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Helping B2 learners recognize cohesive devices to

become more efficient readers

Word Count (2500)

Contents Page Number

1. Introduction 1

1.1 Why focus on cohesive devices for reading?

1.2 Scope

2. Analysis 1

2.1 Grammatical cohesion

2.1.1 Reference and co-reference

2.1.2 Substitution and ellipsis

2.1.2.1 Substitution

2.1.2.1.1 Substitution with ‘one’

2.1.2.1.2 Substitution with ‘do’

2.1.2.1.3 Substitution with ‘so’

2.1.2.2 Ellipsis

2.1.2.2.1 Verb ellipsis

2.1.2.2.2 VP ellipsis

2.1.2.2.3 Nominal ellipsis

2.2 Lexical cohesion and lexical chains

3. Teaching problems and suggestions 4

3.1 Sensitizing learners to ellipsis and substitution

3.2 Finding the lexical chains

3.3 Using literary texts to focus on reference

4. Conclusion 6

5. Bibliography 6

5.1 Research materials

5.2 Resource materials

6. Appendices 7-14

Helping B2 learners with cohesion for reading Chad Langford, Candidate number 007

1. Introduction

1.1 Why focus on cohesive devices for reading?

This Language Skills Assignment addresses ways to raise learners’ awareness of some basic features of cohesion in written discourse so as to guide them to greater fluency and independence as readers as well as to a general appreciation of the written medium.

Cohesion must be seen within the wider context of discourse (Halliday and Hasan, 1976). Discourse is best defined as meaning at the supra-sentential level, that is, beyond what can be observed at the ‘plain sense’ level (Nuttall, 2005) of individual clauses. Its relevance to reading is obvious: I am interested in helping learners to cope not with isolated sentences, but with stretches of authentic written text.

Cohesion, in turn, refers to the lexical and grammatical devices which conspire to make such stretches of text hang together. When fluent reading in their L1 takes place, readers are unaware that these mechanisms are operating – indeed, were they aware of them, reading would be far less fluent.

However, I feel my intermediate learners who are not yet fluent readers can begin to make better sense of a well-written text when they are trained to use these devices consciously. I have only recently started making wider use of this approach. I have noticed that my learners have never been trained to recognize cohesive devices, and I feel that their inefficiency as readers can be partially explained by their inability to use these devices effectively to chart their way through texts.

1.2 Scope

I limit the scope here to three subtopics subsumed under cohesion: co-reference, substitution/ellipsis and lexical chains. I have chosen not to treat what Halliday and Hasan (1976) refer to as conjunction, that is, the sign-posting of logical relations between sentences via overt discourse markers. This is because it is the one area of cohesion that my learners are aware of, and also because some positive transfer from their L1 (French) already seems to be taking place.

As for coherence – the fraternal twin brother of cohesion, so to speak – I will not address it at all. Indeed, Hoey (1991) posits that coherence is a far messier topic of inquiry and is the subject of debate among discourse specialists. Its usefulness for my learners, at least, is less immediate.

The readers I have in mind are motivated pre-university learners somewhere in the B2.1 band, enrolled in a 15-week, 60-hour course in general English.

2. Analysis

2.1 Grammatical cohesion

2.1.1 Reference and co-reference

Reference in its most general sense refers to the link between a linguistic expression – e.g. the NP [the boy] – and the extra-linguistic, real-world entity (e.g. a young male) that the expression refers to, the referent. It is most commonly achieved

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with the indefinite and definite articles (a(n) and the, respectively). Such extra-linguistic reference is called exophoric: it does not refer to anything within the text and thus is not immediately relevant to cohesion in the way that co-reference is.

