” (1992:25) considers

discourse to be “a continuous stretch of language larger than a sentence, often constituting

a coherent unit such as sermon, argument, joke, or narrative.”

Although discourse is understood and defined differently, the definition by Halliday and Hasan, in which the discourse means language in use, seems to be the clearest to follow That is also the concept adapted in this research Besides, as far as the scope of discourse is concerned, discourse refers not only to spoken interactions and interviews, but also to written and printed words, such as newspapers, articles, and letters The discourses in the research are written texts in textbook

1.1.2 Discourse and text

The distinction between discourse and text has been paid much attention to for ages Although it is common knowledge that this distinction is not always visible, confusion of these two terms may result in the failures of discourse analysis There exist two opposite points of view to the problem

On the one hand, text and discourse are seen inconsistently Widows (1979:98) makes a very clear and explicit distinction between text and discourse According to him, a text is the combination of sentences with the relation of their grammatical cohesion, whereas discourse

is the use of such sentences for communicative purposes and discourse has coherence Cook

(1989:168) considered text as “a stretch of language” doing nothing with context, while discourse is also “a stretch of language”, but in context Crystal (1992: 72), sharing the

same ideas with Widdowson, says that text should be used only for writing and discourse for speech

On the other hand, the two terms are said to be interchangeable In their book “Cohesion in English,’ Halliday and Hasan define text as follows:

A text is a unit of language in use It is not a grammatical unit, like a clause or a sentence;

and it is not defined by its size A text is sometimes envisaged to be some kind of super

sentence, a grammatical unit that is larger than a sentence but is related to a

sentence in the same way that a sentence is related to a clause, a clause to a group and

so on: by constituency, the composition of larger units out of smaller ones But this is

misleading .A text is not something that is like a sentence , only bigger; it is

something that differs from a sentence in kind ….A text does not consist of sentences , it is

realized by , or encoded in , sentences

(Halliday and Hasan 1976:1-2)

In their sense, “text” refers to “discourse”, and is “a passage of discourse.” Schiffrin

(1994: 363-364) supports this by stating that text is a linguistic product of discourse that can

be studied without reference to its contextual elements as an evidence of linguistic rules

Salkie, (1995: IX) views text and discourse analysis is just one area of linguistics - “the

systematic study of language”; therefore, according to him “a text, or a discourse, is a

stretch of language that may be longer than one sentence Thus, text and discourse analysis

is about how sentences combine to form texts.” Cohesion, then, is a principle factor in

determining texture since it is a means through which we can relate our utterances or

sentences

In the present research, the second viewpoint is adapted The term “discourse” is used with

no different meaning from “text.” In this sense, to analyze a text means to a discourse

Therefore, in this study, text analysis of reading text also means discourse analysis

1.1.3 Spoken and written discourse

Spoken and written discourses are different modes of discourse Cook, (1989:50)

distinguishes them as follows:

“Spoken discourse is often considered to be less planned, more open to intervention by the

receiver There are some kinds of spoken discourse, however -like lesson, lectures, interview, and

trials- which have significant features in common with typical written discourse…Conversely,

there are at times when readers do have rights to affect written discourse Written responds to the

market.”

Brown and Yule (1983:13), moving on the same route, differentiate spoken discourses from

written ones in terms of their various functions: the first is used for the establishment and

maintenance of human relationships (interactional use) and the second for the working out

of and transference of information (transactional use) In “Discourse analysis: an

introduction”, Paltridge (2006: 25) concludes that “speaking and writing draw on the same

underlying grammatical system but in general they encode meanings in different ways

depending on what they wish to present.”

In Cook’s opinion (1989: 128), whether the discourse is spoken or written profoundly

influences the choices of the appropriate cohesive ties This present study focuses on

product of communicative process Thus, though both spoken and written texts are made to

be persuasive and attractive, we just look into cohesion in written discourses , not in the spoken ones The question is how we can analyze a discourse There is nothing

better than basing ourselves on disciplines of discourse analysis

1.1.4 Discourse analysis

Discourse Analysis (DA) has been developed from the work of different disciplines in the 1960s and early 1970s, including linguistics, semiotics, psychology, anthropology and sociology Discourse analysts study language in use, written texts and spoken data of all kinds under the approach different from that of old grammarians

British DA was mainly influenced by M.A.K Halliday’s functional approach of language His framework emphasizes the social function of language and the thematic and informational structure of speech and writing De Baugrande (1980), Halliday and Hasan (1976) as well as Prague School of linguists have made their significant contribution to this branch of linguists in pointing out the links between grammar and discourse

Yule (1996: 139) state in his book study of language

“ in the study of language, some of the most interesting questions arise in connection with the way language is used”, rather than what its components are (…) we were, in effect, asking how it

is that language-users interpret what other language-users, make sense of what we read in texts, understand what speakers mean despite what they say, recognize connected as opposed to jumbled or incoherent discourse, and successfully take part in that complex activity called conversation, we are undertaking what is known as discourse analysis."

Discourse analysis, therefore, is very important to understand or interpret a text One of the very key technical terms in DA is cohesion A brief introduction about cohesion as a core studying matter of this thesis will be discussed later on

1.1.5 Context in discourse analysis

Context is an important aspect in discourse analysis There is a dialectical relationship between discourse and context: the context creates the discourse as much as the discourse

creates the context Nguyen, H (2000: 39) sees context as “the most elusive and fluid concepts on modern linguistics.” Nunan (1993:7) emphasizes “Context refers to the situation giving use to the discourse, and within which the discourse is embedded.”

According to him, context consists of both linguistics and non-linguistics There are two types of context in discourse, respectively context of situation, and context of culture

1.1.5.1 Context of situation

Context of situation is an integral concept of discourse analysis According to Eggins

(1994:30), context of situation is usually discussed under three variables: “what is talked about, what the relationship between the communicators is; what role the language plays.”

Halliday (2002:52) thought of context of situation as a determining environment which affects text meaning

1.1.5.2 Context of culture

Besides the language and context of situation we need to pay attention to the context of

culture As stated by Malinowski (1923) “if you are not a member of the culture, you cannot understand what is meant” To recognize the text as meaningful, the readers or hearers need

to refer the text to a cultural context It is important to know the culture of the given language in interpreting and understanding the given messages

1.1.6 Register and genre in discourse analysis

Register is an important factor that can not be ignored because this study focuses on cohesion, which is supplemented by the concept of register Halliday and Hasan (1976:22) give the concept and components of the context of situation, which shows the features of

register by FIELD, TENOR and MODE Field of discourse shows what is happening with the nature of the social action that is taking place Whereas, Tenor of discourse refers to who is taking part, to the nature of the participants, their statuses and roles Mode of discourse regards to what part the language is playing, what it is that the participants are

expecting the language to do for them in that situation

In terms of genre, Eggins (1994:32) believed

“Genre, or context of culture, can be seen as more abstract, more general - we can recognize a particular genre if we are not sure exactly what the situational context is Genre, then, can be thought of as the general framework that gives purpose to interactions of particular types, adaptable to the many specific context of situation that they get used in.”

