The Impact of Explicit Teaching of Lexical Cohesive Devices in English writing at Sentence Level (A Case Study: (University of Kassala)

Abstract

This study investigates the use of English lexical cohesive devices by students enrolled in advanced academic writing course at University of Kassala. The data were quantitatively analyzed to examine the correct and incorrect usage of different lexical connectors in expository texts. Further examination of the lexical errors revealed the difficulties encountered and the strategies learners used to deal with lexical problems. An understanding of such strategies would illuminate appropriate approaches for teaching FL writing and vocabulary. The researchers constructed a test to assess the use of lexical items in students’ writing. The test contained four areas of evaluation, synonymy, hyponymy, antonymy and inclusion. The findings supported the hypotheses that the students’ writing demonstrated weak lexical cohesion due to lack of connector variety, inappropriate use of connectors, and long distance between cohesive ties in a chain. The results indicated that the subjects had limited vocabulary knowledge that did not enable them to express their ideas clearly, precisely, and made them prone to produce lexical errors. Such inadequate lexical knowledge did not enable them to produce well-structured texts. Therefore, it seems that second language instruction needs to focus on expanding the lexical knowledge of foreign language learners as well as familiarizing them with academic rhetorical features to help them to succeed in English academic settings. In addition, writing teachers need to engage their students in conscious learning tasks that are designed to make them aware of the gaps in their vocabulary knowledge and provide them with more opportunities to encounter new words in different semantic contexts.