A study on some discourse features in the reading texts in the vietnamese new english textbook for non english major students (with implication for teaching and learning) m a thesis linguistics 5 04 09

1 UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND FOREIGN STUDIES VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY POST-GRADUATE FACULTY NGUYỄN THỊ HƯƠNG GIANG A STUDY ON SOME DISCOURSE FEATURES IN THE READING TEXTS IN THE VIETNAMESE NEW ENLISH TEXTBOOK FOR NON-ENGLISHMAJOR STUDENTS (WITH IMPLICATIONS FOR TEACHING AND LEARNING) Nghiên cứu số đặc điểm diễn ngơn đọc hiểu sách giáo khoa tiếng anh 11 dành cho học sinh không chuyên( kèm theo số gợi ý cho việc dạy học) M.A THESIS FIELD: ENGLISH LINGUISTICS CODE: 50409 Ha Noi, August - 2010 UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND FOREIGN STUDIES VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY POST-GRADUATE FACULTY NGUYỄN THỊ HƯƠNG GIANG A STUDY ON SOME DISCOURSE FEATURES IN THE READING TEXTS IN THE VIETNAMESE NEW ENLISH TEXTBOOK FOR NON-ENGLISHMAJOR STUDENTS (WITH IMPLICATIONS FOR TEACHING AND LEARNING) Nghiên cứu số đặc điểm diễn ngơn đọc hiểu sách giáo khoa tiếng anh 11 dành cho học sinh không chuyên( kèm theo số gợi ý cho việc dạy học) M.A THESIS FIELD: ENGLISH LINGUISTICS CODE: 50409 SUPERVISOR: Dr NGUYỄN HOÀ Ha Noi, August - 2010 Table of content ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TABLE OF CONTENT LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Part I: INTRODUCTION Rationale Aim of the study Scope of the study Method of the study Organization of the study Part II: DEVELOPMENT Chapter 1: Theoretical background 1.1 1.1.1 D 1.1.2 D 1.1.3 Spoken and written discourse 1.1.4 D 1.1.5 D 1.1.5.1.Context in discourse analysis 1.1.5.2.Discourse analysis and language teaching 1.2 1.2.1 D 1.2.2 T 1.2.3 Roles of text in language teaching 1.3 1.3.1 The concept of cohesion 1.3.2 C 1.3.3 Main types of cohesion 1 1.3.4 Aspects of coherence 1.3.4.1 Topical coherences 1.3.4.2 Logical coherence Chapter 2: Analysis of main discourse features in the reading text in the Vietnamese new English 11 textbook for non-English - major students 2.1 Reference 2.1.1 Personal reference 2.1.2 Demonstrative reference 2.1.3 Comparative reference 2.1.4 Concluding remarks on reference 2.2 Substitution: 2.2.1 Nominal substitution 2.2.2 Verbal substitution 2.2.3 Clausal substitution 2.2.4 Concluding remarks on substitution 2.3 Ellipsis: 2.3.1 Nominal ellipsis 2.3.2 Verbal ellipsis 2.3.3 Clausal ellipsis 2.3.4 Concluding remarks on ellipsis 2.4 Conjunction: 2.4.1 Additive 2.4.2 Adversative 2.4.3 Causal 2.4.4 Temporal 2.4.5 Concluding remarks on conjunction 2.5 Lexical cohesive devices: 2.5.1 Repetition 2.5.2 Synonyms 2.5.3 Super-ordinate and general word 2.5.4 Collocation 2.5.5 Concluding remar Part III: Conclusion Major findings and conclus Implications for teaching an non - English- major stude Suggestions for further stud REFERENCE APPENDIXES LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Table 1: Literacy text types Table 1: Personal reference Table 1: Demonstrative reference Table 1: Comparative reference Table 1: Grammatical and lexical cohesion Figure 2: Analysis of three types of reference in the chosen reading texts Figure 2: Analysis of four types of conjunction in the chosen reading texts Figure 2:3 Analysis of lexical cohesive devives in the chosen reading texts Part I: INTRODUCTION Rationale: Nowadays, teachers of languages in Vietnam with the pressure of professionalization are more aware of the important role of linguistics in their field They spend much time and energy not only keeping up with the field but also doing a lot of research on linguistics in general and discourse analysis in particular To a teacher of language, it is vital to understand how textbooks are seen in the light of discourse analysis, i.e how language is used in when designing teaching materials or engaging learners in learning activities aimed at improving their target language proficiency or when evaluating piece of materials before deciding using them “Discourse feature” is a broad category which covers a variety of criteria, including both intra-linguistics factors and extra-linguistics elements, such as cohesive, theme-rhyme structure, text structure, speech acts, writer‟s/ speaker‟s intensions, background knowledge, etc Halliday and Hasan (1976:3) claim that: if a passage of English containing more than one sentence perceived as a text, there will be certain linguistics features present in that passage which can be identified as contributing to its total unity and giving it texture” To the researcher, the linguistics features that are of great importance and interests are those of generic structure and cohesion due to the belief that these two factors make influential contribution to defining a genre of discourse High school English teachers in general and English teachers at Tran Phu high school, Vinh Phuc province in particular focus so intensively on their English