Learning vocabulary effectively in clt through language games at high school

1 Table of content Part A: Introduction Rationale of the study Aims of the study Scope of the study Methods of the study Design of the study Part B: Development Chapter 1: Theoretical background 1.1 Theory of Discourse 1.1.1 Concept of discourse 1.1.2 Spoken discourse and written discourse 1.1.3 Text and discourse 1.1.4 Discourse context 1.1.5 Discourse structure and information structure 1.1.6 Sense relation 1.2 Cohesion 1.2.1 Concept of cohesion 1.2.2 Cohesion and coherence 1.2.3 Types of cohesion 1.3 Lexical cohesion 1.3.1 Concept of lexical cohesion 1.3.2 Types of lexical cohesion 1.4 Reiteration 1.5 Types of Reiteration 1.5.1 Reiteration in Text and in Reiteration in Discourse Chapter 2: Reiteration as a cohesive device news-inbrief on Iraq war in English press 2.1 General structure of news stories 2.2 General information of materials selected 2.3 Reiteration occurrences in separated parts of news-in-brief texts 2.3.1 Headline 2.3.2 Lead 2.3.3 Body 2.4 Classification of Reiteration based on types 2.4.1 Repetition 2.4.2 Synonyms and near synonyms 2.4.3 Superordinates and General words 2.4.3.1 Superordinates 2.4.3.2 General words 2.5 Reiteration with and without identical reference Chapter 3: Application Part C: Conclusion Part A: Introduction Rationale 1.1 During both processes of producing and perceiving in learning English, learners are usually guided to pay their attention on the logicality of the text In other words, they are taught how to recognize (in listening and reading) or create (in speaking and writing) coherence of the text Textual coherence can be obtained by various linguistic devices including grammatical and lexical ones However, it is traditionally the case that almost learners‘ attention has been drawn onto grammatical devices (such as reference, ellipsis, substitution…) and very little on lexical ones despite the fact that the latter can contribute a significant part in creating coherence, as David Nunan (1995: 31) puts it: ‗ lexical cohesion is the single most important form of cohesion, accounting for something like forty percent of cohesion ties in text‘ Among lexical cohesive devices, reiteration is considered the most common one and to contribute the most to textual coherence Obtaining a sufficient awareness of the extensive and vivid existence of reiteration as a type of lexical cohesive device, of its significant role in generating textual coherence as well as proper ways in which it is used by native speakers (or writers) can make a helpful contribution to English learners in more correctly, properly and lively producing and perceiving in their English learning 1.2 Press, in the civilized society, has become one of the most popular and powerful means of communication and nowadays plays a displaceable part in man‘ s life It is not only where people get themselves expressed, knowledgeenriched, information-updated and entertained, but also one of places where a language can interestingly manifest its own existence with its certain features Unexceptionally, we can amusingly trace many of characteristics of English language in press published in English, possibly in any forms of writing there Being interested in Reiteration in English, we find it very interesting, and proper also, to apply related theories into the brief news daily updated on Iraq war in English press, the source of material that has never been used for any discussions involving Reiteration in Discourse so far For all reasons above, we decided to choose ― Reiteration as a cohesive device in news-in-brief on Iraq war in English press‖ to be the theme of the thesis Aims of the study The aims of the thesis are: - To emphasize the important role of Reiteration in creating textual coherence - To give a statistic and description of types of Reiteration used in a specific form of writing in English press: News-in-brief - To study the reasons leading to the different degrees of fondness in using each types of reiteration there - To suggest some practical implications of Reiteration in teaching and learning English Scope of the study Our research deals with types of Reiteration in discourse provided by Halliday and Hasan (1976) including Repetition, Synonymy, Subordinates and General words Other types of lexical and grammatical cohesion are out of the scope of the thesis The statistic synthesized in the thesis is taken from news-in-brief texts available on CNN, which is – in our opinion – among the most well known online newspapers It has nowadays become an internationalized newspaper on which English is the major language to be chosen for the information display The news-in-brief texts are about