Name: Pham Anh Thu

Student’s code: 17040060

Class: QH2017E3
Subject: Discourse analysis
DISCOURSE ANALYSIS – FINAL ASSIGNMENT.
I, The choosen essay.
Subject: English for Academic Purposes – 4B – Writing section.
Topic: School is bad for children.
It’s an excerpt from my essay. They are the introduction and 1st body paragraph.

(1) Children are sent to school at a certain age because it’s believed that academic
institution is an appropriate place where children have the chance to develop their
abilities. (2) It is undeniable that school has positive impacts on students’ development;
however, schools are not always beneficial with students. (3) In my opinion, school is not
the good place for students due to its negative impacts on both children’s mental health
and behaviours.

(4) Schools are regarded as one of the reason which lead to students’ mental illness such
as stressful, aggressive. (5) First of all, students are under pressure to take numerous
exams at school which make them stress. (6) Most schools are built based on exam-
oriented system which overemphasize on high score; hence, students’ intellectual
capacity is often evaluated through test results. (7) Take curriculum in China as a typical
example. (8) According to Kirakpatrick & Zang (2011), in China, score is regarded as the
only criteria which people based on to evaluate children’s worth. (9) Students who get
high results might be provided more chances to expose to better educational environment
than lower-scoring students. (10) As a result, students have to cope with a large amount
of exercises to get the courses’ purposes. (11) Secondly, students are influenced by
hundred negative words which come from their teachers at school. (12) Elbla (2012)
claimed that many school-age children suffer from rude words as a punishment because
of their misbehaviours. (13) Teachers often speak bad words such as: donkey, stupid,
goat to their students at classes (Elbla, 2012). (14) Students who suffer from verbal
bullying are often lack of concentration at classes; hence, they had poor academic results.
(15) Besides, these rude words have impacts on children feelings such as upset and
aggressive.

II, Identify cohesive devices, analyze the text and give score.
The coheseive devices which are used in my essay will be shown in the tables below:
Table 1: Reference:
No Type of Number of reference use Total use of
reference reference
Reference Reference Number of %
sentene devices
1 Anaphoric Their 1 3 75% 4
They 14
Them 5
Student 5
2 Cataphoric These 15 1 25%

Table 2: Conjunction
No Type of Number of conjunction use Total use of
conjunction reference
Conjunction Sentenc Number of %
word e devices
1 Casual Because 1 4 66,66% 6
Conjunction Hence 6,14
As a results 10
2 Adversative However 2 1 16,67%
conjunction
3 Additive besides 15 1 16,67%
conjunction
Table 3: Lexical cohesion:
Number Type of lexical Item Sentence
cohesion
1 Repetition Children 1,2 (2 times)
School 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 11 (7
times)
Student 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11
13 (9 times)
Teacher 11,13 (2 times)
Agressive 4,15 (2 times)

2 Synonym School – academic

insituation
Students – school-age
children
Rude words – bad words
– negative words
3 Antonym Positive – negative
High – low
4 Hyponymy Mental illness – stress,
agressive
5 Collocation Develope one’s ability 1
Impact on 2
Emphasize on 6
Suffer from 12