subject And they warmly welcome the new set of English textbooks for non-English-major students which based on quite a new approach - communicative approach - is highly appreciated by both teachers and students As a teacher of English here, I am deeply aware of challenges in dealing with the interest but demanding subject of English I also realize some obstacles that needs in solving the teaching and learning process of this subject Most of my students face up with the difficulties in reading and deeply understanding the reading texts in the textbook These difficulties surely will hinder the effectiveness and improvement of students‟ study Further more, though there are many researchers who have been paying much attention and doing researches on cohesive devices used in the textbooks not for high school students but for those who learn English with special purposes (ESP) Therefore, I decided to study on some discourse features in the reading texts in the Vietnamese new English 11 textbook for non-English - major students (because of the limit of time and my knowledge), from the point of view of discourse analysis, the researcher only focus on cohesion devices used in the reading texts These cohesive devices are related to properties that make the text a unified whole They refer to both text characteristics and readers‟ interaction with the text Awareness of coherence as a quality that make a text conform to a consistent world picture, to experiences, culture, and convention and cohesive devices used the linguistics means by which elements of a text are arranged and concern is vital for students of English in improving reading comprehension Based on my analysis from the point of view of cohesive devices, some suggestions are given for improving the effectiveness of teaching reading skill and learning reading skill for English teachers and students Aim of the study: Examining the cohesive devices in the reading texts in the Vietnamese new English 11 textbook for non-English - major students including grammatical cohesive devices, lexical cohesive devices and conjunctions, with the aim of working out the typical features of cohesive in reading texts in the Vietnamese new English 11 textbook for nonEnglish - major students which to satisfy the research questions:  What are cohesive devices mainly used in the reading texts in the Vietnamese new English 11 textbook for non-English - major students?  How are those cohesive devices performed in the reading texts in the Vietnamese new English 11 textbook for non-English - major students? Scope of the study: Focuses of consideration for the investigation of one of the greatest category of the discourse features that is cohesion, used in collected reading texts in a certain textbook: the Vietnamese new English 11 textbook for non-English - major students Method of the study: To reach the final goal of revealing the discourse features of the reading texts in the Vietnamese new English 11 textbook for non-English - major students, the methods of description, analysis and statistic in linguistics are used in this thesis and are carried out in the following steps: 10  Collecting data, including relevant theories for analysis, Reading texts in the Vietnamese new English 11 textbook for non-English - major students will be collected Relevant theories will be extracted from various linguistics book written by several linguistics, such as: Cook (1989), Hatim and Mason (1990), Swales (1990), Halliday and Hasan (1976), etc, as unavailable in printed books in Vietnam, will be collected from the Internet sources, the address of which will be provided in the list of References at the end of this thesis  Relevant theories will be presented on the ground of several linguists‟ view of points  16 reading texts in the Vietnamese new English 11 textbook for non-English - major students will be comprehensively investigated for cohesive devices so as to find out the most typical cohesive devices used in written text  Based on the results of the analysis, some concluding remarks can be generalized and some implication for teaching and learning reading skills can be proposed Organization of the study This research is composed of three main parts Part I, the Introduction, present briefly the rationale, the aims, the scope, and the methods of the study as well as the organization of the study Part II is the Development, which consist of two chapters Chapter discusses the Theoretical Background related to discourse analysis In this chapter, the researcher will present the basic concept of discourse and discourse analysis, the discourse features, text types and its important roles as all the reading texts in the chosen textbook is performed in the text form, as well as the notion of cohesion which mainly focus on Chapter is devoted to the analysis of Cohesive Devices used in the reading text in the Vietnamese new English 11 textbook for non-English - major students so as to reveal some typical features And finally, some remarks are