Third-person personal pronouns (he/him; she/her; it; they/them), their corresponding possessive forms (his; her(s); its; their(s)) and the demonstratives (this/that; these/those) are key elements in textual co-reference, and thus an inextricable part of textual cohesion. These pronouns and determiners have no reference of their own, but rather inherit their reference from a preceding NP (anaphora: John called; he’s running late) or, less commonly, a following NP (cataphora: There she is, Miss America). This, that and it, furthermore, can refer to entire stretches of text rather than to an NP. In this case, what is being referred to is not always easily identifiable – the referent is a situation rather than an entity. The textual referent these pronouns point to can be somewhat subjective and difficult to pin down.

Full NPs, of course, can be co-referential as well. Flowerdew (2013) differentiates between general nouns (for humans and objects) and signalling nouns (for abstract notions), both of which commonly have endophoric reference (usually anaphoric), that is, within the text:

My fiancé will be paying child-support bills for the next 12 years. […] I love the man and his children dearly, but do not want to assume any financial responsibility for his difficulties. Newsweek, 7 May 2001

[T]he abductions demonstrated the naïveté of a constitutional assumption – namely, that neighboring countries automatically deserve Japan's trust.Newsweek, 26 December 2005

The system of reference is basic to the understanding of any text. Reference directs the reader to the world outside the text. Co-reference constantly points the reader forward and backward within the text.

2.1.2 Substitution and ellipsis

Substitution refers to the use of words such as one, do and so to replace another word or phrase (Flowerdew, 2013). Ellipsis (or ‘substitution-by-zero’ (Thornbury, 2005: 22)) refers to a similar phenomenon by which a word or phrase is eliminated entirely. The kind of ellipsis I am interested in here is ‘verbatim’ ellipsis (McCarthy, 1991: 43), where the word-for-word ellipted element can be found elsewhere in the text, usually anaphorically. In fact, both ellipsis and substitution make use of anaphora, rendering a text more elegant and communication more economical.

I have chosen the following illustrative examples of substitution and ellipsis because I feel they are quite representative and speak for themselves. They are all authentic.

2.1.2.1 Substitution

2.1.2.1.1 Substitution with ‘one’

There are two markets in Leeds city centre. The main one is Leeds City Market […] on Vicar Lane.

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www.wikipedia.org

2.1.2.1.2 Substitution with ‘do’

Our good friends told us that we just ‘had to’ join them […] for one of their regular visits to Steiny's. So we recently did.www.tripadvisor.com

2.1.2.1.3 Substitution with ‘so’

Is It Weird to Breast-Feed a 3-Year-Old? Mayim Bialik Doesn’t Think SoTime, 27 September 2011

2.1.2.2 Ellipsis

2.1.2.2.1 Verb ellipsis

‘[I]nstitutions […] can advise us – and we them – on the wide range of issues involved […].’www.trendmicro.co.uk

2.1.2.2.2 VP ellipsis

‘Penn East says it will restore the land to what it was before the pipeline was put in. Not only won’t they, they can’t.’www.huffingtonpost.com

2.1.2.2.3 Nominal ellipsis

‘There are many ways of doing this, but one of the best is to roll over onto your stomach and then to go on all fours.’British National Corpus

2.2 Lexical cohesion and lexical chains

It is not only grammatical features that give a text cohesion. Indeed, a text derives much of its personality and texture from its lexis. Any number of variables – genre and theme (or topic), of course, but also register and intended readership – contribute to a text’s overall lexical content.

Semantically or thematically related lexemes form lexical fields. The distribution of these lexemes links one sentence to another but can also span an entire text. Lexeme-to-lexeme links create interweaving lexical chains (Thornbury, 2005). These chains are made up exclusively of content words and are rich in examples of repetition, nominalization (Flowerdew, 2013; Nuttall also refers to ‘elegant variation’ (2005: 91)), as well as synonymy, hyponymy and the lesser-discussed meronymy (hierarchical whole-to-part relationships) (Murphy, 2003). A text’s overall cohesion owes a great deal to these lexical chains and the way they work together with co-reference.

Examples of lexical chains can be seen in document 3 (appendix), where I suggest and chart the lexical chains that help to form the fabric of a journalistic text I use with B2.1 learners.

