The Relationship Between Cohesion and the Students' Written English Quality

Abstract

This study aimed to find out the relationship between cohesion and the quality of the students' written English at the third level of Sudanese secondary schools. The study subjects were two hundred (200) students from Rufa’a city secondary schools. The study assumed some factors that underlie ignorance of cohesion such as L1 interference, overgeneralization, misuse of communicative learning strategies, inadequacy of practical English classes, students' negative attitudes towards English writing and insufficiency of qualified teachers. a test was the elicitation technique to obtain data in this respect. The analytical method was adopted to analyse the test to demonstrate the problem. However, results and findings revealed that students ignore cohesive devices and sentence boundaries. This ignorance is due to MT and overgeneralization sources, teachers' misuse of learning and communication strategies, inadequacy of practical English writing classes, students developed negative attitudes towards English writing, then neither teachers nor students are enthusiastic about writing courses. Accordingly, recommendations are submitted to develop writing standard, beside a prerequisite to qualify teachers for better linguistic performance in order to achieve coherent effective writing

Keywords: cohesion, EFL students, writing, attitudes