discussed to answer the research questions Part III is the Conclusion In this part, a review of the study is presented, together with some implication for teaching and learning, and suggestions for further studies The study is ended with Appendixes showing list of Reading texts taken into consideration 11 Part II: DEVELOPMENT Chapter 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 1.1 Theory of discourse 1.1.1 Definition of discourse The concept of discourse has been paid considerable attention to by many linguists Different authors have different definitions of discourse Let‟s look at some of them to achieve the similar as well as the different among them According to Crystal (1992:25) discourse is “a continuous stretch of (especially spoken) language larger than a sentence, often constituting a coherent unit, such as a sermon, an argument, a joke or a narrative” Cook (1989: 156) shares the same idea with Crystal in stating that discourse is “stretches of language perceived to be meaningful, unified and purposeful” In his point of view, discourse may be composed of one or more well-formed grammatical sentences – and indeed it often is – but it does not have to be There can be some grammatical mistakes in a discourse, which not affect the overall structure and meaning of the discourse Discourse treats the rules of grammar as a resource, conforming to them when it needs to, but departing from them when it does not Discourse can be anything from a conversation to a great novel or a length legal case Cook also argues that “What‟ matters is not its conformity to rules, but the fact that it communicates and is recognized by its receivers as coherent” discourse is supposed to be meaningful and thus used to communicate with one person in a way that another person does not have the necessary knowledge to make sense of Halliday & Hasan define discourse as follow: “We can define text (discourse) in the simplest way perhaps, by saying that it is language that is functional By functional, we simply mean language that is doing the same job in some context as opposed to isolated words or sentences that I might put on the blackboard (These might also be functional of course, if I was using them as linguistic examples) So any instance of living language that is playing some part in a context of situation, we shall call a text It may be either spoken or written or indeed in any other medium of expression that we like to think of” We can understand from Halliday & Hasan‟s perspective on discourse is that discourse is a unit of meaning and is functional It is functional in the sense that it occurs in a context 40 this level, students are expected to achieve the knowledge of verb tense or the using of clauses such as if-clause, relative clause… etc However, thanks to its appearance that helps the clauses, sentences or paragraphs link together, therefore create the meaning of the text We hardly see any other expressions such as: as a result, for this reason….etc apart from these in the textbook The way of using this kind of conjunction will be shown as follows: (48) Everyone has a number of acquaintances, but no one has many friends, for true friendship is not common, and there are many people who seem to be incapable of it (49) My father knew this, so on my birthday he gave me some money so that I could buy the hat for myself (Unit 2: Personal experience) (50) Because power demand is increasing very rapidly, fossil fuels will be exhausted within a relatively short time (Unit 11: Sources of energy) (51) People believe that what they on the first day of the year will influence their lucky during the whole year Thus, only positive comments should be made (52) Because power demand is increasing very rapidly, fossil fuels will be exhausted within a relatively short time Therefore, people must develop and use alternative sources of energy (Unit 11: Sources of energy) For in (48) indicates the reason why true friendship is not common which has been said previously Like for, other causal conjunctions such as: because, thus, therefore and so also indicate what is said is the cause, the reason of what has been mentioned before 2.4.4 Temporal Temporal conjunction shows the sequence in time between two sentences, two clauses or two paragraphs, one is subsequent to the other to express the logical order Temporal relation is expressed by then, next, after, before, first, last, until now, soon, later …In the collected texts, we can see the appearance of almost those main conjunctions, however, among those then, next, the first, the second….occur with the highest 41 frequency (53) The first quality is unselfishness (Unit 1: Friendship) (54) First, the site was prepared and then the huge blocks of stone were transported and put in their places (Unit 16: The wonders of the world) (55) After that, Lisa opens her birthday cards and presents (Unit 3: A party) (56) Before Gagarin‟s historic flight, there were still enormous uncertainties (Unit 15: Space conquest) Thanks to