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3. Teaching problems and suggestions

I have a fairly categorical opinion concerning the learning and teaching problems surrounding ESL/EFL reading in general: reading skills may be the one area where learners’ and teachers’ problems actually overlap. My learners nearly always approach a written text as though it were an exam; what they want is to find the correct answers. By defining a reading lesson essentially as one where learners answer content questions, teachers, including myself, exacerbate an already vicious circle, testing rather than teaching. Nuttall (2005) decries the pervasiveness of this practice in the classroom. While she agrees that the verification of comprehension is important, she points out that we cannot test learning before learning has taking place. The suggestions below, then, depart from the comprehension-heavy approach I have overused in the past.

3.1 Sensitizing learners to ellipsis and substitution

Identifying features of cohesion runs into problems when it comes to ellipsis, for here – contrary to the way we would treat discourse markers (however, consequently, etc.) – we are asking learners to identify something that has no surface manifestation. Thornbury (2005) proposes three useful tasks for identification/sensitization where many cohesive devices are treated concurrently (see appendix). Regretfully, there are only two examples of ellipsis in the tasks he provides. For that reason, I suggest that recourse to constructed texts is useful given that (1) authentic texts are not dense enough in examples of ellipsis; and (2) concise corpus examples, though authentic, are decontextualized, defeating the purpose of working on discourse in the first place. Document 2 (see appendix) is a constructed dialogue purposefully riddled with twenty examples of ellipsis and substitution with ‘do’. The text is taken from New Headway, Advanced. In contrast to Thornbury’s tasks, this text is rich in examples and provides a wide variety of semantic and syntactic contexts for ellipsis. In the appendix, I suggest further enriching the text with types of ellipsis not found in the exercise. Examples of substitution could be included as well.

Originally designed as a productive exercise, the text could either (1) be distributed to learners, who could identify cases of ellipsis and comment upon their use; or (2) be fully expanded by removing all instances of ellipsis and substitution, thereby demonstrating the unnatural quality of a text where these devices are absent. Learners would then make suggestions to improve the text via ellipsis/substitution. Subsequent work with Thornbury’s tasks gives a much larger vision of interactive cohesive features, but if ellipsis is to be treated rigorously, a denser flood of input than that provided by Thornbury’s tasks will be necessary initially.

3.2 Finding the lexical chains

The following teaching suggestion sensitizes learners to the usefulness of being aware of lexical fields and lexical chains throughout a text. It also makes uses of schemata and script activation (Carrell, 1983) and prediction (Smith, 1985), all of which are trademark features of a top-down approach to receptive skills capitalizing on what readers already know about the world and how their knowledge interacts with their understanding of a text.

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The authentic journalistic text used for this activity is found in the appendix (document 3). Before attacking the text, learners work in groups of three or four with a collection of cards (identical for each group) with lexemes from the text’s four major lexical fields: police investigation, animals, geography and family relations. Together, learners organize the lexemes into four categories and give each category a title. Orally, or on paper, learners predict what the story might be about based on the schemata activated and a script they all agree on. Learners then turn over the cards to see how many times each word occurs in the text and are told they can modify their narrative if they want.

The text is then distributed to the learners. It is important that there remain in the text a few lexemes from each field that are not on the cards. Learners skim the text, locating the words and creating four lexical chains by drawing lines. Different colours may be used. At the same time, they skim the text looking for additional words for each category. The exact lexical sets and chains developed by each group need not be the same. Finally, learners work their way through the text together and compare their version to the actual version.

The advantages of this activity are numerous: an authentic text is used; top-down strategies are exploited, thereby activating schemata and a chronological script of the events; lexical fields are addressed, and lexis potentially expanded for some learners; the skill of scanning is brought in; finally, it allows for an ultimate close reading of the text in a collaborative context. An end-of-the-lesson comprehension check in no way compromises the main goal, which is to enhance reading skills rather than to test learners.