Iraq war, an international security event initiated in March 2003 by the United States, and then followed by her allies, against Iraq The war is still believed by public to be unfinished up to the day the material for this thesis is selected (April th, 2006) The event has been drawing the attention of all nations and people all over the world And it comes as no surprise that online newspapers are where the hottest news about the war has been most frequently and fastest updated to the public As the title of the thesis implies, most of the examples given in chapter are taken from this source and reference is made for each Examples taken from other sources are clearly marked with specific references as well Methods of the study - Revision of published related theories - Quantitative methods - Analysis and systematic of selected data Design of the study There are three main parts in this research paper: Part A: Introduction In this part, the rationale, aims, scope, methods and design of the thesis are introduced Part B: Development This part consists of three chapters: Chapter Theoretical background Chapter Reiteration as Cohesive device in brief news of Iraq war in English press Chapter Applications Part C: Conclusion In this part, principal findings are summarized and some suggestions for further researches are provided Part B: Development Chapter 1: Theoretical background 1.1 Theory of Discourse 1.1.1 The concept of discourse Until the first half of 20th century, traditional linguists had been working under the orientational point of view that sentences are the largest complete units to be studied It has, however, gradually been realized to be a mistaken one Many problems concerning with both linguistic theories and practices appeared to be unthoroughly solved with this viewpoint This fact eventually led to the appearance of a new subject in the 1960s and early 1970s, studying languages through units above sentence level Discourse Analysis (as the new subject was termed), as Michael McCarthy (1991:5) puts it, ‗ is concerned with the study of the relationship between language and the contexts in which it is used‘ , under the assistance of traditional linguistics, semiotics, psychology, anthropology and sociology Since the time Discourse Analysis came into being as a branch of linguistics, the term ― discourse‖ has been defined in different ways A discourse, according to David Nunan in the introduction of his Introducing Discourse Analysis (1995), ― is a stretch of language that may be longer than one sentence.‖ Barbara Johnstone (2002:2) claims that: ― discourse usually means actual instances of communication in the medium of language‖ In this thesis, the notion by Guy Cook (1995:198) seeing discourse as “ stretches of language perceived to be meaningful, unified and purposive” seems to be the best to adopt 1.1.2 Text and Discourse The viewpoints of the distinction between the two terms text and discourse are rather controversial To some linguists, the two can be interchangeably used, as they state: (1) A text, or a discourse, is a stretch of language that may be longer than a sentence [17:1] (2) A text may be spoken or written, prose or verse, dialogue or monologue It may be anything from a single proverb to a whole play, from a momentary cry for help to all day discussion in a committee [6: 1] On the other hand, some linguists suppose that it is worth seeing the two terms in different ways Widdowson (1979), for instance, suggests that: One way sees it (the language beyond the limit of sentence) as a text, a collection of formal objects held by the pattern of equivalences, or frequencies, or by cohesive devices The other way sees language as discourse, a use of sentences to perform act of communication which cohere into larger communicative units, ultimately establishing a rhetorical pattern which characterizes the pieces of language as a whole as a kind of communication (quoted in Nguyen Thi Phuong Ngoc, 1999 – MA Thesis) Widdowson‘ s differentiation is more or less similar with that of Brown and Yule (1983:6) who ‗ use text as a technical term to refer to the verbal record of a communicative act‘ ; and that of Crystal (1992:25) defining discourse as ‗ a continuous stretch of (especially spoken) language larger than a sentence, often constituting a coherent unit, such as a sermon, argument, joke or narrative‘ and text as ‗ a piece of naturally occurring spoken, written or signed discourse identified for purposes of analysis It is often a language unit with a definable function, such as a conversation, a poster.