Cohesive devices in reading texts in the textbook “Tiếng Anh 12 – Ban Cơ Bản

Năm bảo vệ: 2011 Abstract: The study aims at finding out the grammatical and lexical cohesive devices in the textbook “Tiếng Anh 12” for grade 12 students in general throughout Vietnam

Cohesive devices in reading texts in the

textbook “Tiếng Anh 12 – Ban Cơ Bản

Bùi Thị Nga

Trường Đại học Ngoại ngữ Luận văn ThS Chuyên ngành: English Linguistics; Mã số: 60 22 15

Người hướng dẫn: Nguyen Thuy Phuong Lan, MA

Năm bảo vệ: 2011

Abstract: The study aims at finding out the grammatical and lexical cohesive devices in

the textbook “Tiếng Anh 12” for grade 12 students in general throughout Vietnam The reason for choosing grammatical and lexical cohesion as the main objects of the study lies in their popularity in linguistic fields and the tests for examinations at upper secondary schools these days In this paper, some theories of discourse and cohesion leading to the basic background for the study are discussed According to that, the theory

of cohesive devices by Halliday and Hasan (1976) is the major framework Besides, the source of the study is reading texts; hence, features of written discourse are necessary base to characterize the study Throughout investigating 16 units in the textbook, the author found out that the most prominent cohesive device is collocation, then conjunctions, reference and repetition It was suggested that during the process of teaching, teachers should instruct students in understanding and employing these cohesive devices correctly

Keywords: Bài đọc; Sách giáo khoa; Tiếng Anh; Lớp 12

Content

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

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