AND BUT OR AS COHESIVE DEVICES IN ENGLISH WRITTEN DISCOURSE a CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS WITH VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY M.A THESIS AND/BUT/OR AS COHESIVE DEVICES IN ENGLISH WRITTEN DISCOURSE - A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS WITH VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS (And/But/Or phương tiện liên kết văn ản tiế tiếng Anh – Phân tích đối ối chiếu chi với yếu tố tương đương tiếếng Việt ) NGUYỄN NGUY THỊ THU HƯƠNG Field: English Linguistics Code: 60220201 MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY o0o M.A THESIS AND/BUT/OR AS COHESIVE DEVICES IN ENGLISH WRITTEN DISCOURSE - A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS WITH VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS (And/But/Or phương tiện liên kết văn tiếng Anh – Phân tích đối chiếu với yếu tố tương đương tiếng Việt) NGUYỄN THỊ THU HƯƠNG Field: English Linguistics Code: 60220201 Supervisor: Assoc Prof Dr PHAN VAN QUE Hanoi, 2017 ii CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY I, the undersigned, hereby certify my authority of the study project report entitled(AND/BUT/OR AS COHESIVE DEVICES IN ENGLISH WRITTEN DISCOURSE- A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS WITH VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS) submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master in English Language Except where the reference is indicated, no other person’s work has been used without due acknowledgement in the text of the thesis Hanoi, 2017 Nguyen Thi Thu Huong Approved by Supervisor: Assoc Prof Dr PHAN VAN QUE (Signature and full name) Date:…………………… iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my thanks to those who have assisted my study First and foremost, I would like to register my deep gratitude to Dr Phan Văn Quế As a supervisor, he has always been willing to give not only invaluable instructions and suggestions but also support and encouragement, without which this study would not be completed In carrying out this study, I am also indebted to many teachers of Postgraduate Studies Department who have enthusiastically given lectures in my M.A Course My thanks also go to my colleagues at Lai Chau Boarding high school for their invaluable comments and assistance during the time I was completing my study The support extended to me by my family and friends has been immeasurable I wish to express my deep gratitude to my parents for their love and encouragement while I was doing this study In my study, it is inevitable that the ideas of many writers in the field are reflected and developed To all the authors of the publications in the list of references, I offer my sincere thanks iv ABSTRACT This thesis deals with the three coordinators AND/BUT/OR as cohesive devices in English written discourse within the sentence level This thesis aims to give a systematic presentation of the uses of the three central coordinators AND/BUT/OR as cohesive devices and their frequency of occurrence in English written discourse, make contrastive analysis of AND/BUT/OR as cohesive devices and their equivalent realizations in Vietnamese and put forward some suggestions as effort to help English-major students at Lai Chau Boarding high school to overcome the consequences of interference when learning writing skill The methods of this study is that descriptive and comparative analysis are used to understand the sematic and syntactic of AND/BUT/OR in English and the equivalents of Vietnamese The thesis gives a systematic presentation of the performance of these coordinators as cohesive devices Different semantic implications of each coordinator are given in the study to prove that the coordinators examined appear to be more flexible than their logical meanings Other implications that have not been mentioned before are also searched for The thesis also makes a contrastive analysis of AND/BUT/OR in English and their equivalents VÀ/NHƯNG/HAY-HOẶC in Vietnamese in order to find out whether they are the only equivalents of AND/BUT/OR in all contexts Last but not least, the thesis also mentions some suggestions for teaching writing skill at Lai Chau Boarding high school The thesis is open to all potential criticism and comments v LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS E: English V: Vietnamese Adv: Adverbs Conj.: Conjunction vi LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Table 1:The reference, conjunction and Reiteration .22 Table 2:The frequency of the implications of AND .31 Table 3: The frequencty of The implication of BUT 33 Table 4: The frequency of the implications of OR 36 Table 5: The frequency of The Implications of AND/BUT/OR 37 Diagram 1: The frame work of contrastive analysis and/but/or as cohesive devices in English written discourse- A contrastive analysis with Vietnamese equivalents 42 Table6: Vietnamese equivalents to AND denoting the examined implication “And” “Và” 52 Table 7: Vietnamese equivalents to BUT denoting the examined implications .54 Table 8: Vietnamese equivalents to OR denoting the examined implications .56 vii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iv ABSTRACT v LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS vi LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES vii Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale for the study 1.2 Aims and objectives of the study 1.3 Research questions 