Cohesion Devices in Relation to Quality of Engineering Students’ Genre-Based Writings

Abstract

Writing skill is one of the four language skills in learning English in EFL context. In writing, cohesive
devices are used to establish the links among the ideas in a sentence and paragraph. This study was aimed at
investigating IT Del engineering students’ use of cohesive devices in genre based writing and the relationship
between the number of cohesive devices used and writing quality. There were 30 writings selected out of 50
compositions written by the engineering students at IT Del. The quantitative analysis was performed to
explore the results. The findings revealed that the students applied a variety of cohesive devices in their
English compositions, among which reference category had the highest percentage, followed by lexical and
conjunction categories. Furthermore, it was found that there is no significant relationship between the number
of cohesive ties used and the quality of writing. The results have some important implications for learning
English as a Foreign Language.