3.3 Using literary texts to focus on reference

Bringing a literary text into the reading programme can be a risky business, and it requires careful planning. Texts that are not too challenging from a lexical point of view are preferable. Shirley Jackson’s short story ‘The Lottery’ fits the bill in this respect: the online Compleat Lexical Tutor software (www.lextutor.ca) not only reveals that over 85 per cent of the text’s lexis falls within the 1000 most common words in English, it also neatly categorizes less common lexis, facilitating the task for the teacher who wants to gloss items, pre-teach vocabulary, slightly simplify the text or hone in on what lexis can most easily be deduced from context (see Grellet’s (1981) exercises: pp. 28-42).

I suggest using a self-contained excerpt from this story (see appendix) to help learners to focus on reference. I first ask learners to focus on paragraph 1 and to identify how many adult men are mentioned (three). I then ask them to skim the text to find all instances of he–him–his and to comment briefly on the absence of she–her. Once learners have identified the NP referents of each anaphoric pronoun and determiner, I ask them to formulate a hypothesis as to why Mr Summers’ name is mentioned three times whereas the other two male characters are each mentioned only once. The point of this exercise is to sensitize learners to the fact that identical functional words in close proximity can have multiple referents, and that the repetition of Mr Summers name interacts closely with the referential pronouns, serving to prevent any sort of ambiguity as to who is being referred to in each case. Tangentially, instances of nominalization (the subject; the ritual) and hyponomy (paraphernalia, the box, the stool) in paragraphs 2 and 3 could be broached, as could the single case of non-referential it in paragraph 3.

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4. Conclusion

My decision to research the skill of reading for this LSA was calculated. Reading is not an aspect of my teaching that I have excelled at in the past. In my institution, other colleagues have expressed the same concern. The few lessons during which I have attempted to implement what I address here have been enlightening for my learners, but also for me.

Working through cohesion with my learners, I noticed something I had not expected: the purely intellectual side of getting a grasp on these devices is rewarding in and of itself. My learners were less passive readers; they found the challenge exciting, and it raised their self-esteem as adult learners. These lessons are a far cry from earlier comprehension-based lessons; these, I am confident, will play a lesser role in my syllabus design and lesson planning in the future and lead my learners to accord greater value to the transmission of meaning from mind (of writer) to mind (of reader) so aptly advocated by Nuttall (2005). It seems reasonable to assume that their skills as writers will improve concomitantly.

5. References

5.1 Research materials

Carrell, P.L. (1983a) ‘Some Issues in Studying the Role of Schemata, or Background Knowledge, in Second Language Comprehension.’ Reading in a Foreign Language, 1:81-92.

Flowerdew, J. 2013. Discourse in English Language Education. London: Routledge.Grellet, F. 1981. Developing reading skills: A practical guide to reading comprehension

exercises. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Halliday, M.A.K. and Hasan, R. 1976. Cohesion in English. London: Longman.Hoey, M. 1991. Patterns of lexis in text. Oxford: Oxford University Press.McCarthy, M. 1991. Discourse analysis for language teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.Murphy, M.L. 2003. Semantic relations and the lexicon: antonymy, synonymy, and other

paradigms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Nuttall, C. 2005. Teaching reading skills in a foreign language. Oxford: Macmillan.Smith, F. 1985. Reading (2nd ed). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Thornbury, S. 2005. Beyond the sentence: Introducing discourse analysis. London:

Macmillan.

5.2 Resource materials Jackson, S. 1948 (26 June). ‘The Lottery’, in The New Yorker magazine (26 June 1948).Soars, L. and Soars, J. 2004. New headway advanced, workbook. Oxford: Oxford University

Press. (see p. 5)

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6. Appendices

Document 1, from Thornbury (2005)

Document 2, ellipsis exercise from Soars and Soars (2004)

Document 3, article from The Guardian, 2008

Document 4, excerpt from Shirley Jackson’s ‘The Lottery’

Document 5, exercises from Grellet (1981)

Document 6, exercises from Grellet (1981)

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Document 1, Thornbury (2005) (see section 3.1)

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Document 2, from Soars and Soars (2004), p. 5 (see section 3.1)

Ed Hi, I’m Ed. You must be the new teacher.