1.2 Cohesion

1 2.1 Definition of cohesion

There are various definitions of cohesion McCarthy (1991:25) regards cohesion as surface

links between the clauses and sentences Nguyen, H (2000:23) states that “cohesion refers

to the formal relationship that causes text to cohere or stick together.” It also may be

defined as the formal linguistic realization of semantic and pragmatic relations between clauses and sentences in a text (Quirk et al 1985: 1423 cited in Cook 1994: 29) Halliday

and Hasan in “Cohesion in English” (1976: 4-5) see cohesion as “part of the system of language”, more exactly as “a semantic one” which refers to “relations of meaning that exist with the text and that defined it as a text.” In their point of view, cohesion is expressed

through the stratal organization of language, and is expressed partly through the grammar

and partly through the vocabulary

Definition of cohesion and its classification by Halliday and Hasan (1976) is the framework

for the present study

1.2.2 Cohesion vs Coherence

Cohesive devices in Salkie’s opinion (1995: X- XI) are the adhesives to stick the different parts of a text together However, according to him, to make a text, cohesive devices are only one factor Cohesion must be put in the relation to coherence Nevertheless, in the study of discourse analysis, it is very important to distinguish cohesion and coherence Palmer (1983, cited in Nguyen, H, 2000: 23) contrasted coherence from cohesion at the

point that coherence is “the type of semantic or rhetorical relationships that underline texts.” This viewpoint is strongly agreed by Bell (1991, cited in Hoang, V.V, 1999: 13)

Cohesion is concerned with formal surface structures (syntax and lexis) to interact with underlying semantic relations or underlying functional coherence to create textual unity Coherence, in contrast, is concerned with the sequencing of the configuration of the concepts and relation of the textual world which underlies and are realised by the surface text

It seems that coherence is the hidden link among ideas that the readers draw themselves while reading the text; whereas, cohesion is a surface relation and it connects together the actual words and expressions Richards et al (1992: 62) said that cohesion means the grammatical and or lexical relationships between the different elements of a text, while

coherence is “the relationships which link the meanings of utterances in a discourse or of the sentences in a text.” In other words, cohesion is a guide to coherence

However, coherence and cohesion are interrelated, as Widdowson (1984) concludes “the procedures of cohesion and coherence are not entirely distinct….” Coherence can be shown

out by cohesion, but the identification between coherence and cohesion sometimes can not

be made Thus, coherence and cohesion are connected to each other in making ties within a text As what noticed by Tran, N.T (1981:3), coherence is “content cohesion”, including

topical and logical cohesion

1.2.3 Aspects of cohesion

To make a discourse coherent, the two vital factors which can not be omitted are topical and logical cohesion However, because the present study does not focus on these two, they will not be discussed in details

1.2.3.1 Topical cohesion

What topical cohesion concerns about is Theme and Rheme Theme is usually expressed by the least- most constituent of the sentence It refers to what speaker nominates as the subject

of what he will think about in the Rheme The function of theme is to connect back or link

to previous discourse and to serve as a starting of departure for further development of discourse

1.2.3.2 Logical cohesion

Logical cohesion, in Nguyen, H’s view (2000:28), is also powerful sentence connectors They demonstrate the logical relationship holding between sentences, thus creating or expressing cohesion There exist the following types of logical cohesive devices: and, enumeration, addition, transition, concession, and comparison

Table 1.1: Types of cohesion (Source: Halliday and Hasan, 1976: 318)

Halliday and Hasan state that “cohesion is expressed partly through grammar and through partly the vocabulary.” In his book An A-Z of ELT: a dictionary of terms and concepts used

in English Language Teaching, Thornbury (2006:32) confirms Halliday and Hasan’s idea

that by means of grammar and lexical, cohesion can help connect texts, either spoken or written The two types of cohesion, grammatical and lexical, can be classified as follows:

Table 1.2: Grammatical and lexical cohesion

Halliday and Hasan add that conjunction, particularly, is “on the borderline of the two.” However, it can be better to put it in the group of grammatical cohesion as it is “mainly

grammatical with a lexical component in it” (Halliday and Hasan, 1976: 6) The detail of

each type is briefly explained as follows

1.2.4.1 Grammatical cohesion

1.2.4.1.1 Reference

According to Halliday and Hasan (1976: 31) the interpretation of a word is not necessarily based only on its own right, but it can make reference to something else provided that the reference is either to some other parts of the text or to the world experienced by the sender and the receiver of the text That is, the information to be retrieved is the referential meaning, and the cohesion lies in the continuity of reference

Reference, in Halliday and Hasan’s viewpoint, can be accounted as “exophoric” or

(Types of reference; source: Halliday and Hasan, 1976: 33)

“Exophoric reference directs the receiver „out of „the text and into an assumed shared world” (McCarthy, 1991: 41) Endophoric function, in contrast, refers to the text itself in its

interpretation (Brown and Yule, 1983: 92) Endophoric reference is divided into two classes: anaphoric relations which involve looking back in texts to find the referent and cataphoric relation which looks forward for their interpretation

Without regard to these functions, Halliday and Hasan (1976: 31-84) classify reference into three types Personal Reference, Demonstrative Reference, and Comparative Reference

 Personal Reference is a reference by means of function into a speech situation through the category of the person in the form of personal pronouns, such as: I, me, you, him, etc or personal determiner like mine, your, her, etc

 Demonstrative Reference is reference by means of location on a scale of proximity such as this, these, here, now (near proximity), that, those, there, then (far proximity), or, the (neutral proximity)

 Comparative Reference is indirect reference by means of identity or similarity, such as same, identically, identical, equal (identity -general comparison), similar, additional

(general similarity - general comparison), other, different, else, differently, otherwise

(different), better, more, so, less, equally (particular comparison)

1.2.4.1.2 Substitution

Substitution can be defined as the replacement of one item by another to avoid repetition in the text Halliday and Hasan (1976:89) distinguish substitution from reference in terms of linguistic system, in which “reference is a relation on the semantic level, whereas substitution is a relation on the lexicogrammatical level, the level of grammar and

vocabulary, or linguistic form.” They classify substitution into 3 types: nominal, verbal and clausal Most of the substitutes are pro-forms within sentences, which are used across

sentences In specific words, substitutes may be pro-forms for adverbials, pro-forms for predicate and predication, and also pro-forms for the direct object clause According to

Halliday and Hasan (1976: 91), nominal substitution includes “one”, “ones”, “same”,

verbal substitution consists of “do”, and clausal substitutes are “so”, “not”

1.2.4.1.3 Ellipsis

Similarly to substitution, ellipsis is used to avoid repetition, as Salkie (1995:56) said that the

aim of ellipsis is to “leave out a word or phrase rather than repeat it.” It is often regarded

as “substitution by zero.” Nevertheless, Halliday and Hasan (1976:142) argue that although substitution and ellipsis embody the same fundamental relation between parts of a text (a relation between words or groups or clauses), they are two different kinds of mechanism, and hence show rather different patterns They also add that ellipsis is an omission of certain elements from a sentence or clause and can only be recovered by referring to an element in the preceding text Therefore, ellipsis is normally an anaphoric relation In Halliday and

Hasan’s viewpoint (1976:146), ellipsis is divided into three subtypes, namely, nominal ellipsis, verbal ellipsis, and clausal ellipsis

1.2.4.1.4 Conjunction

According to Halliday and Hasan (1976: 226), conjunctive elements are cohesive not in themselves but indirectly by virtue of their specific meaning It means that they are not primarily devices for reaching out into the preceding text but they express certain meaning which presupposes the presence of other components in discourse In other word, conjunction does not depend either on referential meaning or identity or association of wording There are four types of conjunction:

 Additive: According to Halliday and Hasan (1976: 244) additive relation consists of additional information to the text The conjunctive relation, are: and,

or, furthermore, beside, likewise, similarly, that is, in other word, for instance, etc

