Text Cohesion in English Scientific Texts Written by Saudi Undergraduate Dentistry Students: A Multimodal Discourse Analysis of Textual and Logical Relations in Oral Biology Texts

Abstract

This qualitative study examined multimodal cohesive devices in English oral biology texts by eight high-achieving Saudi English-as-a-foreign-language students enrolled in a Bachelor of Science Dentistry program. A Systemic Functional Multimodal Discourse Analysis (SF-MDA) of the textual and logical cohesive devices in oral biology texts was conducted, employing Halliday and Hasan’s cohesion analysis scheme. The findings showed that students used varied cohesive devices: lexical cohesion, followed by reference and conjunctions. Although ellipsis was minimally employed in the oral biology texts, its discipline-specific uses emerged: the use of bullet points and numbered lists that facilitate recall. The SF-MDA of cohesion in multimodal semiotic resources highlighted the processes underlying construction of conceptual and linguistic knowledge of cohesive devices in oral biology texts. The results indicate that oral biology discourse is interdisciplinary, including a number of subfields in biology. The SF-MDA of pictorial oral biology representations indicates that they include instances of cohesive devices that illustrate and complement verbal texts. The results indicate that undergraduate students need to be provided with a variety of multimodal high-cohesion texts so that they can successfully extend underlying conceptual and logical meaning-making relations.

Cohesive Devices Used in Argumentative Essays by Undergraduate EFL Learners

“…The use of grammatical cohesion became problematic for learners even though the cohesive devices used in academic discourse either enhanced the writing quality or improved learners' learning experience (Alyousef, 2021). The problems mostly done by learners were conjunctions and references in their argumentative essays.…”

The Wake of Modernistic Tourism in the Kingdom: A Multimodal Analysis of Online Discourse

“…Moving from the global to the immediate context, the researchers within the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia have extensively applied multimodal discourse analysis theories and tools for a variety of text analyses, specifically within the last few years (Al-Ghamdi & Albawadi, 2020; Alsalem; 2019; Alyousef, 2021;Taher, 2019). These research studies focus on diverse issues like female representation in commercial magazine images (Taher, 2019), the exploration of linguistic and semiotic features of TV commercials (Alsalem, 2019), sociocultural placing, and representation of visuals and texts related to Covid-19 in social media posts (Al-Ghamdi & Albawardi, 2020), implicit persuasiveness of political content in Mubarak's and Algaddafi's speeches during Arab Spring (Alduhaim, 2019).…”

Exploring the Realization of Cohesion as a Resource of Text Texture on Undergraduate Students’ Academic Writing

“…The significance of cohesive devices in both written and spoken texts cannot be overstated, as they play a crucial role in creating semantic connections within a text (Halliday 2014;Alyousef, 2021;Kifti et al, 2022;Tabari and Johnson, 2023;Ngongo, 2023;Galparvan, 2024). These devices, when applied at the grammatical level, ensure a text's coherence, aiding listeners or readers in comprehending its intended message.…”

“…The analysis incorporates Halliday (1985), Bloor and Bloor's (1995), and Halliday andMatthiessen's (2004, 2014) frameworks on cohesive devices, including reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction, and lexical cohesion. Previous research by experts such as Ngongo (2013Ngongo ( , 2015Ngongo ( , 2023, Alyousef (2021), and others have laid the groundwork for understanding lexical and grammatical cohesion in both spoken and written texts, providing a foundation for this study.…”