Sue Yes, I (1) ___ (am) am the new teacher. My name’s Sue.

Ed Welcome to Lisbon.

Sue Thanks. Have you been living here long?

Ed I certainly (2 ) ___ (have) have been living here for long. Six years now.

Sue Oh, good. You might be able to explain a few things.

Ed Well, I (3) ___ (will) will explain a few things if I (4) ___ (can) can explain a few

things. You arrived yesterday, then?

Sue I (5) ___ (did) arrived yesterday, but my suitcases (6) ___ (didn’t). didn’t arrive

yesterday. The airline seems to have lost them.

Ed Oh, no! Have they explained what happened?

Sue They (7) ___ (did) explained what happened, eventually. I had to ask an official

from another airline to help, but he (8) ___ (wouldn’t) wouldn’t help, which

was a bit mean. The woman I finally got to speak to said I should have

checked in early enough. I thought I (9) ___ (had) had checked in early

enough! I suspect they just put my luggage on the wrong plane.

Ed I suppose they (10) ___ (did). put your luggage on the wrong plane. You’ll soon

find out, though. Anyway, I hope the rest of your journey went OK?

Sue Yes, it (11) ___ (did) went OK, but the traffic through Lisbon seemed to be moving

very slowly.

Ed I’m sure it (12) ___ (was) was moving very slowly. Yesterday was a public holiday,

you see.

Sue Ah, that explains it. What I saw of the city from the taxi looks great. I’m looking

forward to exploring it.

Ed I bet you (13) ___ (are) are looking forward to exploring it. Can you speak

Portuguese?

Sue No, (14) ___ (can’t) can’t speak Portuguese.

Ed Shame. It would help if you (15) ___ (could) could speak Portuguese.

Sue I speak Spanish, so I was hoping I’d be able to pick it up quite quickly by just living

here.

Ed I’m sure you (16) ___ (will) will pick it up quite quickly by just living here.

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Sue I might try and join a language class, though.

Ed I (17) ___ (would) would try and join a language if I were you. I never got my

grammar sorted out in the beginning and now I really wish I (18) ___ (had)

had got my grammar sorted out in the beginning. When are you going to

move into your flat?

Sue I already (19) ___ (have) have moved into my flat, but the previous tenant left a lot

of stuff that needs throwing out.

Ed I’ll help you with it, if you like.

Sue (20) ___ (Will) you Will you help me with it? That would be really kind.

Ed No problem.

Suggestions for possible enrichment of text (C. Langford):Substitution with ‘one’:

Ed Would you like to borrow my public transport card today?Sue Thanks, but I’ve already bought ___ (one) I’ve already bought a

public transport card!

Substitution with ‘so’:Ed You’ll be able find you way round in Lisbon in no time.Sue Oh, I hope ___ (so) I hope I’ll be able to find my way round Lisbon in

no time!

Nominal ellipsis:Ed What time should I take the tram to get to the language school?Sue The first leaves at 7.15 The first tram leaves at 7.15. Thanks for

everything, Ed.

Verb ellipsis + nominal ellipsis:Ed I’m so happy to have made your acquaintance, Sue!

Sue And I yours, Ed And I’m so happy to have made your acquaintance, Ed. Thanks for everything.

