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Cohesion and Coherence in Compositions in Malay and English

The American University Washington, D.C.

Empirical studies on cohesion in written discourse of native and non-native speakers of English indicate that judgments of writing quality may depend on overall coherence in content, organization, and style rather than on the quantity of cohesion (Witt & Faigley, 1981; Connor, 1984; Lindsay, 1984; Scarcella, 1984; Schneider, 1985). However, the studies concerning non-native speakers of English have not included data from the first language nor controlled the language and cultural background of ESL writers.

This study examines cohesion in expository essays written in Malay and in English by native speakers of both languages and in ESL by Malaysian writers. Sample compositions evaluated holistically as "good" or "weak" in quality were submitted by Malaysian teachers of com position in Malay and by American teachers of native and non-native speakers of English. T-tests performed on the data obtained from a cohesion analysis of text (Halliday and Hasan, 1976) indicate no dif ferences in the amount of cohesion between "good" and "weak" com positions written in Malay by native speakers (20) or in English by native (20) and Malay speakers (20).

"Good" compositions written in Malay have more intersentence semantic ties (e.g., reiteration and collocation) than "weak" compositions. However, "good" compositions written in English by native speakers have more intersentence syntactic ties (e.g., reference and conjunction) than "weak" compositions. The development of content in the com positions written in Malay in comparison to those written in English by native speakers indicate a crosscultural variance in conditions for quality. In addition, compositions in ESL demonstrate a developmental stage in the usage of syntactic cohesive links and the organization of material, reflecting previous writing experience in the Malay language.

RELC Journal, Vol. 23, No. 2, 1-17 (1992)
DOI: 10.1177/003368829202300201


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