1.4 Methods of the study 1.6 Significance of the study 1.7 Design of the study Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Previous studies 2.2 Theoretical background 2.2.1 Discourse 2.2.2 Cohesion 12 2.2.3 Conjunctions as Cohesive Devices 27 2.3 Theoretical framework 29 2.3.1 Features of And/ But/ Or 29 2.3.2 AND/OR/BUT 31 2.4 Summary 39 Chapter 3: AND/BUT/OR AS COHESIVE DEVICES IN ENGLISH WRITTEN DISCOURSE - A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS WITH VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS 40 3.1 Implication of Vietnamese equivalents of AND/BUT/OR in English 40 3.1.1 Vietnamese equivalents of AND/BUT/OR in English 40 3.1.2 A contrastive analysis of AND/BUT/OR as cohesive devices in English with Vietnamese equivalents and implications 44 3.2 CONSTRASTIVE ANALYSIS BETWEEN AND vs VÀ, BUT vs NHUNG, OR vs HAY/HOẶC 48 3.2.1 AND vs VÀ 48 viii 3.2.2.BUT vs NHƯNG 52 3.2.3 OR vs HAY/HOẶC 54 3.3 Summary 55 Chapter 4: APPLICATION OF AND/OR/BUT IN WRITING 57 4.1 The actual status of teaching the subject of writing in Lai Chau Board School 57 4.2 Suggestions for teaching and materials 59 4.3 Some types of exercises for improving the writing skill of students in Lai Chau Board School 60 4.4 Summary 63 Chapter 5: CONCLUSION 65 5.1 Concluding remarks 65 5.2 Limitation of the study 67 5.3 Recommendations/Suggestions for further study 67 REFERENCES 69 ix Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale for the study No one denies the importance of the English language in the present time as a global language because it has become more dominant around the world than any other languages It is used as an official language in more than 44 countries and has played an important role in dealing with international relations especially in such fields as science and technology, business, commerce and diplomacy These reasons motivate people all over the world to learn English as a foreign language However, learning any foreign languages in general and English in particular is not easy It is a lengthy and effortful process to master English as a native speaker because of a variety of factors Linguistic knowledge of English accounts for learners’ ability to combine phonemes into morphemes, morphemes into words, and words into sentences That means, when people speak or write they have to convey a certain message by organizing their thoughts and ideas into strings of words to produce sentences, and then combine sentences together to create higher units of discourse But how to combine sentences to each other and to the rest of the context has been a big question for linguists Communication is possible only when sentences which create discourse hang together so that discourse has its unity and the product of our creation would make sense In other words, knowledge of cohesion and coherence is essential in discourse construction and necessary for successful communication In discourse, cohesion has an interrelation with coherence; the former is a guide to and part of the latter in both spoken and written language Awareness of coherence as a quality that makes a text conform to a consistent world picture, to experiences, culture, and convention and cohesive devices as the linguistic means by which elements of a text are arranged and connected is vital for learners of English Up to now, there have been many studies by various linguists on this aspect Each discusses the issue from different angles Thus, they give out different ways of classifying and naming cohesion In English, Quirk (1972) primarily covers three main factors of sentence connection The first is the implication in the semantic Chapter 4: APPLICATION OF AND/OR/BUT IN WRITING 4.1 The actual status of teaching the subject of writing in Lai Chau Board School To meet the demand of all learners of English in general and of English major students in particular, teachers of English in Vietnam have been trying to find out the most suitable and effective methods of teaching English The methods being worked out can be for the four English skills, of which writing should be most paid attention to Writing is not only an important form of communication in day-to-day life but it is even more necessary for students who are preparing for further study This is because academic writing is one of the most important aspects of academic literacy that every scholar should possess in order to get socialized in their disciplinary communities However, writing for academic purposes is really a 57 challenging task for students who are studying English as a foreign language This is because the skills involved in writing are highly complex on the one hand, and the students’ own culture has its own styles for organizing academic writings which are not always compatible to the English academic conventions, on the other For students at Lai Chau Boarding high school, the situation seems to be more difficult The school is in Lai Chau province, which is about 400 kilometers from Hanoi This can be considered a disadvantageous place for study as it is difficult for both teachers and students to get enough materials for references Moreover, there is a library in the school but it lacks of many good references especially English books, newspapers and magazines Generally, the students of this school are weaker than those of other schools in the area Most of them have low level of English because they are ethnic minority, moreover