temporal conjunctions, we know what happens first, and what will be followed, therefore, the text gains its coherent and cohesive purpose The first in (53) tells us that there will be other qualities which are going to be mentioned after that And then in (54) implies that there is other action has been done before the huge blocks of stone were transported and put in their places 2.4.4 Concluding remarks on conjunctions Statistics show that 230 conjunctions are recorded from 16 reading texts selected for examination in which 177 conjunctions are additive (which equal 77%); 19 conjunctions are adversative (which equal0 8%); conjunction are causal (which equal 0,3% ) and 26 conjunctions are temporal (which equal 12%) As can be seen from the statistics above, additive relation, of course, occurs with the highest frequency among of the four main mentioned conjunctions This is explained by the fact that most of the Reading texts, which are carefully chosen in the textbook, are in essay, narrative or theme writing form in which series of actions, events, activities, proper names…take place, one sentence usually adds information to the preceding one, and then is added some by the following one Additive relation is marked by the use of and in the majority of cases Causal relation accounts for the last proportion can be explained by the reason that at 11 grade level of non-major English students, the knowledge expected to achieve is at preintermediate level, therefore they just aim to achieve separate grammar points such as verb tenses, or simple clauses not the difficult ones Further more, the requirement of four skills: speaking, reading, listening and writing, after each lesson just is repeating, creating 42 simple sentences or short paragraphs, so clausal conjunctions are hardly taught, and of course, all the collected texts must be simple, too Analysis of four types of conjunctions used in 16 chosen Reading texts is illustrated in figure below: Additive Adversative Temporal Causal Figure 2:2 Analysis of four types of conjunction in the chosen reading texts The presence of conjunctions helps to make the relations among sentences much clearer, and make the text smoother, more natural and interesting 2.5 Lexical cohesion 2.5.1 Repetition By „lexical repetition‟, we mean that repeated items and repeating ones are in lexical relations Repetition occurs frequently in text in general, and in the reading texts in the Vietnamese new English 11 textbook for non-English - major students, in particular Repeated and repeating items vary from forms to the entities they denote They may be words or phrases, and the repeating items may be part or whole of the repeated ones Repetition of words Normally, the nouns relating to theme topic of the texts are repeated throughout the texts Consider these examples: (57) Everyone has a number of acquaintances, but no one has many friends, for true friendship is not common, and there are many people who seem to be incapable of it For 43 a friendship to be close and lasting, both the friends must have some very special qualities (Unit 1: Friendship) (58) It is Lisa‟s birthday She is seven years old today, and her family and friends are at her birthday party On the table is a birthday cake with seven candles, one for each year People sing „Happy Birthday‟ to Lisa: When they finish singing, Lisa blows out the candles on the cake Then everybody eats cake and ice cream After that, Lisa opens her birthday cards and presents Her family and friends give her toys and clothes for her birthday (Unit 3: A party) (59) Lunar New Year, or Tet, is Vietnam‟s main holiday It is the grandest and most important occasion in the year which falls sometime between 19 th January and 20 th February on the Western calendar Tet mark the beginning of spring and, for agrarian people, the start of a new year (Unit 8: Celebrations) By repeating the words time and time again, the topic of the lesson is emphasized Repetition of phrases Phrases are repeated wholly, partly or even with additional modifiers  Wholly repetition: (60) During their five-decade history, the Asian Games have been advancing in all aspects The numbers of participants has been increasing The quality of athletes, officials and sports facilities has also been developing through the time New sports and st traditional sports have been introduced and added to the games The Asian Games were basketball, cycling, football, aquatic sports, athletics and weightlifting Boxing, shooting and wrestling were added at the nd Asian Games in Manila, the Philippines in rd 1954; and tennis, volleyball, table tennis and hockey were added at the Asian Games in Tokyo, Japan in 1958 Squash, rugby, fencing and mountain biking were introduced for th the first time at the 13 Asian Games in Bangkok, Thailand in 1998 (Unit 12: The Asian games) 44 (61) By July 2000, sixty – one provinces and cities throughout Vietnam had completed the programmes of “Universalisation of Primary education” and “Illiteracy