Discourse analysts do not only concern about the relationship between language and
context, they also care about the organization in a conversation, or in a text. A text can be
referred as a piece of writing, or a spoken material, which can be understood through
context. A text concerns more about a semantic relationship than grammatical forms.
Texture concerns the way language in a text is tied in terms of meaning. Therefore, in
order to develop cohesion in a text or an essay, the cohesive devices should be used
appropriately. In English, cohesive devices are divided into five main patterns which are
reference, conjunction, lexical cohesion, substitution, and ellipsis. In the exertion above, I
used a variety of cohesion devices to create the unity of an essay. These cohesion devices
are shown in the 3 tables above.
Firstly, the term reference can be identified as a situation in which the specific items
cannot be semantically interpreted without referring to other items in a text. There are
four main types of reference which are anaphoric, cataphoric, exophoric and hophoric. In
my essay, I used 2 types of reference which are cataphoric and anaphoric (see table 1).
Anaphoric reference is where a specific item refers back to the other item which is
mentioned earlier. All the anaphoric references in my essay are used effectively since
they help my essay to be clearer and easier to follow. In sentence 1:
“Children are sent to school at a certain age because it’s believed that academic
institution is an appropriate place where children have the chance to develop their
abilities”
“Their” is an anaphoric reference since it refers back to “children”. In this case, readers
can understand that the abilities of people who are mentioned are children not adults or
others. Moreover, in sentence 5:
“First of all, students are under pressure to take numerous exams at school which make
them stress”
“Them” is another anaphoric reference as it refers back to “students”. In this case, the
advantages of using anaphoric reference are to make sure the readers are clear who is
suffer from the numerous exams at school and avoid repetition. The aims of using
anaphoric reference in sentence 5 are the same as in sentence 14:
“Students who suffer from verbal bullying are often lack of concentration at classes;
hence, they had poor academic results”
The anaphoric reference “They” refers back to “students”.
In my essay, I mainly used 2 types of references. The proportion of anaphoric reference
and cataphoric reference are 75% and 25% respectively.
Secondly, to strengthen the unity in my essay, I also used some conjunction words
which help connect sentences, clauses in an essay and express the “logic-semantic’
relation (Halliday & Hasan, 1976). In the excerpt above, there are 6 conjunction words in
total which are categorized into 3 groups: casual conjunction, adversative conjunction
and additive conjunction (see table 2). The percentage of three categories are 66,66% ,
16,67% and 16,67% respectively. In the essay above, there are three conjunction words
that express consequence meaning which are because, hence, as results. All these
adversative casual conjunctions express the logical-semantic relation between 2 clauses
and 2 sentences. The first sentence or the first clauses are the reasons which contribute to
the consequences (sentence 1, 6, 14, 10). I used the word “hence” 2 times while I used
the two other words one time through the excerpt. However, the word “hence” in
sentence 6 isn’t used correctly because the first clause is not the cause of the second
clause. In terms of adversative conjunction, there is only one conjunction word which is
“however” in sentence 2. This adversative conjunction is used to show the contrasting
ideas about school. There is one additive conjunction is used in sentence 15, which aims
to connect two sentences and add more information about the negative impacts of verbal
bullying at school.
Thirdly, through the excerpt, I also use a variety of lexical cohesion such as
repetition, synonym, antonym, hyponym and collocation. In terms of repetition, there are
some items which are repeated to emphasize the key ideas such as children (2 times),
school (7 times), students (9 times), teacher (2 times), aggressive (2 times). These words
are related to the topic of school and school’s influences. However, the words “school”
and “students” are repeated much more than the other. Moreover, these words seems to
be overused because of my limited vocabulary. Concerning synonym, in order to avoid
repetition which can affect the cohesion, the words have the near meaning should be used
in the text. In my essay, the words “academic institution”, “school-age children”, “bad
words” and “negative words” are used to replaced “school”, “students” and “rude words”
respectively. In terms of antonym, which are applied to show the contrast meanings, there
are two pairs of antonym in the excerpt which are “positive – negative” and “high-low”.
Besides, hyponym is employed to develop the cohesion of the excerpt, which is “mental
illness – stress, aggressive”. The hyponym shows the “general-specific” relation about
“mental illness” which make the essay clearer. In terms of collocation, all the
collocations in the excerpt are used correctly. All the nouns, adjtives combines with
correct prepositions and nouns.
Based on the analysis and the tables above, in my essay, a variety of cohesion
devices are used. The type of cohesive device which I mainly use is lexcial cohesion,
after that is conjunction. Reference is the least preferable. Besides the cohesive devices
contribute to the essay cohesion effectively. However, regarding repetition, the words
“school” and “students” are repeated many times, which reveals my limited vocabulary
knowledge and make the essay boring. Besides, there are still conjunctions which are not
correct such as hence (sentence 6). Moreover, I do not use any ellipsis and substitutions
devices in the essay.
In conclusion, I will mark my essay 8 out of 10 in terms of cohesive devices based
on the analysis above.

III, Revised essay:

Green: cohesive devices
Red: language.
(1) Children are sent to school at a certain age because it’s believed that academic
institution is an appropriate place where children have the chance to develop their
abilities. (2) It is undeniable that school has positive impacts on students’ development;
however, schools are not always beneficial with students. (3) In my opinion, school is not
the good place for students due to its negative impacts on both children’s mental health
and behaviours.
(4) Schools are regarded as one of the reason which lead to students’ mental illness such
as stress, aggression. (5) First of all, pupil are under pressure to take numerous exams at
school which make them stress. (6) Most schools are built based on exam-oriented
system which overemphasize on high score. It means that students’ intellectual capacity
is often evaluated through test results. (7) Take curriculum in China as a typical example.
(8) According to Kirakpatrick & Zang (2011), in China, score is regarded as the only
criteria which people based on to evaluate pupil’s worth. (9) Students who get high
results might be provided more chances to expose to better educational environment than
lower-scoring ones. (10) As a result, students have to cope with a large amount of
exercises to get the courses’ purposes. (11) Secondly, students are influenced by hundred
negative words which come from their teachers at school. (12) Elbla (2012) claimed that
many school-age children suffer from rude words as a punishment because of their
misbehaviours. (13) Teachers often speak bad words such as: donkey, stupid, goat to their
students at classes (Elbla, 2012). (14) Students who suffer from verbal bullying are often
lack of concentration at classes; hence, they had poor academic results(eleminate). (15)
Besides(eliminate) these rude words have impacts on children feelings such as upset and
aggressive.

References:
1, Halliday, M. A. K., & Hasan, R. (1976). Cohesion in English. London: Longman.
2, Bahaziq, A. (2016). Cohesive Devices in Written Discourse: A Discourse Analysis of a
Student's Essay Writing. English Language Teaching, 9(7), 112-119.
3, Paltridge, B. (2012). Discourse analysis: An introduction. Bloomsbury Publishing.