Exploring new insights into the role of cohesive devices in written academic genres

Tabari, Mahmoud Abdi; Johnson, Mark D.

doi:10.1016/j.asw.2023.100749

Cited by 14 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…Moving forward, AI-detection tools can draw on the enormous amount of research work done on different genres and incorporate distinctive features into the algorithm. Recent examples include studies on cohesive devices in narrative and argumentative texts (Tabari & Johnson, 2023), lexical complexity in scientific letters (Zhou et al, 2023), and the use of the passive voice in research articles in the sciences and humanities (Leong, 2021a), among many others. A genre-based approach, that is to say, is crucially needed for detection results to be more reliable.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Clause complexing in research-article abstracts: Comparing human- and AI-generated texts

Leong

2023

ExELL

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The ability of chatbots to produce plausible, human-like responses raises questions about the extent of their similarity with original texts. Using a modified version of Halliday’s clause-complexing framework, this study compared 50 abstracts of scientific research articles from Nature with generated versions produced by Bard, ChatGPT, and Poe Assistant. None of the chatbots matched the original abstracts in all categories. The only chatbot that came closest was ChatGPT, but differences in the use of finite adverbial clauses and –ing elaborating clauses were detected. Incorporating distinct grammatical features in the algorithms of AI-detection tools is crucially needed to enhance the reliability of their results. A genre-based approach to detecting AI-generated content is recommended.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Clause complexing in research-article abstracts: Comparing human- and AI-generated texts

Leong

2023

ExELL

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“…Although there are different types of paragraph writing (e.g., descriptive, argumentative, expository, narrative, process) (Savage & Shafiei, 2007), to achieve textual linkage within the paragraph, the topic of the paragraph and its supporting ideas need to be connected to allow the reader to perceive their semantic relationships. Research has shown that use of cohesive devices enhances the quality of the written text (e.g., Crossley & McNamara, 2016;Liu & Braine, 2005) as its readability depends on how the semantic relations are established within it beside the reader's background knowledge (Tabari & Johnson, 2023).…”

Section: Cohesionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Use of Cohesive Devices in Paragraph Writing by Efl Students at English Language Centers in Vietnam

Tuan,

Trang,

Nhu

2023

JFS

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This research explores Vietnamese EFL students’ use of cohesive devices in paragraph writing. Eighty Vietnamese EFL learners in four pre-intermediate English classes at two English centers in Vietnam each wrote five paragraphs about five different topics via learning blogs, yielding a corpus of 400 paragraphs. Halliday and Hasan’s (1976) cohesion taxonomy was employed to identify and analyse the cohesive devices used. The results of the study show that the learners employed a wide range of cohesive markers in their paragraphs and the large majority of them were grammatical in nature; lexical cohesive means were used to a much smaller extent and mainly involved repetition. Of the grammatical cohesive types, use of reference and conjunction was common while substitution and ellipsis were infrequently used. The study provides important pedagogical implications for EFL writing instruction in regard to the employment of cohesive devices in written language production.

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“…In other words, learners need to understand the expected features in the texts of a particular genre. For example, in addition to the commonly investigated features in academic writing such as coherence, cohesion and cohesive devices (e.g., Abdi Tabari and Johnson, 2023;Basturkmen and von Randow, 2014), citation practices are uniquely important in literature review writing (Badenhorst, 2018). While previous studies have explored citation types and forms, functions, and use of reporting verbs in academic writing (Hyland, 1999), it is not clear how English L2 l-students developed their citation practices as a result of learning.…”

Section: Development Of Literature Review Writing Skillsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessment of Academic ESL Writing in an Online Tutorial for Graduate Students

Li,

Makarova,

Wang

2023

ECEL

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English-as-a-second language (L2) graduate students often face challenges in developing academic writing skills, which can be exacerbated by a lack of timely support at institutional level. To help address this concern, an original set of online academic writing tutorials with a focus on the genre of Literature Review was designed by the authors to assist international graduate students enrolled in graduate programs in Canada. This paper introduces and compares multiple assessment tools employed in the online tutorial set for international English L2 graduate students. Our project pursues two major goals: First, to address the above-identified gap in Academic Writing support to English L2 graduate students with minimal costs and faculty involvement through designing the online tutorial set; second, to contribute to the research on e-learning of Academic English as a second language (ESL) writing in terms of developing integrated tools for online tutorial building, analysis of texts produced by learners, and assessment of learners’ writing progress. The research questions are: 1. What resources can be combined to develop an online tutorial set for graduate students at minimal costs? 2. How can the learners’ progress in academic ESL writing be assessed with different assessment tools? First, the paper describes the tools employed in the tutorial construction: MoodleCloud platform, H5P interactive e-book designed by the authors, surveys, and assessment tools. Second, we present and compare assessment tools employed to evaluate learners’ writing progress: Expert assessment with an analytic rubric, self-assessments of progress by the participants, and automated text analysis with corpus-based tools as reported in Li, Makarova, and Wang (2023). A comparison of the scores across the three assessment tools shows some discrepancies, which seems to suggest that combined tools yield a more comprehensive picture. The expert assessments and self-assessments demonstrate improvement in the writing quality over the course of the tutorial series, which are partially supported with the findings from corpus-based analysis of participants’ texts. The findings are of relevance to e-learning scholars, faculty, and administrators of English-medium universities with substantial intakes of international graduate students in Social Sciences and Education whose native languages are other than English.

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Exploring new insights into the role of cohesive devices in written academic genres

Cited by 14 publications

References 41 publications

Clause complexing in research-article abstracts: Comparing human- and AI-generated texts

Clause complexing in research-article abstracts: Comparing human- and AI-generated texts

Use of Cohesive Devices in Paragraph Writing by Efl Students at English Language Centers in Vietnam

Assessment of Academic ESL Writing in an Online Tutorial for Graduate Students

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