Eradication” However, by that time, only 94% of the population was able to read and write This meant that more work had to be done to eradicate illiteracy in the country In the summer of 2000, the Vietnam Society of Learning Promotion started a campaign for illiteracy eradication (Unit 5: Illiteracy) (62) The population of the world has been increasing faster and faster In 10,000 B.C; there were probably only 10 million people In A.D 1, there were 300 million It took 1,750 years for the world population to reach 625 million In 1850, only one hundred years later, the population reached the figure of 1,300 million In 1950, the figure had more than doubled to reach 2,510 million In 1985, only 35 years later, there were 4,760 million people In 2000, the world population was about 6.6 billion, and by 2015 it is expected to be over billion (Unit 7: World population)  Partial repetition (63) After a while, I turned round and noticed that the boy‟s schoolbag was open Inside it, I saw a wad of dollar notes exactly the ones my father had given me I quickly looked into my own bag – the notes had gone! (Unit Personal experiences) (64) Last Saturday the representatives of three classes of my school took part in the annual final English competition organized by our English teachers Its aim was to stimulate the spirit of learning English among students The competition was sponsored by the students‟ parents Society Mrs Lien, our English teacher, explained the competition‟s rules to the students (Unit 6: Competitions) (65) Although there are some disadvantages, the potential of alternative sources of energy is great However, how to make full use of these sources of energy is a question for researchers all over the world (Unit 11: Sources of energy) 45 Thanks to partial repetition, the sentences are shorter but they still keep their cohesive relations because of anaphoric meaning For example, the notes in (63) even is shortened, we still understand it is a wad of dollar notes that mentioned beforehand 2.5.2 Synonyms Repetition is not always an ideal way to link the sentences in the discourse; thus synonymic substitution is a helpful alternative in many cases This type represents the cohesive device realized by synonymic words and phrases Synonymic words are defined as those that belong to the same semantic field, denote the same entity or concept and not have opposite meaning Lyons (1981) claims that complete synonymy of lexemes, i.e lexemes that possess the same descriptive, expressive and social meaning, is quite rare in natural language Even thought the occurrence of synonym is rare in the chosen texts, we sometimes can find some of dictionary synonyms (66) For a friendship to be close and lasting, both the friends must have some very special qualities … Such changeable and uncertain people are incapable of a lifelong friendship (67) In the summer of 2000, the Vietnam Society of Learning Promotion started a campaign for illiteracy eradication In the campaign, six hundred ethnic minority students from the northern highlands were asked to provide reading and writing skills to 1,200 illiteracy people living in their home villages… ….Those students who took part in the flight against illiteracy considered it an honorable job to help people in their home villages ….It is hoped that illiteracy will soon be eradicated in our country as more and more people are taking part in the struggle against it (68) It has been suggested that there are enough blocks in three pyramids to build a 3- metre-high, 0.3-metre-thick wall around France………… Although it is not known how the blocks were put in place, several theories have been proposed One theory involves the construction of a straight or spiral ramp that was raised as the construction proceeded (Unit 16: The wonders of the world) 46 Synonyms may be of the same part of speech, like lasting and lifelong in (66) and the campaign, the flight, and the struggle in (67), or different part of speech like build (a verb) and construction (a noun) in (68) Generally, words or phrases of different parts of speech should be taken into consideration for the examination of cohesive devices In general speaking, though synonyms not make a great contribution among the cohesive devices used in those Reading texts, prove to be an effective means for the coherence while helping to avoid redundant and boring expressions 2.5.3 Super-ordinate and general word Coordinate means that two items are in cohesive relation, in which one item belongs to a general class compared to the other Super-ordinate in texts means that the latter noun is synonymous with the previous one in the sense of higher level of generality Mc Carthy {25;66} divides super-ordinate into two categories: immediate super-ordinate and general super-ordinate (or general words).however, in this thesis, the researcher not aim at focusing on analyzing super-ordinate, therefore, I will not analyze the way of using this cohesive device separately Let us take these following examples which appear