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Discourse in Writing
by Emma Worrall
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Why do students need to understand and use discourse?
As a teacher, I have found that most students' writing at
the FCE level tends to lack a clear structure and they often
lack a sense of cohesion. At sentence level there are often
coherence and accuracy problems but overall the students manage
to convey the main message. White and Arndt (1991:4) say "readers
expect writers to use language which is clear, unambiguous,
and appropriate to the context and type of text concerned".
They also say that if writers fail to observe accepted writing
conventions they "produce writing which is unsatisfactory
and ineffective" (White and Arndt 1991:4). Thornbury
says (1997: 140) "As readers, we assume that the organisation
of the text is not arbitrary, but that it serves to convey
the writer's intention- that it makes the writer's intention
coherent". This brings us to the question of the target
reader. As many students need English for their work it is
important to recognise the target reader and what knowledge
those readers share with the writer and how much of that knowledge
is exclusive to only the writer. We must then consider not
only the clear linking of the information of written work
but also clear structure, punctuation, paragraphs etc. But,
unfortunately, from the point of view of the students and
the teacher in a language classroom, Nunan says (1991: 88)
that when students do writing,
"teachers tend to view the resulting texts as final
products to evaluate,
which conveys to the students the message that the function
of writing is to produce texts for teachers to evaluate, not
to communicate meaningfully with another person".
It is up to the teacher to convey to the students that they
must consider the target reader of any written work that they
produce and to encourage 'good' writing habits. In the case
of the FCE, students have to learn to write a cohesive, coherent
text using different styles. Students need to be able to plan,
draft and redraft their texts in order to be proficient in
writing skills. Nunan says that skilled writers will revise
their writing at all levels of lexis, sentence and discourse
so writing classes should not just be concerned with the "mechanics
of grammar, spelling, punctuation and vocabulary" ( Nunan
1991: 90).
Nunan (1990) concludes that writing as a skill is difficult
for a lot of people in L1 let alone foreign learners of a
language writing in L2. So, although most people will have
some difficulties in writing in L2, it is the role of the
teacher to guide the learners looking at writing both as a
product (where the learner imitates, copies and transforms
models of correct language) and as a process (i.e. the cognitive
processes which competent writer go through in order to achieve
their objectives in a text).
Problems with discourse and writing
One of problems I have noticed in my students written work
is the lack of or misuse of discourse markers. There are various
theories of this which I shall now address. It has been suggested
by Crewe, Wright and Young (1985: 61) that many linkers are
"abstract and opaque text organizers and not fixed, concrete
lexical items". In theory, writers may make any links
between the stages of their writing as long as it makes sense
to them. But, what happens when the expectations of the reader
and the writer do not coincide? As Crewe says "there
is a communication breakdown on the grounds of 'illogicality'"
(Crewe 1990:316). He says we could quite easily resolve an
incomprehensible link by simply ignoring it or by replacing
it. Several studies conducted (for example in Cohen et al,
1979) have shown that ESL readers encounter difficulties when
dealing with cohesive links and that readers constantly reformulate
what they have read in order to make sense of it. However,
some studies suggest that, although linking devices can improve
the coherence of a text, ESL students will often leave them
out of their writing altogether rather than risk confusing
the reader. This is something that many of my colleagues and
I have experienced, especially with exam classes. If no linking
devices exist then the reader can, in most cases, supply the
linking devices based on their own 'schemata' of the topic
or situation presented. So, here we are left with the problem
of the actual relevance of discourse markers to ESL students
when both non-native and native English speakers are able
to process texts which do not contain any linking devices.
Some of the problems students have with discourse markers
are outlined by W.J.Crewe (1990). Students often confuse discourse
markers. It does not help when they are taught lists of them
in the classroom as in their attempts to use a variety of
discourse markers they often unwittingly reorient the whole
structure of the argument. I must admit I have attempted to
teach my students discourse markers in this way! Equally,
gap fill exercises, he says, become meaningless when we realise
that "the same lexical item may have a range of semantic
values" (Crewe 1990: 319), which does not address the
issue of the fact that alternative lexical items "might
represent different or illogical progressions of the argument".
Here, Dubin and Olshtain (in Zamel 1984:112) say "The
most important characteristic of cohesion is the fact that
it does not constitute a class of items but rather a set of
relations". Often, students rely too much on connectives
and in doing so they are apparently imposing a logicality
on their writing where actually there is no logicality. Thus
the cohesion and coherence may be unstable. Just because a
writer's work contains logical connectives does not mean that
the text will be logical. As Harnett says (1986:143)
"Cohesive ties do not create relationships(although
they can stimulate their invention); rather they express cohesive
relationships that already exist in the writer's thinking.
Cohesion reflects mental processes which both writers and
readers perform. Although cohesive, devices are visible signs
of the relationships that they signal, they are best only
indicators of them. A cohesive device can mislead readers
if it signals a relationship that is not intended or has multiple
interpretations".
Thornbury (1997: 126) reiterates this by saying that "Cohesion
alone is not enough to make a text coherent". Texts have
an internal logic, which the reader recognises even without
the aid of explicit cohesive devices. Students need to be
able to analyse the 'deep structure' of a text as there are
a number of other linguistic devices that affect the extent
to which groups of sentences hold together and form a complete
and cohesive text such as reference words (e.g. pronoun reference,
article reference, ellipsis etc) lexical sets, lexical repetition
as well as conjunctions. It is not sufficient to try to make
ones writing cohesive (or appear cohesive) by simply using
a 'sprinkling' of discourse markers. In fact, as Crewe points
out, students sometimes over-use discourse markers in an attempt
to make their writing seem more 'professional'.
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