 Adversative: The adversative relation is contrary relations which happen in the component of what being said (1976: 250) The adversative relations are: yet, but, however,

at the same time, in fact, at least…

 Causal: According to Halliday and Hasan (1976: 260) causal relation includes the relation from combination clauses or sentences which clausal effect exists The causal

relation are; so, because, for this reason, as a result, then, here

 Temporal: According to Halliday and Hasan (1976: 261) temporal relation is expressed in its simplest form by sequential relation conclusion and summary The temporal relations are; next, before then, first, finally, in the end, in short, to sum up

1.2.4.2 Lexical cohesion

Lexical cohesion is established in a text by the choice of words According to Halliday and Hasan, lexical cohesion looks at the way aspect of vocabulary links parts of text together It is established through vocabulary, and hence at the lexicogrammatical level

(1976: 6) There are two types of lexical cohesion: reiteration and collocation

1.2.4.2.1 Reiteration

Reiteration, according to Halliday and Hasan (1976: 318) is “the repetition of a lexical item,

or the occurrence of a synonym of some kind, in the context of reference; that is, where the

two occurrences have the same referent.” Reiteration involves repetition, synonyms and

near synonyms, super-ordinates, and general words (ibid: 278) Repetition is the way we

repeat exactly a lexical item mentioned previously in the text However, the overuse of repetition can make the text monotonous Therefore, synonyms and near-synonyms, words with the same or similar meaning, are used to avoid unnecessary repetition Super-ordinate, according to Halliday and Hasan (1976:280), is any item whose meaning includes that if the earlier one The two authors (ibid: 281) also add general words into this category They state that general words are cohesive only when they have the same referent as whatever they are presupposing, and when they are accompanied by “the”, “this”, “that”, “these”, and

“those.”

1.2.4.2.2 Collocation

Collocation is an important tool to make parts of a text bind together Richard et al

(1992:62) explains “collocation refers to the restrictions on how much words can be used together, for example, which prepositions are used with particular verbs, or which verbs and nouns are used together.” Collocation refers to the semantic and structural relation

among words, which native speakers can use subconsciously for comprehension or production of a text Halliday and Hasan argue the case of collocation as follows:

The cohesive effect … depends not so much on any systematic relation-ship as on their tendency to share the same lexical environment, to occur in COLLOCATION with one another In general, any two lexical items having similar patterns of collocation – that is, tending to appear in similar context – will generate a cohesive force if they occur in adjacent sentences

(Halliday & Hasan, 1976: 286)

In short, collocation refers to words that keep company with each other In terms of

structure, there are two types of collocation: grammatical collocation and lexical collocation (Halliday and Hasan, 1976:284)

 Grammatical collocation often contains a lexical content word and grammar function words, i.e a noun, an adjective, a verb plus a reposition Some main kinds of grammatical collocation include V+ prep, Adj + Prep, N + Prep, Prep + N

 Lexical collocation is lexically restricted word pairs where only a subset of the synonyms of the collocators can be used in the same lexical content Lexical collocation does not contain prepositions but consist of various combinations of nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs The following common patterns are involved: Adj + N, Quant + N, V +

N, N + V, V + Adv, V + V, Adv + Adj, N + N

1.3 Textbook and the book for grade 12 in general throughout Vietnam

Textbook is probably among the most quintessential equipments of teaching in general and language teaching and learning in particular Hutchison and Torres (1994: 315) once confirm that teaching and learning can not happen without textbook Cunning Worth (1995) considers textbook as “a syllabus” in which the learning objectives are presented Sheldon (1998:237) agrees with Cunning by adding that textbook both shows the ELT program and

“offers consider advance for both students and teachers when they are being used in the ESL

or EFL classroom.”

In brief, a textbook is a guide map for both teachers and students to know exactly what are supposed

to be covered To grade 12 students, who are working hard for their exams, the use of their textbook is even more essential in order to be sure that they have already gone through all they need

In Vietnam, to advocate the recent adoption of a market economy as well as the entry into ASEAN Bloc and WTO, the English language curriculum has been changed, which led to the arrival of the new textbooks at high schools in 2006 with the changes from a grammar and vocabulary focus to a skill focus

The new English textbook for grade 12, called “Tiếng Anh 12”, was composed by a group

of lecturers of Vietnam National University, Hanoi, University of Languages and

International Studies It was first published in 2006 The syllabus for “Tiếng Anh 12” is the

continuation of the textbook for grade 10 and 11 The book is designed under theme-based

approach with 16 units Besides a “test yourself” after every two or three units to examine

how well students have achieved in the previous units, these 16 units are set up in the

following order:

1 Home Life 7 Economic reforms 13 The 22 nd SEA Games

2 Cultural Diversity 8 Life in the future 14.International Organizations

3 Ways of socializing 9 Deserts 15 Women in Society

4 School education system 10 Endangered species 16 The Association of Southeast

5 Higher education 11 Books Asian Nations

6 Future jobs 12 Water sports

These topics cover 6 themes, according to the book “Hướng dẫn thực hiện chuẩn kiến thức

kĩ năng môn Tiếng Anh trung học phổ thông” (Vu, T.L & Nguyen, H.C., 2010: 36-40)

Theme 1: You and me - unit 1, unit 2, unit 3

Theme 2: Education - unit 4, unit 5, unit 6

Theme 3: Community - unit 7, unit 8

Theme 4: Nature - unit 9, unit 10

Theme 5: Recreation - unit 11, unit 12, unit 13

Theme 6: People and places: unit 14, unit 15, unit 16

There are 5 parts in each unit Each part is carried out in a period of forty-five minutes

They are arranged as follows:

A reading -> B Speaking -> C Listening -> D Writing -> E Language Focus

Reading is the beginning part of each unit Each reading passage is about 300 words in

length These passages closely relate to the themes of the units According to “tài liệu bồi

dưỡng giáo viên” (MOET, 2006:60), the passages at secondary levels are written with

simple and easy style Nevertheless, some passages in “Tiếng Anh 12”, such as in unit 7, are

long and rather difficult for students to understand as there are a lot of difficult new words

It takes time to elicit That is the reason why, in order to help students to know the passage

well, teachers sometimes need to show students how to guess the answers basing on the

cues and cohesive signals instead of looking up for all new words and structures

SUMMARY: To sum up, in this part, some terms in discourse analysis are defined

Among which, cohesive devices – the subject of the thesis – are discussed in details

Accordingly, there are four subcategories of grammatical cohesive devices, namely

references, substitutions, ellipsis, and conjunctions The two types of lexical cohesive

devices include reiteration and collocation Besides, features of the chosen reading texts in

the research textbook are also described

CHAPTER 2: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

OF TEXTBOOK OBSERVATION

This chapter aims at exploring the frequency of cohesive devices through textbook observation It should be repeated that the analyzed book is named “Tiếng Anh 12,” by Hoang, V.V et al (2010) for grade 12 students at intermediate levels throughout Vietnam The book is divided into 16 themes, with two or three units in each theme Yet, no texts present the most typical features of each theme; therefore, all the texts in the book, except 4 reading texts in 4 Test Yourself parts, are put into the observation The main method used is statistics Table and chart demonstrations are used to analyze the statistical data

2.1 Grammatical cohesion

As being stated earlier, grammatical cohesion in Halliday and Hasan’s viewpoint includes 4 subcategories, namely, reference, substitution, ellipsis and conjunction The following is the details of each type used in the reading texts