in the collected Reading texts to see the differences between the two kinds of super-ordinate (69) Then everybody eats cake and ice cream After that, Lisa opens her birthday cards and presents Her family and friends give her toys and clothes for her birthday (Unit 3: A party) (70) One of Tet‟s most special food is banh chung, which is made from sticky rice, green beans and fatty pork Mut, which is candied fruit such as sugared apples, plum or tomatoes, is also popular (Unit 8: Celebrations) (71) Everyone eats some cakes and says “Happy Anniversary!” to Rosa and Luis People also give cards and gifts to the anniversary couple (Unit 3: a party) It would not be accurate to say that presents equals to toys and clothes in (69), but we can say that the meaning of presents is included in the meaning of toys and clothes We express this sense relation by saying that presents is an immediate super-ordinate for short of toys and clothes Similarly, special foods is an immediate super-ordinate for short of banh chung and mut, and fruits is an immediate super-ordinate for short of 47 sugared apples, plum and tomatoes in (70) Whereas, the anniversary couple in (71) is not included Rosa and Luis, but for replacing for the preceding proper nouns: Luis and Rosa Saying in different way, the anniversary couple is equivalent to Rosa and Luis And it is called general super-ordinate or general words according to Halliday and Hasan [16; 274] According to Halliday and Hasan [16; 281], general words is common in English discourse, and they are cohesively only when they have the same referent as whatever they are presupposing, and it is accompanied by a reference item „the‟ or one of the demonstratives „this, that, these, those‟ However, in those chosen texts, immediate super-ordinate occurs with the higher frequency This is by the fact that all the collected texts are theme writing ones, therefore all the things, the actions, the facts, human or nonhuman animated….listed or mentioned in the texts belong to a general class compared to the other, basing on the main topic of the whole lesson 2.5.4 Collocation Collocations represent „the most problematical part of lexical cohesion‟ (Halliday and Hasan, 1976) It includes all those items in a text that are semantically related To be more specific, collocation is the type of cohesion that is achieved through the association of lexical items that regularly co-occur Collocation meaning may arise from various semantic associations For example; in part-whole collocation – the two items are in some kind of semantic relation between a person, a thing, or a concept as a whole and its parts (72) Last Saturday the representatives of three classes of my school took part in the annual final English competition organized by our English teachers Its aim was to stimulate the spirit of learning English among students The competition was sponsored by the students’ parents Society Mrs Lien, our English teacher, explained the competition‟s rules to the students (Unit 6: Competitions) In this example, classes, English teachers, learning English, students, the students’ parents Society are all parts of school There also exist collocation meanings in hyponym relation This happens when two items are of the same rank and are members of the same more general class For example, winter and summer in (73) are hyponyms, for they belong to a broader concept „season‟ 48 (73) The most popular spectator sports re football and rugby in winter, and cricket and athletics in summer (Unit 14: Recreation) Similarly, industry and agriculture in (74) are also in hyponym relation, and they belong to a greater concept „economic branches‟ (74) They are affecting the water supply by using the water for industry and agriculture (Unit 10: Nature in danger) In many cases in the chosen Reading texts, several semantically related items form a chain of lexical collocation and thus create cohesion for the texts This can be explained by the fact that all the collected texts in the textbook are theme writing texts The main content of the texts mentions one problem, one event, one activity… , therefore the amount of vocabularies used must relate to the main topic, to create cohesion for the texts Let us take the following example for consideration (75) The Great Pyramid of Giza was built by the Egyptian pharaoh Khufu around the year 2560 BC The purpose of this huge stone pyramid was to serve as a tomb when he died and to protect the burial chamber from the weather and the thieves who might try to steal the treasures and belongings there The Great pyramid is believed to have been built over a 20-year period First, the site was prepared and then the huge blocks of stone were transported and put in their places (Unit 16: The wonders of the world) The Great Pyramid of Giza, built, Egyptian pharaoh Khufu, huge stone pyramid, tomb, protect, burial chamber, treasures, belongings and the site, the huge blocks of stone are in collocation in the sense that they tend to co-occur in a