Analysis of cohesion and coherence in pre-service teachers’ expository essays

Abstract

This study explores the way cohesive patterns are distributed in expository essays of students in Evangelical Presbyterian College of Education, Bimbilla, and compares the relationship between the occurrence of the devices and text quality. The study further describes and explains the problems encountered by the students in creating cohesion and the causes of the problems. The current research adopted the sequential exploratory mixed research approach involving text analysis, semi-structured interview, questionnaire and observation as data collecting tools. Sixty essays were analyzed using Halliday and Hasan (1976) cohesion model and augmented with observation of sub-categories of the devices. Ideas were solicited from five tutors while twenty students were granted interview. The results of this study show that the students were able to effect cohesive relations in all the five types of cohesive devices. Statistically, reiteration was the most dominant with38.94%, with repetition as the dominant used sub-category. Conjunction was second with 35.85%, reference 18.74%, collocation 4.87%, Substitution 0.86% and ellipsis was 0.71%.The students achieved text coherence through the deployment of the cohesive devices, the development of themes, and the generic structure. Problems encountered during the use of cohesive devices were overuse of repetition, inadequate use of synonyms and collocation, misappropriating of conjunctions, misappropriating of reference and inadequate mastery of transition of ideas. The causes of the problems were identified as poor reading skills, serial verbs construction, intralingual limitations, interlingual sources: interference and developmental errors. It is recommended that the problems could be minimized with the use of awareness creation strategies coupled with progressive activities, embedded teaching and tutors adhering to students‘ errors and providing comprehensive feedback to them.