Cohesion Analysis of L2 Writing: The Case of Iranian Undergraduate EFL Learners

Abstract

This study aimed at investigating the most frequent cohesive errors committed by Iranian undergraduate EFL learners
at different levels of proficiency as well as the sources of cohesive errors. An overall number of 67 undergraduate students at
Shiraz Azad University participated in this study. To have three groups of learners with different proficiency levels, Oxford
Placement Test 1B1 (Allan, 1985) was administered. To achieve the objectives of the study, the participants were given a writing
task requiring them to write an approximately 200-word narrative composition. Then, the compositions were scored based on the
taxonomy developed by Halliday and Hasan (1976). Finally, the data were analyzed through appropriate procedures using
quantitative methods. Regarding the frequencies and percentages of errors it was found that low-level learners' most frequent
errors were involved in references (20), followed by errors in lexical (14), and conjunctive cohesion (1). Besides, the findings
showed that errors in references were the most common (17), followed by errors in lexical (13), and conjunction cohesion (2) in
the mid-level learners' narrative compositions and, finally, the high-level learners' most frequent errors were involved in lexical
cohesion (17), references (14), conjunction cohesion (3), and substitution (1).This study also allowed for an examination of the
sources of cohesive errors. It was found that errors in the use of relative pronouns, conjunctions, along with different forms of
repetition appeared because of the incomplete knowledge of the learners—intra-lingual causes. Furthermore, in this study, the
errors in the use of personal-, possessive-pronouns, demonstratives and collocations were among the inter-lingual causes of
errors.