they don’t learn English at primary school For them, English is the most difficult subject, especially as it is a foreign language, but it is compulsory for all students They learn English in a non-English-speaking environment They have many difficulties in learning English in general and in learning writing in particular Their abilities and their current writing levels don’t meet the demand of the writing skill They almost lack writing skill and they don’t recognize the importance of learning writing as well Almost students of Lai Chau Board school are weak in the following skills but I think they are weakest in the writing skill The teachers at Lai Chau Boarding high school have been trying their best to find the most suitable and effective ways to help their students overcome the difficulties to catch up with other English-major students at other school Especially, in writing skill, the teachers not only teach the necessary techniques in writing a good paragraph or essay, but also review necessary grammar points in their lesson to help improve their level of English proficiently and thus, write better In the next part of this study, some implications for teaching writing skill are introduced by the author to improve the situation at Lai Chau Boarding high school 58 4.2 Suggestions for teaching and materials It is the fact that cohesive devices play a very important role in writing a paragraph or an essay because they produce cohesion, which is of vital importance in writing Therefore, it is the job of the teacher to raise students’ awareness of cohesive devices in general and coordinators in particular AND/BUT/OR are the most central coordinators, thus, they should be taught thoroughly The degree of student’s acquisition of these three English coordinators depends, to a large extent, on the teacher’s presentation The teacher should know how to present them and their usage in a comprehensible way to students A good presentation is supposed to provide all necessary information Therefore, it is advisable for the teacher to follow the following steps The teacher should, first of all, provide students with some general ideas about the meanings of the three coordinators AND/BUT/OR Then, the variety of semantic implications by each coordinator is introduced However, it is not a good idea to teach all of them mechanically at one time as students may get confused In addition, the teacher should familiarize the students with various possible semantic relations in specific contexts or situations, which can help students avoid ambiguity and uncertainty when facing these cases Next, it is suggested that a brief explanation of the cross-cultural differences in the usage of AND/BUT/OR and their equivalents in Vietnamese be mentioned Finally, the teacher should design many types of exercises for the learners to until they are proficient enough in using these coordinators The teaching materials are also as important as the teaching method The materials chosen should ensure the clear explanation and the description of the coordinators in consideration For illustration, pairs of discourse should be given to contrast the good ones with those considered to be a failure due to the inappropriate use of coordinators Furthermore, the teaching materials should be aimed at communicative purpose of language teaching, so situations set should be familiar and understandable to the learners Sample discourses with detailed knowledge about science, technology or a certain technical process should be avoided Last but 59 not less, bilingual materials should be encouraged to ensure the exact use by the learners and to avoid pitiful interference In conclusion, the teaching of reading has often focused on the sentence level Vocabulary and grammar have received a great deal of attention However, we also need to help students look at relations which exist between sentences and between paragraphs Teaching cohesion in general and coordinators in particular is a key way of increasing students’ awareness of how texts function Therefore, some types of exercises are suggested in the hope of helping students avoid making mistakes in using these three English coordinators 4.3 Some types of exercises for improving the writing skill of students in Lai Chau Board School To improve the writing skill, there are some types of exercises to give students some ideas in using the coordinator to make the writing Type 1:Combine the following pairs of sentences using the coordinators AND/BUT/OR: My family has gone to the movies I was at home alone I bought a bottle of wine We drank it together You can it right now You can leave it until tomorrow Type 2: Match a sentence in column A with another in column B using appropriate coordinators AND/BUT/OR A B My family has gone to the movies AND I was at home alone I bought a bottle of wine BUT We drank it together You can it right now OR You can leave it until tomorrow Type 3: Fill in the gaps with appropriate coordinators AND/BUT/OR: Maria tried to read a novel in French, ……….it was too difficult The waiter was very nice, ……… the food was delicious You can stay here, ……… you can go home 60 These three types of exercise is rather simple but it helps to establish the logical thinking of students by organizing ideas with the use of AND to denote addition, BUT to express contrast and OR to show alternative Type 4: Complete the sentences using the suggested coordinator Jane