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Document 3, from The Guardian (1 October 2008), (see sections 2.2 and 3.2)

Crocodile suspected in disappearance of Scottish man at Australian campsite

Search continues for 63-year-old who was camping with his wife on river in northern Queensland

A Scottish man is believed to have been killed by a crocodile next to a remote river while camping in north-east Australia.Arthur Booker, 63, who was born in Banffshire, had been camping with his wife, Doris, near the Endeavour river, five miles north of Cooktown, northern Queensland.The couple, who lived in Logan near Brisbane, had been travelling around the country in a caravan.According to an article published in the Scotsman, Booker went to the river to check crab pots for the day's catch at around 8.30am yesterday.Booker's wife raised the alarm when he had not returned to the camp after two hours.Queensland Parks and Wildlife rangers said Arthur Booker found a snapped crab pot rope on the bank, along with large crocodile slide marks and their camcorder.Her husband's watch was also found, and one sandal."No sign of the man has been found and police strongly suspect a crocodile attack," a rangers spokesman said. "They were searching the river and a small creek from where Mr Booker was taken, looking under logs in case the big croc had stashed the body in there."The local environmental protection agency will set up crocodile traps near the campsite.Endeavour river has a large population of saltwater crocodiles. Warning signs are dotted throughout the campsite.The saltwater crocodile, which is believed to be responsible for Booker's disappearance, is capable of attacking animals up to the size of an adult water buffalo, either in water or on dry land.One crocodile in the area, which is 20ft and nicknamed Charlie, has been tagged for conservation purposes.Leanne Rayner, who co-owns the Endeavour River Escape bush campsite with her husband, Terry, said Booker's wife had been sent to the local hospital for treatment."Nobody knew what to say," said Rayner. "We searched and searched. She was engulfed in grief. It has all been very upsetting."Booker's daughter and son-in-law are expected to arrive in Cooktown today.The search for the man has resumed today.

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Document 4, excerpt from ‘The Lottery’, by Shirley Jackson (The New Yorker Magazine, 26 June 1948), (see section 3.3)

Note that bold and boxed text are given for the purposes of this assignment and would not be present in the version of the text given to learners.

The lottery was conducted – as were the square dances, the teen club, the Halloween program – by Mr. Summers, who had time and energy to devote to civic activities. He was a round-faced, jovial man and he ran the coal business, and people were sorry for him, because he had no children and his wife was a scold. When he arrived in the square, carrying the black wooden box, there was a murmur of conversation among the villagers, and he waved and called, “Little late today, folks.” The postmaster, Mr. Graves, followed him, carrying a three-legged stool, and the stool was put in the center of the square and Mr. Summers set the black box down on it. The villagers kept their distance, leaving a space between themselves and the stool, and when Mr. Summers said, “Some of you fellows want to give me a hand?” there was a hesitation before two men, Mr. Martin and his oldest son , Baxter, came forward to hold the box steady on the stool while Mr. Summers stirred up the papers inside it.

The original paraphernalia for the lottery had been lost long ago, and the black box now resting on the stool had been put into use even before Old Man Warner, the oldest man in town, was born. Mr. Summers spoke frequently to the villagers about making a new box, but no one liked to upset even as much tradition as was represented by the black box. There was a story that the present box had been made with some pieces of the box that had preceded it, the one that had been constructed when the first people settled down to make a village here. Every year, after the lottery, Mr. Summers began talking again about a new box, but every year the subject was allowed to fade off without anything's being done. The black box grew shabbier each year: by now it was no longer completely black but splintered badly along one side to show the original wood color, and in some places faded or stained.

Mr. Martin and his oldest son, Baxter, held the black box securely on the stool until Mr. Summers had stirred the papers thoroughly with his hand. Because so much of the ritual had been forgotten or discarded, Mr. Summers had been successful in having slips of paper substituted for the chips of wood that had been used for generations. Chips of wood, Mr. Summers had argued, had been all very well when the village was tiny, but now that the population was more than three hundred and likely to keep on growing, it was necessary to use something that would fit more easily into the black box.

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Document 5, exercise from Grellet (1981), p. 28-29 (see section 3.3)

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Document 6, exercise from Grellet (1981), p. 30-31 (see section 3.3)

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Documents

peterstrutt.co.ukpeterstrutt.co.uk/.../05/...devices-to-become-more-efficient-readers-… · Web viewOrally, or on paper, learners predict what the story might be about based on