2.1.1 Reference

With table 1 in the appendix, it has been proved that reference is among the most prominent cohesive devices in reading texts in the observed textbook with 658 instances Basing on the theory in chapter 2, reference is divided into 3 main types: anaphoric, cataphoric and exophoric Further discussion of each type is presented in the next texts

2.1.1.1 Anaphoric reference

Anaphoric reference means referring to backwards In this study, reference takes up 357 items The table below summarizes different patterns of reference in reading texts in the book

Anaphoric reference Number of items Percentage (%) Total number

Table 2.1: Different types of reference words for anaphoric ties

As can be seen from the table, definite article, “the,” accounts for the largest part with 46.5

% This figure is nearly twice as much as that of personal pronoun with 26.05 % This result

does not bring about any surprise, because “no other item in English behaves exactly like the” (Halliday and Hasan, 1976: 70) Moreover, in terms of meaning, according to Halliday and Hasan (ibid: 70-71), “the” is “a specifying agent” through which a single individual or

subtype within the class assigned by the noun is recognized Furthermore, “the” is believed

to use to refer to mentioned things in the text For secondary students, whose language competence is still at intermediate level, this anaphoric feature is very important It makes the texts simpler and easier to follow and understand Some examples are given as follows:

If you are excited, you might jump up and down and wave as hard as you can to attract his attention This is the instance where big, obvious non-verbal signals are appropriate.

(Unit 3, page 31, “Tiếng Anh 12”) Today, although their status varies in different countries, women in most parts of the world have

gained significant legal rights The most important of these are: the right to have equal work opportunities and pay to men, the right to vote, and the right to formal education

(Unit 15, page 163,“Tiếng Anh 12”) After definite article, personal pronoun ranks second with 93 items, making up of 26.05 % Similarly to definite article “the,” personal pronouns are commonly used to refer to relevant persons or subjects that appear earlier before It is noted that in this case, personal pronouns are not the substitution for those persons or subjects It is because the fact that “neither the syntactic functions of the personal itself, not the syntactic function of its referent, has any bearing on the anaphoric relation between the two” (Halliday and Hasan, 1976:54) Anaphoric personal pronouns in the textbook “Tiếng Anh 12” gain their highest rate of occurrence in unit 1, unit 5, and unit 11 The following are some examples from these units:

My mother is a very caring woman She takes the responsibility for running the household She is always the first one to get up in the morning to make sure that we leave home for school having eaten

breakfast and dressed in suitable clothes

(Unit 1, page 13, “Tiếng Anh 12” )

My roommate left the window open all the time, even when it as 10 degrees Celsius out, and

went to bed at 10 every night When she got sick after midterms, she blamed my typing and having a light on while she was trying to sleep

(Unit 5, page 53, “Tiếng Anh 12” )

It is also observed from the frequency list that some particular personal pronouns are exploited at higher frequency than the others In sum of all reference items of personal pronouns in the observed book, including anaphoric, cataphoric and exophoric reference, the most common ones are “you” with 45 times, “we” 39 times, “it” 37 times “I” is less favorable with 20 instances, then “they” with 13, “us” with 7, and at the end of the line is

“them” with 4 items Among these instances, anaphoric personal pronouns involve 34 cases

of “it”, 18 “I”, 13 “they”, 8 “we”, 4 “them”, 2 “us.”

According to Halliday and Hasan (1976:54), “all that has been said about personal pronouns applies equally to the categories of personal, namely the possessive determiners and possessive pronouns.” In here, possessive determiners and possessive pronouns are subtypes

of personal determiners They, similarly to the definite article and personal pronouns, refer anaphorically to the said-before objects In the case of the reading texts in the book “Tiếng Anh 12”, personal determiners are also used at high rate of frequency They stand at the third position with 17.09 % Among 61 cases of personal determiners in the observed books,

“My” appears 21 times, their 12, mine 1, her 11, his 16, our 6, its 8 Let’s see some examples of anaphoric personal determiners:

I come from a family of five people: my parents, my two younger brothers and I My

mother works as a nurse in a big hospital She has to work long hours and once a week she

has to work on a night shift My father is a biologist He works from 8 a.m to 5 p.m in a lab,

but sometimes when there is a project, he doesn’t come home until very late at night

(Unit 1, page 13, “Tiếng Anh 12” ) Significantly, more Asian students than American students agree that a husband is obliged

to tell his wife where he has been if he comes home late The Asian wife can demand a record of her husband’s activities The American wife, however, trusts her husband to do the

right thing because he loves her not because he has to

(Unit 2, page 21, “Tiếng Anh 12” )

It is surprising demonstrative pronouns account for only over 6 %, nearly 8 times less than definite article although both of them refer to the location of something, typically some entity - person or object - that is participating in the process As being observed, demonstrative pronouns often occur as elements within nominal groups or elliptical elements It is also analyzed from the course book that “this” and “these” are employed more frequently than “that” and “those.” For example:

We do not whistle or clap our hands to get the person’s attention That is considered impolite and

even rude

(Unit 3, page 31, “Tiếng Anh 12” )

Many people believed that women’s natural roles were as mothers and wives These people

considered women to be better suited for childbearing and homemaking rather than for involvement

in the public life of business or politics

(Unit 15, page 163, “Tiếng Anh 12” ) Although comparison is one main part in the schedule of grade 12, comparative types, including comparative adjective and comparative adverb, are not used frequently in the reading texts in the course book for basic grade 12 students Comparative adjective

references account for only 2.24 % with 8 items They appear mostly in the text in which there exists the comparison between such things as two cultures in unit 2, the past and the present in unit 7 and 15, the present and the future in unit 8, etc Comparative adverb and demonstrative adverb stand at the lowest position This low rate of anaphoric reference shows that the texts are made the clearest and the simplest so that students can grasp them more easily

2.1.1.2 Cataphoric reference

Another category of endophoric reference, besides anaphoric reference, is cataphora It is used to refer forward to the following text In spite of a small part in inferential ties, cataphoric is proved to be quite necessary to vary the direction of reference and contribute

to the cohesion of the text The percentage of different types of reference words for cataphoric ties is illustrated in the table below

Cataphoric reference Number of items Percentage (%) Total number

Table 2.2: Different types of reference words for cataphoric ties

As it is shown from the table, like that in anaphora, definite article still owns the highest rate

of occurrence, with 59.85 % It sounds a little bit strange because the definite article is often used to refer back to the mentioned things However, within texts for secondary students, the clarity and simplicity are of great importance Therefore, all concepts mentioned should

be made identifiable Definite article here can only refer to a modifying element within the same nominal group as itself The following are some examples:

Robots will do most of the work in factories, so they will be cleaner places for fewer people to work in them Offices, too, will go electronic with the result that paper will almost completely

disappear

(Unit 8, page 85, “Tiếng Anh 12” )

Like football, the game begins with the ball in the centre of the pool and both teams sprint for it

from their own goal lines

(Unit 12, page 129, “Tiếng Anh 12” ) Unlike the rate in the anaphoric category, in cataphora, comparative adjective makes up to over 31.39 % of occurrence As being counted, the most common anaphoric comparative cataphoric items are “more,” “different,” “such,” and “other.” Besides, “same” and some other adjective with their comparative forms are also exploited For example:

This good advice shows how it is possible to read different types of books in different ways For

example, you might pick up a travel book and read a few pages before going to sleep It is enough

to dip into it and read bits here and there In a word, this is “tasting”