is lovely (but) She is beautiful (and) You have to go tight now (or) This type of exercise may be helpful in arousing the students’ interest in using these coordinators to signal logical relations between ideas It also helps improve the students’ reproductive skill Type 5: Identify the semantic implications between the coordinated clauses of the following sentences: Maria tried to read a novel in French, but it was too difficult I bought a bottle of wine, and we drank it together You can it right now, or you can leave it until tomorrow They disliked John – and this is not surprising Give me some money, or I’ll shoot you The purpose of this exercise is to help students recognize that these three coordinators AND/BUT/OR can denote several other implications besides the logical relationships commonly used and understood Therefore, it is important for teachers to make the situations clear when designing this type of exercise so that the students cannot get confused when identifying the semantic relationships between the coordinated clauses Type 6: a Translate the following sentences into Vietnamese Pay much attention to Vietnamese equivalent linkers to the coordinators given Maria tried to read a novel in French, but it was too difficult I bought a bottle of wine, and we drank it together You can it right now, or you can leave it until tomorrow He tried hard and he failed 61 There’s nothing attractive at all, but I have to accept it b Translate into English the following sentences Use only AND/BUT/OR as linking devices equivalent to the underlined words Tôi yêu cô cô lại yêu Anh không đến, định hủy nhân Tôi giúp anh với điều kiện anh phải cố gắng The aim of these exercises is to remind the students of the flexibility in meaning of the coordinators AND/BUT/OR And it also aims to make the students be aware of the different Vietnamese equivalent linkers of these coordinators Hopefully, these types of exercises would be appreciated and exploited by teachers and students in order to help students become better writers Putting forward some suggestions as effort to help English-major students at Lai Chau Boarding high school to overcome the consequences of interference when learning writing skill To teachers, It is emphasise to students that good writing skills are important, both to their satisfactory completion of the unit and to their future careers Encourage students to improve their writing skills (Motivation) Provide students with an anecdote about the implications of substandard writing or the value of good writing For example, you may talk about a job candidate who missed selection due to his or her poor writing (Motivation) Read aloud quality writing done by a former student, and encourage students to listen to its flow With the permission of the writer, name and praise him or her (Motivation, Instruction) Encourage students to pay close attention to the grammar and punctuation they see in textbooks and other books and articles, as well as in any sample paper (Instruction) Encourage students to complete a writing unit Refer students to writing skills web sites Teacher provides useful fact sheets (Instruction) Explain to students that certain writing skills are fundamental to almost all types of writing, but there are also purpose-specific writing skills and styles (Instruction) Tell students: With practice and feedback on performance, writing becomes better Learning most complex skills involves many attempts; students need not feel 62 discouraged if they are not instantly accomplished writers in a specific genre Once a certain level of skill has been reached, the process of writing becomes increasingly enjoyable (Motivation) Describe to students the process you use to write journal articles and reports and how using the process benefits you This process might include starting with an outline, completing several drafts of the document, checking the writing against the requirements, and asking another individual to proofread the document (Motivation, Instruction) Give students handouts containing important writing rules Teach students one important rule relating to grammar or punctuation in each lecture or in each unit (Instruction) Give students a course-related worksheet, have them write a précis of its content, and then ask them to critique each other's writing (Practice, Feedback) To students, they need to learn more about the purpose of writing and use AND/OR/BUT with the meaning of it in the writing and need to discuss teachers Application of And/or/but in Lai Chau boarding high school Jane sent in her applications and waited for a call from the HR office Rain began to fall and the creek rose rapidly James became addicted to drugs – and that was hardly surprising It was a sunny day, but the wind was cold (Here the second clause suggests a contrast that is unexpected in the light of the first clause.) The stick was thin but it was strong He was ill but he went to work She is poor but honest Everybody but James turned up You can have tea or coffee 10 You can work hard or you can fail 4.4 Summary In general, the results gained from the research give the researcher enough confidence to say that the thesis has finally succeeded in completing the objectives 63 which had been mentioned in the introduction The author has been able to give a systematic presentation of the ways the three coordinators AND/BUT/OR work in context A contrastive analysis of these coordinators