‘ This thesis supports the short discrimination of Raphael Salkie (1993) suggesting that the term text is best used to refer to any written record of a communicative event and discourse, on the other hand, to the interpretation of the communicative event in context That means any complete piece of news taken for analyzing in this study is best seen as a text, or a discourse unit 1.1.3 Spoken discourse and written discourse Spoken and written discourse simply means speech and writing It has been widely agreed by linguists that there are common features as well as different ones between these two forms of language According to Halliday (1985), writing emerged in society as a result of cultural changes which created new communicative needs that could not be readily met by the spoken language Approvingly, Raphael Salkie (1993) contributes that the contexts for using written language are very different from those in which spoken language is used For example, in the case of information, written language is used to communicate with others who are removed in time and space, or for those occasions of which a permanent or semi-permanent is required One, as a result, cannot deny that spoken discourse is often considered to be less planned and orderly, more open to intervention by the receivers while written discourse is much better structured and the possibilities for subordinate participants are limited Brown and Yule (1983) claim that spoken and written discourse serve the various functions, the former is used for the establishment and maintenance of human relationships (interactional use) and the latter for the working out of and transference of information (transactional use) (cited in To Viet Thu 2001 – MA Thesis) On the other hand, some linguists see common points between these two forms of language David Nunan (1995) believes that they both perform an equivalent range of broad functions, i.e they both are employed to get things done, to provide information and to entertain Michael McCarthy (1991:150) additionally proposes, ‗ both spoken and written discourses are dependent on their immediate contexts to a greater or lesser degree‘ , and ‗ implicitness and explicitness (of the language being used) will depend on what is being communicated to whom, rather than merely on whether the discourse is spoken or written.‘ In short, despite the fact that written and spoken discourses are two different forms of language, they both carry out many functions of communication and the differences are not absolute, and the characteristics that we tend to associate with written language can sometime occur in spoken language and vice versa This means that some spoken texts will be more like written text than others and vice versa 1.1.4 Discourse context 1.1.4.1 The context of situation David Nunan (1995:7) suggests a concept and a classification of context of situation (or context in short) as follows: Context refers to the situation giving rise to the discourse, and within which the discourse is embedded There are two different types of context The first of these is the linguistic context – the language that surrounds or accompanies the piece of discourse under analysis The second is nonlinguistic or experiential context within which the discourse takes place Non-linguistic contexts include: the type of communicative event (for example, joke, story, lecture, greeting, conversation); the topic; the purpose of the event, the setting including location, time of day, season of year and physical aspects of the situation (for example, size of room, arrangement of furniture); the participants and the relationships between them; and the background knowledge and assumptions underlying the communicative event 10 This viewpoint of Nunan is much similar to that of Halliday and Hasan (1976) who claim that when responding to a spoken or a written passage (discourse or text), the receiver employs not only linguistic clues, but also situational ones: linguistically, he responds to specific features which bind the passage together, the pattern of connection, independence of structure, that we are referring to as cohesion Situationally, he takes into account all he knows of the environment: what is going on, what part of language is playing, and who are involved And the importance of context toward discourse interpretation is apparently undeniable, as Cook (1989:10) asserts: ‗ There are good arguments for limiting the field of study to make it manageable, but it is also true to say that the answer to the question of what gives discourse its unity may be impossible to give without considering the world at large: the context.