JHASS
A Comparative Study of the Frequency of the Cohesive Devices in Argumentative Writing by Non-English-Majors and Native Speakers
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Abstract
Various factors could affect writing quality, and the use of cohesive devices is presumably one of them. To investigate the frequency of cohesive devices used by Chinese college students and native English speakers and the relation between the frequency of cohesive devices and writing quality, based on cohesion theory, this study compared the frequency of cohesive devices contained in each T-unit in 120 writing samples. Through AntConc 4.2.4, TreeTagger 3.0, L2SCA, Mann-Whitney test, and Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient analysis, the frequency of cohesive devices was counted, and their relations to writing quality were rated. It was found that: (1) there were significant differences in the frequency of reference and conjunction used by the freshmen and native speakers. (2) Only the frequency of conjunction was weakly related to writing quality. The reasons for the differences mainly involve a colloquial tendency in written language, the native transfer of Chinese, students’ poor critical thinking ability, the characteristics of Chinese and English, limited vocabulary, and weak ability of paraphrasing.
Keywords
Comparative study; cohesive devices; argumentative writing; non-English-major freshmen; native speakers
References
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How to cite this paper
A Comparative Study of the Frequency of the Cohesive Devices in Argumentative Writing by Non-English-Majors and Native Speakers
How to cite this paper: Ningxin Zhang, Zimeng Ma. (2026) A Comparative Study of the Frequency of the Cohesive Devices in Argumentative Writing by Non-English-Majors and Native Speakers. Journal of Humanities, Arts and Social Science, 10(7), 812-817.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.26855/jhass.2026.07.012
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