as cohesive devices and their equivalent realizations in Vietnamese has already been done and some suggested exercises to help students at Lai Chau Boarding high school have also been given Within the scope of this study, the research questions at the very beginning of the thesis have finally been answered through the different methods used Some major findings can be found out as follows: Firstly, as cohesive devices in English written discourse, the three coordinators AND/BUT/OR appear to be more flexible than their semantic syntactic and logical meanings because these coordinators can function in discourse to create possible implications for the effect of communication We have implications by AND, by BUT and by OR, and the frequency of occurrence of these implications is different from each other’s However, AND/BUT/OR has some implications in common In general, AND is commonly used to denote ADDITION, BUT shows CONTRAST and OR implies ALTERNATIVE Secondly, AND/BUT/OR in English and VÀ/NHƯNG/HAY-HOẶC in Vietnamese has some similar syntactic features which mainly affect the mechanism of their logical relation However, VÀ/NHƯNG/HAY-HOẶC is not the only equivalents to AND/BUT/OR in all relation respectively In fact, for different meanings implied by AND/BUT/OR many other linkers or expressions are found as Vietnamese equivalents of these three coordinators The methods of descriptive and comparative analysis used in this thesis have been proved to be effective The study is presented conductively from general theories to detailed descriptions, with theories presented first, then examples given to clarify the theories The methods used have help the author to give a systematic presentation of the uses of the three central coordinators AND/BUT/OR as cohesive devices and their frequency of occurrence in English written discourse as well as made a contrastive analysis of AND/BUT/OR as cohesive devices and their equivalent realizations in Vietnamese 64 Chapter 5: CONCLUSION 5.1 Concluding remarks It is the fact that cohesive devices play a very important role in writing a paragraph or an essay because they produce cohesion, which is of vital importance in writing Therefore, it is the job of the teacher to raise students’ awareness of cohesive devices in general and coordinators in particular AND/BUT/OR are the most central coordinators, thus, they should be taught thoroughly The degree of student’s acquisition of these three English coordinators depends, to a large extent, on the teacher’s presentation The teacher should know how to present them and their usage in a comprehensible way to students A good presentation is supposed to provide all necessary information Therefore, it is advisable for the teacher to follow the following steps The teacher should, first of all, provide students with some general ideas about the meanings of the three coordinators AND/BUT/OR Then, the variety of semantic implications by each coordinator is introduced However, it is not a good idea to teach all of them mechanically at one time as students may get confused In addition, the teacher should familiarize the students with various possible semantic relations in specific contexts or situations, which can help students avoid ambiguity 65 and uncertainty when facing these cases Next, it is suggested that a brief explanation of the cross-cultural differences in the usage of AND/BUT/OR and their equivalents in Vietnamese be mentioned Finally, the teacher should design many types of exercises for the learners to until they are proficient enough in using these coordinators The teaching materials are also as important as the teaching method The materials chosen should ensure the clear explanation and the description of the coordinators in consideration For illustration, pairs of discourse should be given to contrast the good ones with those considered to be a failure due to the inappropriate use of coordinators Furthermore, the teaching materials should be aimed at communicative purpose of language teaching, so situations set should be familiar and understandable to the learners Sample discourses with detailed knowledge about science, technology or a certain technical process should be avoided Last but not less, bilingual materials should be encouraged to ensure the exact use by the learners and to avoid pitiful interference In conclusion, the teaching of reading has often focused on the sentence level Vocabulary and grammar have received a great deal of attention However, we also need to help students look at relations which exist between sentences and between paragraphs Teaching cohesion in general and coordinators in particular is a key way of increasing students’ awareness of how texts function Therefore, some types of exercises are suggested in the hope of helping students avoid making mistakes in using these three English coordinators The implications in teaching a translations: Teachers should emphasize important transitions so that the students have more chance to recognize those transitions and understand how the sematic relationships between the paragraphs and sentences are manifested by conjunctions Moreover, based on the dividing conjunctions into types including coordinating conjunctions, correlatives, and subordinating conjunctions Teachers can give explicit explanations of the conjunctions usages in each type to help students not confuse 66 The teacher could provide more exercise