(Unit 11, page 118, “Tiếng Anh 12” ) The subsequent National Congresses of the Vietnamese Communist Party held in 1991,

1996, and 2001 continued to reaffirm its commitment to Doi Moi, and called for more

administrative and economic reforms Under the Party’s guidelines, the Government adopted the Land Law in 1993 and the Enterprises Law in 2000 These have laid legal grounds for

dissolving inefficient co-operatives, expanding more opportunities for farmers, and

encouraging both domestic and foreign private investment

(Unit 7, page 75, “Tiếng Anh 12” ) However, it is surprising that comparative adverb is not a favorable type of reference There are only 4 items of comparative adverb belonging to the cataphoric ties although the function of adverb is to suggest the idea of adding to the meaning of a verb This small percentage of occurrence is also applied to demonstrative adverb though it is the nature of English language that comparative adverb, demonstrative adverb and comparative adjective are almost the only source of cataphoric reference The percentages of occurrence of the rests of cataphoric reference, demonstrative pronoun, personal pronoun, personal determiner, are 2.24 %, 1.49 &, 0.75 %, 0.75 %, and 0.75 % respectively

Table 2.3: Different types of reference words for exophoric ties

Of all 16 texts covered, exophoric reference accounts for a relatively large rate It shares words outside of the text Nevertheless, it is not difficult for students to grasp the reading texts because students all have certain knowledge of the referent items The most common exophoric items are personal pronouns with 45.72 % of occurrence, definite article with 35.98 %, and personal determiner with 13.42 % Comparative adjectives also appear 7 times

as exophoric reference items, while there is only 1 item belonging to demonstrative adverb and none of comparative adverb, demonstrative pronouns

The most popular personal pronouns used as exophora are “we,” “you,” and “it.” The following are examples for exophoric reference items with these pronouns

Preparing for a job interview can be stressful, particularly when you are called for the first interview Below are some pieces of advice that can help you reduce the feeling of pressure and create a good impression on your interviewer

(Unit 6, page 63, “Tiếng Anh 12” ) The topic of unit 6 is about interview In the above sentence, both the writer and readers understand that “you” here means the interviewee and “your” means the interviewee’s

In the following sentence, “it” is also exophoric

It has been estimated that a free trade area would be established in the region

by 2020

(Unit 16, page 173, “Tiếng Anh 12”)

Definite article “the” is widely exploited in the textbook, too Look at the below example:

In the afternoon, after hospital, she rushes to the market, then hurries home so that dinner is ready on the table by the time Dad gets home

(Unit 1, page 13, “Tiếng Anh 12” )

“The” in the sentence is used with fixed phrases as a default Readers have knowledge about them; therefore, there is no need for the writer to explain them

Along with reference, conjunction plays an important role in making a text cohesive There are 315 items of conjunctions in total throughout the observed book As being mentioned previously, Halliday and Hasan classify conjunction into 4 subcategories, namely additive, adversative, causal and temporal The following chart presents the occurrence frequency of these four types in reading texts in the book “Tiếng Anh 12” The details of each type are shown in Appendix table 2:

0 20 40 60 80 100

Additive Temporal Adversative Causal

Chart 2.1: The percentage of conjunctions in the textbook

Additive Temporal Adversative Causal

As can be seen from the chart, the highest frequency, which is up to 75, 24%, among the four types of conjunctions belongs to additive items The second next top is temporal conjunctive devices with 12.06 % Adversative, with 8.89%, is a low-encounter conjunction type compared to additive and temporal However, it is not adversative, but causal, that stands at the lowest position Causal items account for only 3.81 % The details of each type are discussed in the following texts

2.1.2.1 Additive

The high percentage of additive items means that the reading texts in “Tiếng Anh 12” mostly provide students with knowledge by adding information, rather than stating causes and effects, or contrasts Of all 315 conjunctions in 16 reading texts, and in 238 additive items, “And” occupies the biggest number with 183 instances One explanation for this is

that “the simplest form of conjunction is AND” (Halliday and Hasan, 1976:233) It is noted

that in the reading texts observed, there is no “and” standing at the beginning of the sentences All items of “and” are used cohesively to link one sentence to another or two objects Let’s have a look at the following examples:

Over 8,300 plant species and 7,200 animal species around the globe are threatened with

extinction, and many thousands more become extinct each year before biologists can identify

them

(Unit 10, page 107, “Tiếng Anh 12” )

You should concentrate on what the interviewer is saying and make a real effort to answer all the

questions the interviewer asks Be clear, polite and honest

Apart from “and”, some other additive items are also used to create cohesion in the text, but with low frequency For instance, “or” appears 14 times, “for example” and “for instance” 8 times, “also” 7 times (see Appendix)

2.1.2.2 Temporal conjunction

Temporal conjunction totals 38 items in all texts The most common temporal words belong

to the simple temporal relations, such as “before” (6 times), “after” (6 times), “since” (2

times), “then” (1 time), specific complex temporal relations like “three years later,”, “at the same time,” etc Sequence words such as “first,” “second” are not widely used This may be because the texts in the textbook mostly narrate the events to give students information rather than describe them in order

Let’s have look at some examples with temporal conjunctions

They traveled along the border of South Australia and the Northern Territory Three years later Madigan led a scientific expedition across the sand dunes on a more northerly route

(Unit 9, page 97, “Tiếng Anh 12” )

A game is divided into quarters ranging from five to eight minutes in length After a tie, there are two overtime periods of three minutes each If the game is still tied after the overtime periods, two teams continue to play 3-minute overtime until the referee’s decision is

of the least use with 1 or 2 times for each word The following are some examples with the most prominent adversative words:

These dunes are deep red-brown, but the sand is pale in the area where Queensland, South

Australia and Northern Territory meet

Although it was the first time Vietnam hosted such a big sports event, the Games were a great

“so” seems to outnumber the other with 3 items “Because” and “so that” follow it with 2 items of each The other casual signals including “in fact,” “the result that,” resulted in,”

“for,” “thanks to” all appear only once in all 16 texts Let’s study some examples as illustration for this analysis

Robots will do most of the work in factories, so they will be cleaner places for fewer people to

work in them

(Unit 8, page 85, “Tiếng Anh 12” )

The American wife, however, trusts her husband to do the right thing because he loves her not because he has to

(Unit 2, page 21, “Tiếng Anh 12” )

2.1.3 Substitution

According to Halliday and Hasan (1976:91), substitution is divided into nominal substitution, verbal substitution, and clausal one Besides reference and conjunction, substitution contributes much to the cohesion of the texts Nevertheless, in the textbook for final year students at upper secondary school, there are only 11 cases of substitution in total Their frequency occurrence is expressed in the following chart:

0 20 40 60 80 100

Nominal Verbal Clausal

Nominal Verbal Clausal

Chart 2.2: The percentage of substitutions in the textbook

Among these 11 items, the frequency percentage of nominal substitutions is up to 90.9%

with 10 items Three nominal substitution words are all exploited “One” is the most outstanding with 5 times, then “same” with 4 times, and finally “ones” once 9.1 % left is of verbal substitutions with “do” as its representative Clausal substitutions account for no

percentage in the statistic data This zero percentage is explicitly explained by Halliday and

Hasan (1976: 131-135) that with its two words “so” and “not”, clausal substitutions appear

to be used in spoken language rather than the written one

The low frequency rate of substitutions in the reading texts in the observed book suggests that these texts are, in the authors’ attempt, made unambiguous This can help students avoid unnecessary misunderstanding about texts’ contents Hereafter are some examples:

Do not start a book unless you can see from the first few pages that it is one you can easily read and

understand

(Unit 11, page 119, “Tiếng Anh 12” )

The nominal substitution “one” here presupposes the noun mentioned earlier In this case, it

is “a book”

Once you’ve got your friend’s attention, you shouldn’t point at the person or thing you want her

to look at A slight nod will do

(Unit 3, page 33, “Tiếng Anh 12” )

“Do” here substitutes for the meaning that the previous sentence expresses “A slight nod

will do” means “a slight not will show the person or the thing you want your friend to look at.”