specific context: description The Great Pyramid of Giza 2.5.4 Conclusion remarks on lexical cohesion In short, lexical cohesion accounts the highest frequency of all the cohesive categories The reading texts in the Vietnamese new English 11 textbook for non-English - major students manipulate all the types of lexical cohesion but with the different frequencies of use This means that some options are preferred to others, and thus are chosen more often 49 than others in maintaining the cohesion for the texts A total number of 574 lexical cohesive devices are recorded in the 16 Reading texts, which includes  417 repetitions (73%)  22 synonyms (4%)  84 super-ordinate and general words (14%)  51 collocations (9%) Figure below summarizes the proportions that each type of lexical cohesive devices accounts for in the chosen Reading texts: Repetitions Super-ordinate & general words Collocations Synonyms Figure 2:3 Analysis of lexical cohesive devives in the chosen reading texts The figure demonstrates that repetition represents the dominant position It accounts for nearly three fourths of all the lexical cohesive devices (73%), and thus proved to be the most essential mean of lexical cohesion The repeated items are usually nouns denoting main actions, key concepts, proper names, events…and these nouns appear constantly throughout the texts to prove for the certain topic of those theme writing texts The other types of lexical cohesive devices account for relatively small percentage; super-ordinate and general words – 14%, collocations – 9% and synonyms - 4%) They do, however, represent good alternatives and contribute to a great extent to create coherence for the texts Choices of different types of cohesive ties help to make the texts clearer and more concise 50 Part III: CONCLUSION Conclusion With the aims of investigating some discourse features of the reading texts in the Vietnamese new English 11 textbook for non-English - major students, I have set up only one major goal for the study that is to examine the cohesive devises in those reading texts Thanks to a comprehensive analysis of 16 chosen reading texts, I have come up to the following conclusions about the discourse features of the reading texts in the Vietnamese new English 11 textbook for non-English - major students The reading texts are written for high school students at a clear and certain level: 11 grade and for non-English - major students at pre-intermediate level, whose language acquisition and background knowledge are above average As the result, variety and simplicity and logical range of words are essential characteristics In term of grammatical cohesion, reference, and especially personal reference, accounts for the highest frequencies of use (49%) This can be explained by the fact that, all the reading texts are performed in the essay or report form, in which the content of the texts have to deal with a certain topic and they show the writer‟s ideas, outlooks, or experiences of an action, an event or a problem This raises the need for the use of personal reference to refer to the writer him/ herself, the characters appear or mention in the texts such as: I, my, me, our, we, they, he …) However, students may face up with difficulties in understanding the meaning of those reference if in a set of sentences appear the same reference but different anaphoric meaning Lexical cohesion is characterized with the use of repetition, which accounts for the biggest proportion (nearly three fourth of all lexical cohesive devices) in those texts Though repetition is not an ideal way to maintain the content of the texts, it is regarded as the easiest way to understand: the students can easily know what the item refers to without looking back the preceding parts What is more, the students are not required to have necessary knowledge for interpretation This is an important factor as those reading texts are mainly written for non-English - major students Repetition is an effective means which enables non-English - major students to connect things and events together for a complete comprehension text With respect to conjunctions, additive relation serves the most active role to describe 51 sequence of events, actions, or objects Thanks to the conjunctions, the students are fully aware of the relation of meaning between sentences Last but not least, other sub-types of cohesive devices, such as synonyms, superordinate and general words, and collocations which make great contribution and play an indispensable part in the texts It obviously makes the Reading texts more concise and logical, and of course, easier to understand Further more, it provides students with a wide range of vocabulary that relate to the main topic, helps them easier to learn and practice those words Implications for teaching and learning English for non - English- major students at Tran Phu High School The important role of teaching and learning English has been realized by all teachers and students at Tran Phu high School recent