or activities for students to be familiar with the usage of those inter-sentential conjunctions Besides, teachers shoud focus on designing many types of exercises for learners to practice until they are proficient in using on designing many types of exercises for learners to practice until they are proficient in using English conjunctions The learner learning English had better investigate the use of conjunctions in authentic materials so that they can learn how to use conjunctions effectively 5.2 Limitation of the study Due to the limited time and unsustainable knowledge of the author, some limitations are unavoidable Firstly, the number of samples is not large enough In other words, with only 100 samples for each coordinator the samples for the research were not really large to allow many generalizations about the performance of coordinators examined Hopefully, in the future research, more samples will be analyzed to have a more satisfactory result Secondly, the data collection method of the author should be improved The samples of this study have been chosen at random from several written discourse types such as novels, short stories, magazines and newspapers However, most of the samples come from some novels where the performance of coordinators AND/BUT/OR in context may be affected by the writer’s writing style Therefore, it is likely to cause some effects when putting the semantic implications of each coordinator in the order of their frequency of occurrence In spite of these limitations, the study has generally been successful in providing Vietnamese learners of English in general and the students at Lai Chau Boarding high school in particular with something useful for better understanding of cohesion in written discourse and thus, improve their writing skill 5.3 Recommendations/Suggestions for further study Honesty speaking, this study is a very small aspect of English coordinators as a whole because of the limited time and scope of the thesis as well as the unsustainable knowledge of the author This study only deals with coordinators as 67 cohesive devices in English written discourse within the sentence level only But discourses are not always long stretches of sentences There are public notices, proverbs, advertising slogans, etc, where one sentence by itself comprises a complete text And discourses are not always limited within written form For the varieties of discourse form and length, it is suggested further research about coordinators AND/OR/BUT should be in: - Coordinators AND/BUT/OR as cohesive devices in English spoken discourse - Coordinators AND/BUT/OR above the sentence level - Coordinators AND/BUT/OR as cohesive devices in a certain type of discourse (application letters, business contracts, etc) A full research on different sides of coordinator AND/BUT/OR will gives us an all-sided insight into the field and we will find that the work deserves our investigation Due to the constraint in time, the framework of a minor M.A thesis as well as the limited knowledge of the author, mistakes are inevitable Any further comments and criticism that can go toward improving this study are, therefore, would be highly appreciated 68 REFERENCES In English: Ball, W.J (1989) Dictionary of Link Words in English Discourse London: Macmillan Publishers Ltd Berk, L M (1999) English syntax: From word to discourse New York: NY: Oxford University Press Brown, G & Yule, G (1983) Discourse Analysis Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Crystal, D (1992) Introducing Linguistics London: Penguin Crombie, Winifred (1985) Process and Relation in Discourse and Language Learning London: Oxford University Press Carthy, Michael Mc (1993) Discourse Analysis for Language Teachers Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Cook, Guy (1989) Discourse London: Oxford University Press Downing, A ,& Locke, P (1992) A university course in English grammar Hertfordshire: Prentice Hall International 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Đại học Quốc Gia Hà Nội 30 Nguyễn Hòa (2003) Phân tích diễn ngơn: Một số vấn đề lý luận phương pháp Hà Nội: NXB Đại học Quốc Gia Hà Nội 31 Hoa, Nguyen (2000) An Introduction to Discourse Analysis Hanoi: National University Publishing House 32 Nguyen Quoc Minh (2001) “Contrastive Analysis of English and Vietnamese Conjunctions , “and”-“và” and “but”-“nhưng” Grammatically and Pragmatically” 33 Trần Ngọc Thêm (1985) Hệ thống liên kết văn tiếng Việt Hà Nội: NXB Khoa học Xã hội Hà Nội 34 Lai, N T (2006) Ngữ Nghĩa Liên từ tiếng Việt: Chuyên ngành Ngôn ngữ học Hochiminh: Ho Chi Minh City University of Pedagogy Press 35 Van, Hoang Van (2006) Introducing discourse analysis Hanoi: Educational Publisher From the Internet: 36 http://en.wikipedia.org 37 http://www.better-english.com 38 http://www.englishclub.com/ 39 http://www.eslgold.com/ 71 ... (2000) about the paper of “ A contrastive analysis of English coordinators and/ or /but and Vietnamese equivalents merely contrasted the typical coordinating the conjunctions and/ or /but in English and. .. coordinators AND/ BUT/ OR used as cohesive devices in English written discourse? What are the equivalents of AND/ BUT/ OR in Vietnamese? What are the similarities and differences of AND/ BUT/ OR in. .. Diagram 1: The frame work of contrastive analysis and/ but/ or as cohesive devices in English written discourse- A contrastive analysis with Vietnamese equivalents 42 Table6: Vietnamese