As being stated in the chart, the most prominent type of ellipsis is verbal ellipsis, with

44.12 % Halliday and Hasan (1976), who describe verbal ellipsis in systemic terms, maintain that a verbal group is; elliptical if its structure does not represent all its systemic features According to them, verbal ellipsis is divided into two types: lexical ellipsis and operator one Lexical ellipsis -ellipsis from the right - is the type of ellipsis in which the lexical verb is missing from the verbal group The other type is operator ellipsis, which is ellipsis from the left In operator ellipsis, the subject is also omitted from the clause, and it must, therefore, be presupposed According to the result of the textbook observation, there is more operator ellipsis than lexical one The following are some examples of operator ellipsis:

Each term is separated by a one-week break called half term, usually at the end of October,

mid-February and the end of May

(Unit 4, page 45, “Tiếng Anh 12” )

On the first weekend I went out with my new friends, walking around campus

(Unit 5, page 55, “Tiếng Anh 12” ) The less preference of lexical ellipsis here is because of the aim of the reading texts in the textbook for secondary students The textbook aims at providing students with information

on various fields in their life, as well as training them some reading skills Therefore, the

reading texts’ contents must be very clear This can only be done through the lexical verbs since they often bring the main message of the texts, or conveying a sentence’s content Consequently, lexical verbs must be omitted minimally Among 30 items of verbal ellipsis, there are only 8 cases of lexical verb ellipsis Let’s cite some examples:

The American wife, however, trusts her husband to do the right thing because he loves her not

because he has to

(Unit 2, page 23, “Tiếng Anh 12” )

If you are excited, you might jump up and down and wave as hard as you can to attract his

attention

(Unit 3, page 33, “Tiếng Anh 12” )

Nominal ellipsis ranks second It accounts for 29.41 %, a bigger portion of about 3 % than

clausal ellipsis (26.47%) Nominal ellipsis occurs most often when a common noun is elided from a nominal group and some other element of the nominal group takes the place of this elided noun

“Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and

digested.”

(Unit 11, page 113, “Tiếng Anh 12” )

A conference was held in Geneva in 1864, and official delegates of 12 nations signed the

first Geneva Convention, laying down rules for the treatment and protection of the wounded and the disaster-stricken

(Unit 14, page 142, “Tiếng Anh 12” ) Today, although their status varies in different countries, women in most parts of the world

have gained significant legal rights The most important of these are: the right to have equal

work opportunities and pay to men, the right to vote, and the right to formal education

(Unit 15, page 157, “Tiếng Anh 12” )

The last type is clausal ellipsis Although the frequency percentage of verbal ellipsis

(44.12%), the largest part, nearly doubles that of clausal ellipsis (26.47%), the latter type still plays an importance role in giving the readers a thorough understanding of the texts According to Halliday and Hasan (1976:197), there are two parts of a sentence: modal element and propositional element The first one which embodies the speech function of the clause consists in turn the subject and the finite in the verbal group The later includes the residue: the remainder of the verbal group, and any complements and adjuncts that may be presented Take the following as the examples for clausal ellipsis:

Fighting back tears, I ran back to my room, thinking I would never feel at home at college

(Unit 5, page 55, “Tiếng Anh 12” )

The Simpson Desert lies between Lake Eyre in the south, the Macdonnel Ranges in the north, the Mulligan and the Diamantina Rivers in the east, and the Macumba and Finke Rivers in the west

(Unit 9, page 95, “Tiếng Anh 12” ) She is always the first one to get up in the morning to make sure that we leave home

for school having eaten breakfast and dressed in suitable clothes

(Unit 1, page 13, “Tiếng Anh 12” )

2.2 Lexical cohesion

Grammatical cohesion only can not create the whole cohesion relation in each text That is why it is essential to put it into connection with lexical cohesion In this part, two types of lexical cohesion, reiteration and collocation, are discussed in details

2.2.1 Reiteration

To begin with, let’s review the classification of reiteration talked about in the previous chapter According to Halliday and Hasan (1976: 288), reiteration cohesive devices include repetition, synonyms and near-synonyms, superordinates and general words The chart below shows the percentage of each type

Chart 2.4: The percentage of reiteration in the textbook

From this pie chart, we can see that there is a big hole between repetition and the other types Its percentage of frequency is up to 70.07 % That the number of repetition in this textbook is large can be explainable The textbook is used for all grade 12 students, most of whom are at intermediate level Therefore, the language should avoid ambiguity, be clear and simple enough for students to take meaning of the texts Repetition is a good choice for this job It should be noted that the repeated words are mostly the important or the relating-topic words Repeating these words can make the texts more coherent and easier to follow For example, the name of unit 9 is “Desert”, and its main content is about the Simpson Desert That is why we find many repeated words relating to the topic desert and the

characteristics of the Simpson Desert, such as “desert” (13 times), “Simpson desert” (5

times), “dunes” (8 times), “Australia” (3 times), and so on One remarkable thing is that

most of the repetition ties in this textbook are word repetition Let’s cite some examples:

In the Simpson Desert there are different types of dunes In the western part of the desert, there is a network of short dunes, mostly less than 10 metres high Hummock grasses grow in loose sand on the crest and spinifex grows in the corridors between dunes and on the more stable slopes

(Unit 9, page 95, “Tiếng Anh 12” )

Like football, the game begins with the ball in the centre of the pool and both teams sprint for it from their own goal lines The ball can be advanced by passing with one hand or swimming with the head above the water and the ball between the arms so it rides on the wave created by the swimmer’s head

No player except the goalie can hold the ball with both hands

(Unit 12, page 125, “Tiếng Anh 12” ) Nevertheless, it is stated in the previous chapter that overuse of repetition can make the text monotonous Hence, using synonyms is a good way to avoid this Synonym, which includes

35 pairs of synonym words, is the second most fluent reiteration item These pairs of synonyms can help enrich students’ vocabulary, so that they can do the other exercises more easily when encountering these words One remarkable thing is that most found synonyms are of nouns and verbs, not adjectives or adverbs The sentences below are the clearest evidence:

Socially, I made lots of new friends both through engineering and living at St John's

College on campus The social calendar of the colleges provides plenty of opportunities

to meet non-engineering students as well as other engineers, many of whom have become my

best mates

(Unit 5, page 53, “Tiếng Anh 12” )

This good advice shows how it is possible to read different types of books in different ways

Today, more books of every kind are sold than ever before

(Unit 11, page 119, “Tiếng Anh 12” )

Superordiate and general words, as being counted, are used equally in 16 texts with 25

items for each type That the later noun is synonymous with the previous one in the sense of higher level of generality is called superordinate in texts Let’s cite some examples as follow:

I try to help with the household chores My main responsibility is to wash the dishes and take

out the garbage I also look after the boys, who are quite active and mischievous sometimes, but most of the time they are obedient and hard-working