years Though English is not their major subject at school, it is compulsory one With their best trying to get the highest result for this subject, the non-English –major students at this school still face up with the difficulties in deeply understanding when dealing with their reading texts which appear in each lesson How to help students overcome these difficulties and to get the best result at this subject is a big challenge to all teachers and students here By analyzing to achieve the main discourse features of 16 reading texts in the Vietnamese new English 11 textbook for nonEnglish - major students, the researcher would like to give some implications for teaching and learning English at this school Firstly, not only teachers but also students need to understand the important roles of cohesive devices in the reading texts and realize some discourse markers often used in the textbook From the point of view of a teacher, I would like to highlight the importance of some cohesive devices in general and collocation, reference in particular which surely contribute to a better reading comprehension skill Secondly, when dealing with the reading texts, teacher should point out some of the main cohesive devices occur in the text and explain the uses of the most common ones among those Thirdly, teacher should make sure that the cohesion, which students are exposed to, are of most benefit to them Further more, while teaching these texts, teacher should help students or ask them to all 52 the words that are in collocation relation to enrich the amount of vocabularies and to realize the coherence of the texts Last but not least, after introducing those cohesive devices, teacher should give exercises on them, because those devices need to be taught in combination with teaching language skills Suggestions for further study Due to the limitation of time, the researcher can focus on cohesive devices used in the Reading texts in the Vietnamese new English 11 textbook for non-English - major students It is hoped that further studies will be made on:  Other discourse features of those Reading texts such as metaphor will be carried out, and the implication part might have included more examples and provided forms of exercises  Analysis of collocation, conjunction more detail Due to the constraint time, the framework of a minor M.A thesis as well as the limited knowledge of the author, mistakes are inevitable It is hoped that the study will a contribution to teaching and learning English in high school in general and in Tran Phu high school in particular 53 REFERENCES Halliday, M.K & Hasan R (1976) Cohesion in English London: Longman Group Limitted 2.Halliday, M.A.K (1994) An Introduction to Functional Grammar London: Arnold Brown, G & Yule, G (1983) Discourse Analysis Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Cook, G (1989) Discourse and Literature Oxford University Press Hoa, Nguyen (2000a) An Introduction to Discourse Analysis Hanoi: VNU Publishing House Hoa, Nguyen (2003) Understanding English Semantics Hanoi: VNU Publishing House Mc Carthy, M (1991) Discourse Analysis for Language Teachers CUP Nunan, D (1993) Introducing Discourse Analysis England: Penguin Group Raphael, S (1995) Text and Discourse Analysis London: Routledge 10 Sallkie, R (1995) Text and Discourse Analysis New York: Routledge 11 Cook, Guy (1989) Discourse Oxford University Press 12 Richards, J.C (1992) The Context of Language Teaching Cambridge University Press 13 Hatim, B $ Mason, I (1990) Discourse and the Translator Longman Group Limitted 14 Simson, P (1997) Language through Literature London: Routledge 15 Swales, J.M (1990) Genre Analysis Cambridge University Press 16 Nguyễn Hồ (2003) Phân tích Diễn ngơn – Một số vấn đề lí luận phương pháp 17 Trần Ngọc Thêm (2000) Hệ thống liên kết văn Tiếng Việt (2 nd ed) Nhà xuất Giáo Dục 18 Halliday, M.A.K (1985a) Spoken and written language Oxford University Press 19 www AboutEnglish-texts.html, p1 20 www.education.tá.gov.an/Enlíh, p1 54 Appendix: List of 16 chosen reading texts Unit 1: Friendship Unit 2: Personal experiences Unit 3: A party Unit 4: Volunteer work Unit 5: Illiteracy Unit 6: Competitions Unit 7: World population Unit 8: Celebrations Unit 9: The post office Unit 10: Nature in danger Unit 11: Sources of energy Unit 12: The Asian games Unit 13: Hobbies Unit 14: Recreation Unit 15: Space conquest Unit 16: The wonders of the world ... relations, collocations in term of semantic relations and collocations in term of grammatical relations Most of collocations are examined in this thesis are basing on semantic relations Grammatical... conjunction appears with the least proportion in comparison with other conjunctions for the reason that conjunction is not the main grammar point in the reading texts in the Vietnamese new English. .. by M .A. K Halliday‟s functional approach of language Halliday‟s framework emphasizes the social function of language and the thematic and informational structure of speech and writing Halliday and