‘ For all the facts above, both linguistic and non-linguistic contexts will be taken into account in this study It is because Reiteration, as a cohesive device and as an actual use of lexis, is obviously concerned with linguistic factors but how that use is carried out also greatly depends on non-linguistic features of discourse 1.1.4.2 Context versus co-text It is necessary to tell these two terms from one another David Nunan (1995) holds that co-text is considered the linguistic element and context the non-linguistic one More specifically, Brown and Yule (1983) claim that ‗ any sentence other than the first in a fragment of discourse will have the whole of its interpretation forcibly constrained by the proceeding text‘ and ‗ the words occur in discourse are constrained by their co-text.‘ In his Pragmatics (1996), Yule gave another concept that considers cotext as linguistic material, accompanying the referring expression The role of co-text is illustrated with the example as follows: 37 (18) BAGHDAD (CNN) – A U.S soldier died Thursday night near Tallil, Iraq from non-battle related causes… Authorities are investigating the incident…(CNN, Nov 4, 2005) (19) Soldiers from B troop, 1st Squadron, 11th Calvary Regiment discovered a very large weapons cache Oct 10 in the Abu Ghraib district… … The cache included 13 mortar rounds, five rocket-propelled grenade rounds, four rifle grenades, two RPG launchers, a mortar tube, a 55 -gallon drum with explosives, six bundles of fuses, 67 RPG propellants, and 110 explosive timers…(CNN, Oct 11, 2005) 2.4.3.1 Superordinates Unlike repetition and synonymy, superordinates are not often used in news-in-brief discourses Of whole 491 occurrences of reiteration, only 30 of superordinates are seen, taking 6.11% This extract contains one of them: (20) Sen John Kerry, D-Mass., Wednesday called on President Bush to put in motion a plan to begin reducing U.S troop levels in Iraq, with the objective of pulling out most military personnel by the end of December 2006 (CNN, Nov 4, 2005) It is the case that not everyone who is military personnel is a U.S troop (soldier) but on the contrary, a U.S troop is obviously of military personnel Using this superordinate helps the writer provide more information and simultaneously create cohesive force within the paragraph While this case is an occurrence of superordinate with identical reference, ones without identical reference are also found in news-in-brief discourses For example: (21) In northern Baghdad, a roadside bomb hit a U.S Army patrol in northern Baghdad, killing one soldier, said military spokesman Sgt 1st Class David Abrams 38 That attack raised to 1,945 the number of U.S military members who have died since the war began in 2003, according to an Associated Press count (CNN, Oct 6, 2005) While ‘soldier’ refers to the one killed in the event being mentioned, ‘U.S military members’ refers to every U.S troop whoever had been being in Iraq Despite the non-identity of the two references, the superordinate sense relation does make items cohesively used Not only of nouns, superordinates of verbs also occur, though very seldom Actually, only occurrences of verb-superordinates are found among the total 30 superordinates, one of which is contained in the following extract: (22) Closely shadowed by riot police and National Guard troops, a group of about 60 to 70 anti-globalization demonstrators advanced from the coastal town of Brunswick The demonstrators were escorted by a group of more than 100 police armed with batons, tear gas and pepper spray (CNN, Nov 4, 2005) As the hyponym, the narrower meaning of to escort (to follow to accompany) is included in the broader meaning of to shadow (to follow) Both verbs refer to the same action of the police to the demonstrators and they significantly contribute to in giving the readers the feeling that the sentences hang together For the fact that very few descriptive adjectives and adverbs are used in news-in-brief texts, it comes as no surprise that no occurrence of adjective and adverb superordinate is found Though some occurrences of adverbial elements are seen, all of them are of adverb phrases that refer to time and place involving the event being mentioned For example: (23) The blast occurred at about 11 a.m in Tal Afar, 260 miles northwest of Baghdad, when the bomb was detonated by remote 39 control as people were shopping in the market, said Brig Najim Abdullah, the town's police chief He said no Iraqi security forces or U.S soldiers were in the area at the time…(CNN, Oct 11, 2005) In this example, the underlined multi-words items play function of adverbial elements The short superordinates the area and the time used in this case not only help avoid repetition but also save a helpful space for the text In short, superordinates are not really often employed in news-in-brief discourses Usually the lexical items taking part in this type of reiteration convey neutral meanings (without personal feelings) As far as the content words are concerned, nouns or noun phrases takes the largest proportion, then comes in turn verbs, adverb phrases and finally, adjectives This can be summed up in the table below: Nouns/ Noun phrases 76.7% Verbs 13.3% Adverbs Adjectives 10% 0% Total occurrences 30 Table - Superordinates in terms of content words 2.4.3.2 General words Even more general than superordinates, general words (or general superordinates as some linguists call) are also used as a cohesive device In this thesis, however, the general word is concerned with only general noun for the reality that not all general words are used cohesively; in fact, only the nouns are (Halliday and Hasan, p 274) This is evidenced by the findings of the survey that all general words in news-in-brief texts are the nouns involving the main information of the news They can be relatively grouped in the following table: 40 Reference Examples found in selected data Event The incident, the attack, the blast, the mission, the work, the dedication… People People, a man, the unit, the victims, authorities, civilians, the military… Time The time, the day Place The location, the area, the site Others Information, thoughts Table 10 – References of general words observed in selected data Interestingly, almost all of these general words occur in the bodies of the texts Actually, among 35 occurrences of cohesive general words (holding 7.13% of all reiteration occurrences), only two are found in the lead extracted below: (24) At least 20 Iraqis, one U.S soldier killed by insurgent bombs BAGHDAD, Iraq - Insurgents using suicide and roadside bombs killed at least 21 people, including a U.S soldier, on Thursday in the latest attacks aimed at wrecking Iraq‘ s constitutional referendum next week (CNN, Oct 6, 2005) The fact that the body is the position for almost cohesive general words to occur is rather understandable when in the lead, the majority of reiterations of key words in the headline is carried out via repetitions (as studied in the prior sections) Moreover, while the lead has only little content words in the headline to hold reiterations, the body can reiterate much more referents both in the lead and the headline Most common are the general words used to refer back to the entire event that is the central content of the text They not refer to some 41 separated lexical item but to the contents of previous parts of the text mentioning the event, usually the headlines and the leads For examples: (25) U.S soldier killed BAGHDAD (CNN) In northern Baghdad, a roadside bomb hit a U.S Army patrol in northern Baghdad, killing one soldier, said military spokesman Sgt 1st Class David Abrams That attack raised to 1,945 the number of U.S military members who have died since the war began in 2003, according to an Associated Press count…(CNN, Oct 6, 2005) (26) U.S soldiers killed in bombing, attack BAGHDAD (CNN) Three U.S soldiers died Wednesday in Iraq, two in a roadside bomb and the third in an improvised explosive device (IED) and small arms fire attack, the military said Thursday (…) Both incidents were under investigation, the military said The soldiers' names were withheld pending notification of relatives The soldiers' deaths bring the number of U.S troops to die in Iraqi to 2,004 (Posted 5:06 a.m.) (CNN, Nov 4, 2005) Apart from the whole events, the lexical items expressing the detailed information given in leads and bodies also reiterated in form of general words For examples: (27) Soldiers from B Troop, 1st Squadron, 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment discovered a very large weapons cache Oct 10 in the Abu Ghraib district (CNN, Oct 11, 2005) The unit had been conducting cordon-and-search operations in the neighborhood and was just about to leave, but—acting on a hunch— they remained at the site for another two hours, digging for buried munitions 42 In this example, the important details of the event – time and location – are first given in long phrases Repeating these phrases not only takes more space but also make the paragraph sound boring The general words „ unit‟ and ‗ site‟ , in this case, replace them successfully, making the paragraphs cohesive Contrary to the claim by some linguists that general words are cohesive only when they have the same referent as that of the items previously occurring, the survey find occasions in which general superordiates are cohesively used even when there is no identical reference Take this example: (28) A roadside bomb that missed a passing U.S military convoy killed seven Iraqis and wounded one south of Baghdad Tuesday (…) while a homicide car bomb at police headquarters in Tikrit killed six The victims in the roadside