(Unit 1, page 13, “Tiếng Anh 12” ) The phrases “To wash the dishes,” “take out the garbage,” “look after the boys” are stuffs of the house hold chores Hence, “the household chores” is the superordinates of these phrases

General words, according to Halliday and Hasan, are cohesive only when they have the same reference as whatever they are presupposing, and when they are accompanied by a reference item “ the” or one of the demonstratives “this,” “that,” “these,” “those.” This is shown in the following sentences:

Before Doi Moi our country experienced a lot of difficulties: the economy was developed and was dominated by traditional agriculture; the country was poor, the people led

under-a poor life, production wunder-as stunder-agnunder-ant; there wunder-as under-a shortunder-age of schools under-and hospitunder-als, under-and

inflation could be seen in every sector of the economy To solve these problems, our

Government introduced a number of renovation measures [… ]

(Unit 7, page 75, “Tiếng Anh 12” )

“These problems” is used to replace the mentioned problems in the previous sentence

“These problems” here is a general word

2.2 . 2 Collocation

Collocation is created by the association of lexical items that regularly co-occur It is considered to be the most problematical part of lexical cohesion In reading texts in the textbook “Tiếng Anh 12”, collocation contributes an important proportion among all lexical cohesion Collocation totals 605 items in all 16 reading texts In term of structure, collocation can be divided into grammatical collocation and lexical collocation Study the following chart to have a general picture for these two:

58.35 41.65 0

Chart 2.5: The percentage of collocation types

Grammatical collocation Lexical collocation

From the chart, it is clear that lexical collocation outnumbers grammatical collocation This may be due to the fact that lexical collocation consists of various combinations of nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and even quantitative These contents words can change their orders in the combination and can be added; hence, they belong to the category of open sets Let’s discuss the details of each type

2.2.2.1 Lexical collocation

The fact realized by linguistics that lexical collocation accounts for the largest part of all collocation is also true for this study 352 lexical collocations are found in the textbook They cover 11 patterns: Adj + N, V + N, N + N, V + Adj, V + Adv, Quant + N, Adv +Adj,

N + V, V + V, Adv + V, Adj + V The contribution of each pattern in the reading texts in the researched book is illustrated in the following table:

Types of lexical collocation Number of items Percentage

Table 2 4: Different patterns of lexical collocation

It can be seen the table that collocations with noun is more preferred than ones with verbs Adj + N and N + N are the two highest frequency items with the percentage of 32.39 % and 23.30 % respectively It is interesting that while Adj is used before nouns to give description, N + N patterns are used when a new concept appears in the reading texts The following example can help clarify this point:

Although it was the first time Vietnam hosted such a big sports event, the Games were a great success

(Unit 13, page 139, “Tiếng Anh 12” )

To solve these problems, our Government introduced a number of renovation measures: they

eliminated government subsidies; they shifted economic priority from heavy industry to three major economic programmes, namely, production of food, production of consumer goods and production of exports; they reduced state intervention in business; they opened trade relations with all countries in the world and encouraged foreign and domestic private investment

(Unit 7, page 75, “Tiếng Anh 12” )

In the first sentence, there are three cases of Adj + N The Adjs “first,” “big,” “great” are used to describe the Asian games held in Vietnam In the second sentence, Adj + N and N +

N are exploited Adj + N pattern is used to describe things, whereas N + N pattern is to give names of things These compound words have provided students with a number of vocabularies to prepare for their examinations

Although V + N and N + V items are the combination of N and V, they differ from each other in the order of N and V This leads to the difference in their percentage of frequency occurrence in the textbook While V + N pattern comes at the third position with 22.44 %, N + V one accounts for only 3 items, equally to 0.09 % The following are some examples for V+ N pattern:

Socially, I made lots of new friends both through engineering and living at St John's College on campus The social calendar of the colleges provides plenty of opportunities

to meet non-engineering students as well as other engineers, many of whom have become my best mates

(Unit 5, page 55, “Tiếng Anh 12” )

The economies of the member countries are diverse, although its major products include electronic goods, oil and wood The Governments of ASEAN countries have paid special attention to trade

(Unit 16, page 167, “Tiếng Anh 12” ) The other patterns, Quant + N, V + Adv, V + Adj, V+ V, Adv + V, Adv + Adj, Adj + V, make up of small parts in the reading texts However, they are not unimportant in helping students grasp the texts It is worth noticing that Adv + V is the rarely-used pattern in any reading materials; however, it is exploited in the researched book despite their small percentages Let’s study the examples:

Since Doi Moi, our country has undergone substantial changes: productivity and agricultural

exports have constantly increased […]

(Unit 7, page 75, “Tiếng Anh 12” )

The drainage of wetlands, cutting of forests, urbanization and road and dam construction

have destroyed or seriously damaged natural habitats

(Unit 10, page 105, “Tiếng Anh 12”)

The unequal distribution of lexical collocation in the reading texts in the researched book may be due to the feature of English and the initial aim of the book’s writers to enhance students’ vocabulary so that the vocabulary is both useful in the real life and in the examinations as well

2.2.2.2 Grammatical collocation

There are 252 items of grammatical collocation, which accounts for 41.65 % of all collocations in the 16 units under study The specific patterns of grammatical collocation are presented in the table below

Table 2.5: Different patterns of grammatical collocation

In the contents of the tests in the GCSE examinations and the entrance examinations to universities, as well as in other skills, besides reading, in the textbook for grade 12 students, Prep + N and V + Prep are the most common patterns, It is coincide that they are also

preferred in the reading texts in the same textbook Prep + N pattern is the highest frequency with 51.98 % Some examples are extracted from the reading passages in the textbook:

I come from a family of five people: my parents, my two younger brothers and I My

mother works as a nurse in a big hospital She has to work long hours and once a week she has to work on a night shift

(Unit 1, page 13m “Tiếng Anh 12”

The Simpson Desert lies between Lake Eyre in the south, the Macdonnel Ranges in the north, the Mulligan and the Diamantina Rivers in the east, and the Macumba and Finke Rivers in the west

(Unit 9, page 97, “Tiếng Anh 12” )

Next comes V + Prep pattern with 33.33 % Besides some few new verbs introduced as new words in the reading texts, most of verbs in V + prep pattern are familiar verbs For example:

When you come to the interview, remember to bring with you your school certificates and

letters of recommendation from your teachers or your previous employers In addition, you may

jot down your qualifications and experience that can relate to the job and prepare for the

questions that are often asked during the interview

(Unit 6, page 63, “Tiếng Anh 12” )

Vietnam's first place finish was not surprising Firstly, to prepare for the 22nd SEA Games, Vietnam carried out an intensive programme for its athletes, which included training in facilities,

both home and abroad

N + Prep pattern is also used in the textbook However, with only 23 items, the percentage

of frequency of this type is nearly 6 times less than that of the highest pattern, Prep + N Let’s cite some examples:

To show the differences, a survey was conducted among American, Chinese and Indian students

to determine their attitudes toward love and marriage Below is a summary of each group’s responses to the four key values

(Unit 2, page 21, “Tiếng Anh 12”)

The initiative for founding the Red Cross came from a Swiss man called Jean Henri Dunant Appalled by the almost complete lack of care for wounded soldiers, he appealed to

the leaders of nations to found societies devoted to the aid of the wounded in wartime (Unit 14, page 153, “Tiếng Anh 12” )

