This item is non-discoverable
AN INVESTIGATION OF THE USE OF CONJUNCTIVE COHESIVE DEVICES IN EMIRATI STUDENTS’ ARGUMENTATIVE ESSAYS
Date
2020-02
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
This study was conducted to scrutinize the use of conjunctions as cohesive devices in Emirati
students’ argumentative essays. The study specifically purported to investigate how solid the correlation is
between employing conjunctions and producing high quality written texts. The context was one of Ras
AlKhaimah Colleges, and the participants were one teacher and six Female students who were enrolled in the
English Foundation Program. Qualitative and quantitative data were collected from students’ writing samples
evaluation forms and through an in-depth interview with the classroom teacher. The data were analyzed in view
of Halliday and Hasan’s (1976) taxonomy of cohesive devices, specifically their classification of conjunctions. In
contrast to many studies that emphasized the close connection between using conjunctions and achieving high
scores in writing, the findings of this study did not indicte such correlation. The findings also showed that
additive conjunctions were found to be the most frequently used type, whereas temporal conjunctions were found
to be the least used type. Moreover, two problems were found regarding students’ use of conjunctions: 1)
adversative conjunctions seemed problematic, and 2) among the overall array of conjunctions, ‘and’ was
particularly overused. Although limited to one school, this study is significant as it disvalidated the
long-established belief that the use of conjunctions is an index to a high score in writing.