bomb explosion were traveling in a minibus in Yussifiyah, 15 kilometers (9 miles) south of Baghdad, when the blast occurred, said the director of the town‘ s hospital, Dawoud al-Taie Little other information was known about the Tikrit blast U.S military spokesman Maj Neal O‘ Brien said six were killed, while police sources said 12 were wounded (CNN, October 7, 2005) All of the content of the first paragraphs is obviously information of some kind The item „ information‟ underlined in the last paragraph, therefore, can be interpreted as a general superordinate of whatever information appears before That is to say it is used cohsively Despite that truth, one cannot say that the item „ information‟ refers to the information conveyed in previous paragraphs, i.e there is any identical reference However, it should be agreed that such cases are not very common in formal discourse Actually, above is unique one among 35 occurrences of cohesive general words observed in selected news-in-brief texts 43 2.5 Reiteration with identical and non-identical reference As proved in some instances of the previous section of the study, reiterations occur even whether there is identical reference for items or not However, the survey shows that the frequency rate between reiterations with identical reference (RWIR) and reiterations with non-identical reference (RWNR) is greatly uneven The inequality can be shown in the table below: RWIR RWNR 31 460 6.31% 93.69% Total occurrences 491 Table 11 – Reiterations with identical and non-identical reference For RWIR are of the great majority and many examples are given in prior parts, RWNR deserve better some mention here It is not out of assumption when the majority of RWNR found is not of any other category of content words but nouns (18/31, holding up 58.06%) Let us see this case: (29) Authorities initially said several suspected terrorists were killed in the strikes, part of a series of raids on suspected terrorist safe houses Three safe houses were destroyed by air strikes, the military said (CNN, Nov 4, 2005) Obviously, what ‗ series of raids‟ refers to is more than ‗ the strikes‟ mentioned before On the other hand, ‗ Three safe houses‟ only refers to a part of what ‗ suspected terrorist safe houses‟ refers to Despite this lack of identical reference, the reiterations are still felt cohesive Reiteration of verbs ranks second after nouns 12 verb-reiterations are counted among the total 31, taking up 38.71%) They are mostly repeated but to refer to different action For example: (30) Three U.S soldiers died Wednesday in Iraq (…) The soldiers' deaths 44 bring the number of U.S troops to die in Iraq to 2,004 (31) In the incident that killed an Iraqi official, a bomb outside Baghdad's Yarmuk Hospital killed Ihsan Kareem, a high-ranking official (…) An hour later, (…), another bomb killed three civilians, and in Mosul, a rocket explosion near the Mosul Chamber of Commerce killed another man (CNN, Nov 4, 2005) In (29), the verb ‗ died‘ is repeated by ‗ to die‘ and the meaning of these verbs are identical As far as reference is concerned, however, they obviously refer to different actions, attributed to different agents It is alike to the verbs ‗ killed‘ in (30) Of reoccurrences of „ killed‟ , only the second belongs to RWIR The third and forth occurrences of „ killed‟ are used to refer to actions, different from the action the first and second refer to, and even different from each other As also can be seen from (29) and (31), not only does RWNR occur in repetitions but it does occur in other forms as well, such as synonyms (strikes – series of raids, U.S soldiers – U.S troops), general words (Iraqi official, three civilians – another man) One occurrence of superordinate (one soilder – U.S military members) is also observed in the following: (32) In northern Baghdad, a roadside bomb hit a U.S Army patrol in northern Baghdad, killing one soldier…That attack raised to 1,945 the number of U.S military members who have died since the war began in 2003…(CNN, Oct 6, 2005) In brief, whether or not there is the same referent to co-refer to, reiteration may still be performed as a cohesive device between lexical items As far as lexical categories are concerned, nouns and noun phrases are of the one that gets most RWNR and then come verbs, while other categories take an 45 insignificant rate In terms of types, repetitions hold the largest part Other types share together the minority All is shown in this table: Criteria Occurrences Lexical categories N V Adj 18 12 58.06% 38.71% 3.23% Rate Total occurrences Types Adv Rep Syn/Near Sup Gen 18 58.06% 22.58% 6.46% 12.90% 31 Table 12 – Summary of Reiteration with non-identical reference N: Nouns V: verbs Adj: Adjectives Adv: Adverbs Rep: Repetitions Syn/Near: Synonyms/Near-synonyms Sup: Superordinates Gen: General words Chapter 3: Application As the introductory part of this study ever presupposes, the study of reiteration as a cohesive device in news-in-brief on Iraq War in English press is helpful for English teachers and learners The study can be applied into some different activities to accompany them with teaching and learning English First, the findings of the thesis prove that paying attention to 46 reiteration in written discourse makes readers better realize the coherence among discourse units Thus, a good ability of decoding reiteration as a cohesive device can increase the speed and enhance the comprehension of reading activities, particularly with discourses in English press Second, the study can also be useful in teaching and learning productive skills, especially in writing because it points out which conditions can assure certain kinds of reiteration to be effectively carried out Following are some suggested practical activities that can make learners more aware of the importance of reiteration in discourse as wall as improve their ability of recognizing and creating cohesion via reiteration Activity 1: Decide what kind of reiteration is each pair of underlined words in following sentences: Repetition, synonymy, superordinate or general words: He was a lonely boy The rich neighbors‘ boys never let him join their games There‘ s his daughter She is a very obedient child He gave the beggar a 5-pence coin The poor man looked up to him with grateful eyes John was asked to finish this work in days but he soon learnt that it would take at least a week to complete The parliament has just completed the draft of new constitution The charter will be put into a referendum Activity 2: Point out the links of synonyms in the following texts: Britain made a ‗ profit‘ of nearly £2.5 billion from the poorest countries in 1990, according to figures released today by Christian Aid The income from debt repayments was that much higher that the total expended on aid from all sources 47 Ten year ago there was a net outflow from Britain to the third World of £5.3 billion [17:20] Some aristocrats argue that their behaviour is bad because of their position in society ‗ I feel confused about my destiny,‘ admits Jamie Blandford ‗ I have always resented having my life mapped out for me.‘ Royal expert Ingrid Seward agrees that people in high places attract more pressure [17:20] Activity3: Find the links between the superordinates and hyponyms in following texts: Ten solicitors are facing criminal charges of defrauding the legal aid fund, and a further others are under investigation The frauds have been unearthed by a four-man Legal Aid Board team of three former police officers The unit was set up in 1980 after spot checks revealed a number of cases of inflated or improper billing [17:17] In 1295, Good King Vaclav II Bohemia founded the town of Pilsen He was certainly an affable older ruler and granted numerous privileges to the town’s inhabitants One of these being to brew beer [17:16] Activity 4: Find the links between general words and hyponyms in the following texts: Surveys show that one of the most common causes of absence from work is back pain Four out of five people will suffer from severe and incapacitating back pain at some stage in their life How does the problem first arise? [17:20] ‗ And what about interviewing, because you interview a number like, well, the Prime minister or the Chancellor of Exchequer Is that an easy thing to do, and how difficult is it when you interview people that you don‘ t particularly agree with or who get difficult with you during an interview?‘ [17:21] Activity 5: Find out the items that are reiterated by underlined ones in the following text and label them: 48 Saddam targeted in bombing Tuesday, April 8, 2003 WASHINGTON (CNN) Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and other senior Iraqi officials may have been in a building in a residential area of Baghdad bombed by the U.S military, U.S officials have said The U.S military dropped four 2,000-pound bombs on the building Monday based on "time-sensitive intelligence" that some senior Iraqi officials, possibly including Saddam and his two sons, were there, U.S officials said early Tuesday The building was in the Mansour neighborhood, where CNN sources said a blast killed nine people and wounded 13 others Monday Central Command said that at p.m Baghdad time (1100 GMT), a B-1 bomber dropped four satellite-guided 2,000-pound GBU 31/32-JDAM bombs on the target, and that it was struck "very hard." Activity 6: Find out all the reiteration occurrences and label them (repetition, synonym, near-synonym, superordinate or general words) in this text: Nine bodies identified as U.S soldiers Sunday, April 6, 2003 Posted: 0554 GMT DOHA, Qatar (CNN) The U.S Central Command said Saturday that nine bodies found during Wednesday's raid to rescue U.S POW Pfc Jessica Lynch were U.S soldiers previously listed as missing in action Among them was the first woman soldier killed in the war All nine were part of a convoy ambushed March 23 in Nasiriya in southern Iraq when Lynch was taken captive by Iraqi forces Lynch, 19, was rescued by U.S forces early Wednesday from a Nasiriya hospital Eight soldiers were members of Lynch's 507th Maintenance Company of Fort Bliss, Texas The other soldier was with the 3rd Division Support Battalion of Fort Stewart, Georgia, said Maj Gen.l Victor E Renuart Jr at a Central Command briefing 49 Part C: Conclusion Review of the major findings Cohesion in discourse is one of the major interests for linguists when they work in discourse analysis Among different cohesive devices, reiteration is the one that receives a great amount of discussion in many well-known theoretical works by many linguists When dealing with general theories involving discourse analysis, this study adopts the consensus concepts introduced by different linguists The practical task in the thesis is to analyze news-in-brief texts on Iraq war taken from CNN online It is carried out mainly based on theoretical framework of Halliday and Hasan (1976) which classifies reiteration into four main types (repetition, synonym and nearsynonym, superordinate and general word) and which supposes that reiteration may occur either with or without identical reference As far as the separated parts of the news-in-brief text are concerned, surveys show that reiteration in headlines is mighty avoided so it only takes an extremely small proportion (0.2%) of total 491 reiteration occurrences 50 24,85% of reiteration in leads, where almost all content words in headlines are reiterated, is a quite considerable rate for the reality that an average lead takes up only 18.21% of an average text‘ s length The rest, and also the major (74.95%), are found in bodies of texts, where details of main contents are most fully provided From the aspect of classification, surveys‘ results deserve separate displays The investigation acknowledges repetition as the most frequently used form, accounting for 65,37% Among repetition occurrences, nouns are most preferable when adjectives are the least usual to be reiterated At the second usage rate after repetition is synonym and near-synonym that together take up 21.18% and the preference between these two categories are almost insignificant (49.04% vs 50.96%) Between synonymy based on linguistic knowledge and synonymy based on factual knowledge, the former takes up an enormously large proportion (95.19% vs 4.81%) Out of our presupposition, superordinates take the gentlest proportion (6.11%) among which nouns and noun phrases are most frequently reiterated (76.7%), then come verbs (13.3%), finally adverbs (10%), and no adjective reiteration is employed Not much greater than superordinates, general words take up the last proportion of reiteration (7,13%) As far as reference is concerned, the study uncovers that reiteration with identical reference is overwhelmingly employed in comparison with reiteration with non-identical reference (93.69% vs 6.31%) For these phenomena, some tentative explanations are made under the awareness of both linguistic and non-linguistic factors 51 The study, apart from the theoretical aims, is intended to make contribution to English teaching and learning The activities given in application chapter are only a few examples for how the thesis can be applied Suggestions for further works This study can server as a pioneering work for further researches such as: - Reiteration as cohesive device in English press compared with that in Vietnamese press - Reiteration as cohesive device in VietnamNet - studied under the sight of English – Vietnamese cross – culture - Reiteration as cohesive device in news stories and in feature stories in English press ... obviously information of some kind The item „ information‟ underlined in the last paragraph, therefore, can be interpreted as a general superordinate of whatever information appears before That is... evidenced by the findings of the survey that all general words in news -in- brief texts are the nouns involving the main information of the news They can be relatively grouped in the following table:... falling into the topic statement is relatively great (8/14 =) This fact results from the chief intended purpose of the lead: to restate in more details the main idea introduced in the headline In