The left three types of grammatical collocation are Adj + Prep, Prep + Adj and Quant + Prep There are 12 items of Adj + Prep pattern, while the number of item of Prep + Adj and Quant + Adj is equally 1 It can be easily seen from the table that there exists a big gap between the highest frequency and the lowest one The examples for Adj + Prep, Prep + Adj and Quant + Prep are cited in order in the following sentences:

Many Games records were close to international levels

(Unit 13, page 139, “Tiếng Anh 12”)

At least two players must touch the ball after a free throw before a goal can be scored

(Unit 12, page 129, “Tiếng Anh 12” )

A large number of Indian men agree that it is unwise to confide in their wives

(Unit 2, page 21, “Tiếng Anh 12” )

2.3 Summary of cohesive devices in the textbook

The graph below represents the comprehensive analysis of all the connective ties whose results are drawn from tables in the Appendixes Basing on this result, major features are picked out to analyze in detail

Chart 2.6: A comparison of grammatical and lexical cohesion in the textbook

Grammatical cohesion, 54.15 Lexical cohesion, 45.85

Grammatical cohesion Lexical cohesion

It can be seen from the chart that grammatical cohesion and lexical cohesion almost have the equal number of items in the textbook This means that they stand at the same position

of importance This result is explainable These days, the communicative language teaching has been appealed to be widely applied in all levels of education The communicative characteristics, consequently, have been brought into the tests Hence, to get the best result, students are required to learn both grammar and vocabulary

A closer view at types of grammatical and lexical cohesion can be expressed in the following tables:

Table 2.6: Different types of grammatical cohesion

Table 2.7: Different types of lexical cohesion

In terms of grammatical cohesion, reference composes of the majority with 62.67 %, among which endophoric is a dominant part Conjunction makes up of 30 %, while the occurrence percentages of ellipsis and substitution are only 6.29 % and 1.05 % respectively Although the last three types are not used as widely as the first one, they are worth being taken notice

of, since they contribute a valuable part in giving students thorough understanding of the passages

For lexical cohesion, the number of items of collocation, 68.05 %, doubles that of reiteration, 31.95 % This shows the important role of collocation in English learning in secondary school

CHAPTER 3: IMPLICATION FOR TEACHING ENGLISH

IN PREPARATION FOR EXAMINATIONS

Basing on the discussed theory the listed findings in the previous chapters, in this chapter 4, the author would like to suggest some implications for teaching English cohesion to students

of grade 12 in general in preparation for examinations through the teaching of reading and writing These suggestions are built on the ground of the following reasons Firstly, reading and writing are the two only skills tested in the examinations Secondly, with the assumption that one criteria of designing tests for the GCSE examinations and the entrance examinations to universities is to base mainly on the textbook, most of the given suggestions here rely on the contents of the book Finally, due to some limitations about time and the size of the paper, as well as the large proportion of references, reiteration, conjunctions and collocations in the reading texts in the textbook and in the two examination tests in recent years, in this part, only these four cases are discussed

However, in order to verify the activities, some sample tasks for cohesive devices are adapted from numerous suitable materials In addition, the application depends on the proficiency levels of students The applications in this study are for grade 12 students whose language competence is at intermediate level

3.1 Teaching cohesion through teaching reading

3.1.1 In terms of grammatical cohesion

3.1.1.1 Teaching conjunctions through teaching reading

Understanding conjunctive items, students will be able to use them to grasp different texts and link different ideas in the text to form a whole cohesive theme Therefore, in their teaching, teachers should systematize the use of conjunctive items and introduce them to

students

There are numerous types of exercises for teachers to teach students to use these words to interpret the texts The first kind is that teacher can supply a text with discourse markers omitted and replaced by gaps In each gap, put two or three markers and ask students to

choose the most suitable one Furthermore, teacher can supply a text with the gaps and a list

of suitable markers and ask students to collocate them to the correct gaps Similarly, teachers can also give a text as above but do not list the omitted markers and ask students to find ones themselves to fill in the gaps The aim of these exercises is to enhance students’ ability in recognizing the context of the sentences or the texts to choose the best words Although in recent year, tests with multiple choice questions are favored, students still need basic knowledge These exercises can, as well, encourage the logical thinking of students so that they can work with multiple choice exercises better

Another exercise which enforces students to study at home is through replacing Students are provided with the list of conjunctions At home, they have to find some sentences containing some of these conjunctions in the reading texts Students, then, are required to replace these conjunctions by all acceptable other conjunctions as long as the sentences are meaningful

Games can be also applied as warm-up activities An example of conjunction game is to do crossword Teachers prepare the crosswords at home The questions for crosswords are sentences with conjunctions from the reading texts in the textbook Nevertheless, these conjunctions are omitted Students work in groups, play the game and try to fill in the sentences with correct conjunctions without refereeing back to the textbook

3.1.1.2 Teaching reference through teaching reading

The most common question to find out the referents is “what does….refer to?” or “what can

be used to replace for {pronouns}?” Teachers can design multiple choice items to the mentioned questions, in order that students are made acquainted with the examinations Another activity is mostly for making students become aware of reference pronouns Teachers can put students in small groups Teachers choose a reading text, maybe among 16 reading texts from the textbook or another book for secondary students, as long as this text contains various references Teachers, then, ask students to read the text and circle all reference pronouns in it After that, students are asked to use arrows to join these pronouns with all their referents They may need to take note the result as soon as they find out the referents With this exercise, all reference pronouns in the text will be covered That students work more with finding referents in this way can help them speed up their reading process and find the referents more quickly when they do tests under time pressure This activity, also, can be applied to identify the other reference ties, such as demonstrative or definite article

3.1.1.3 Teaching collocation

Teaching vocabulary is an indispensable part Teachers can take advantage of this part to teach collocations Therefore, rather than wait for students to meet common collocations themselves during reading process, teachers should present these collocations in context in advance However, it is suggested that only words that relate most to the main topics are chosen to teach

Besides, mind map can be used to teach reading and collocation as well This activity aims

at enhancing students’ awareness of lexical collocation After each reading lesson, teachers ask students to work at home, or in group at class to perform this activity Teachers give a key word about the topic of the reading text, then ask students to use mind map, or diagram

to write down all phrases relating to that key words Students can find the right phrases in the reading passages, or they have to read and make combination of words to have meaningful phrases This activity gives students at least two advantages First, students have chances to revise what they have learnt from the passage Second, students may enrich their vocabulary from these combinations

Grammatical collocation plays an important role in understanding the reading passage It

also has been a crucial part in the tests of GSCE examinations and the entrance examinations to universities for years Therefore, teaching grammatical collocation is very important Teachers may prepare a list of grammatical collocation in the text book, and then ask students to learn by heart this list Also, teachers may require students to make a list on their own by drawing the structures from the reading texts and adding more appropriate collocations that are outside the texts However, these ways are not highly appreciated because students need practice Hence, teachers have to design exercises for students Teachers may cite the sentences in the reading texts in the textbook or from another books,

or teachers’ own sentences, with the prepositions or the lexical words omitted Students have to choose the best prepositions or words to fill in Students are asked to close their books during doing this exercise

3.1.1.4 Teaching reiteration through teaching reading

In addition to grammar, it is obvious that vocabulary holds an extreme place in grasping the reading texts There are four categories of reiteration, namely repetition, synonyms and near-synonyms, superordinates and general words To teach reiteration, teachers can teach reiteration by asking students to find out the words which have the closest meaning to the words in the texts Matching exercises are also mentioned to check students’ understanding

of the texts and students’ ability to notice appropriate definition of the given terms These activities can help students consolidate, enrich their vocabulary, and put these vocabularies