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Ten Cohesion Markers’ Relative Contributions to Coherence: Letters and

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영어교육연구 제24권 2호 2012년 여름

Ten Cohesion Markers’ Relative Contributions

to Coherence: Letters and Stories*1

Jungok Bae
(Kyungpook National University)

Bae, Jungok. (2012). Ten cohesion markers’ relative contributions to coherence:

Letters and stories. English Language Teaching, 24(2), 1-26.

The present study contends that the notion of cohesion influencing coherence is an
oversimplification. The present study examined the relative strengths of 10 cohesion
markers as predictors of coherence. EFL children (N = 130) wrote both letters and stories,
which were analyzed using repeated-measures MANOVA and path analysis. The number
of cohesion markers used in the two writing tasks was significantly different for some
types of markers while similar for other types, indicating that the amount of cohesion
marker use can be task specific. Frequently-occurring cohesion markers were not
necessarily stronger contributors to coherence. Only ellipsis, collocation, and conjunction
showed a significant influence on coherence for both tasks, and their magnitudes were
fairly weak. The significant cohesion markers, collectively, explained only about 10% of
coherence. For both tasks, conjunction exerted a negative influence on coherence. This
study supports the ideas in the literature that cohesion should not be the primary factor in
determining writing quality; coherence is the result of a psychological process within the
reader, who understands the text by incorporating its textual cues through association to
existing knowledge by inference.

I. INTRODUCTION

1. Lack of Empirical Study into Degree of Influence of Specific Markers

One of the things contributing to the coherence of discourse is the presence of

cohesion markers (Cook, 1989; Halliday & Hasan, 1993; Innajih, 2007; McCulley, 1985;
Oller & Jonz, 1994; Sanna-Kaisa, 2006). What then, are the relative contributions of the
different types of cohesion markers to coherence? When we get down to the subdivisions

*This work was supported by the Korea Research Foundation Grant funded by the Korean Government (KRF -
2009 - 332 - A00206). The author thanks the administration of the Language Institute of Kyungpook National
University, Profs. Yae-Sheik Lee and Jin-wung Kim, Sunyoung Kim, Jonathan Jordahl, the teachers, students,
and raters who assisted with and participated in this study and anonymous reviewers for valuable suggestions.
2 Jungok Bae

of cohesion, it is unclear as to which types of cohesion are more related to coherence.

Simply saying that cohesive devices help establish reader coherence is a very broad
generalization. At times, coherence seems only marginally related to cohesion, or even
largely independent of it, as will be explained in the next section. The question needs to
be asked, which types of cohesion markers make stronger, weaker, or even insignificant
contributions to coherence?
Cohesion has a dozen different types, as outlined in “Types of Cohesion Markers.”
Most studies on cohesion performed an in-depth analysis of one, or only a few types of
cohesion markers. Hardly any studies have employed a comprehensive set of cohesion
markers in a single study in an effort to compare their relative strengths as contributors
to coherence. In a rare exception, Bae (2001; see Spiegel & Fitzgerald, 1990)
investigated the contributions of five cohesion markers to coherence. The categories
investigated were the five supraordinate types (references, conjunction, substitution,
ellipsis, and lexical ties): the subtypes within each type were treated collectively (see
“Types of Cohesion Markers” for classification). Among these types, references and
lexical ties were found to be significant contributors to cohesion.
We are left with a question: within references (pronoun, proper noun, and
demonstrative) and within lexical ties (synonyms/antonyms, hyponyms/meronyms,
repetition, and collocation), which sub-types are stronger, weaker, or simply trivial
contributors to coherence? The answer to this question has previously been unclear and
will only be answerable when such specific types are actually used as separate variables
in an analysis, and when they are compared on the same measurement scale.
This study uses path analysis with which ten cohesion markers were evaluated on the
same standardized scale (i.e., a variance of 1) for their relative effect on coherence. This
paper will thus identify which cohesion markers have a stronger, weaker, or simply
trivial influence on coherence. By uncovering their relative importance, this paper will
help put the role of cohesion into the proper perspective in discussions of writing quality.

2. Scarcity of Research with Two Tasks and EFL Children

The variable nature of language use between tasks has been shown in many studies
(Schoonen, 2005; Verikaite, 2005). Whether the relationship between cohesion and
coherence may also be variable between tasks (or genres) is an empirical question, but
this topic has seldom been investigated (Connor, 1984; Tanskanen, 2006). This has no
doubt been due to the double difficulty of collecting and then the far more complex job
of analyzing data in two tasks from the same participants. Research into cohesion and
coherence has focused on narrative and conversation tasks (e.g., Berman & Slobin, 1994;
Halliday & Hasan, 1976/1993; Kang, 2009; Yoon & Lee, 2005). Fewer studies used
 Ten Cohesion Markers’ Relative Contributions to Coherence: Letters and Stories 3

writing texts of history (McNamara & Kintsch, 1996; Voss & Silfies, 1996) and science
(McNamara, Kintsch, Songer, & Kintsch, 1996; Graesser, Leon, & Otero, 2002). In the
author’s search, no studies that compared cohesion and coherence across letters and
stories were found. The present study uses two tasks, letter writing and story writing,
which are types of writing children are familiar with, and will observe whether findings
about cohesion-coherence relationships are stable or variant across the two tasks.
Most research into the cohesion-coherence relationship has used language spoken or
written by native speakers. While the data from native speakers have been useful for
finding principles behind cohesion and coherence, such data also have limitations. For
instance, the language proficiency of native speakers is almost uniformly high,
especially with regard to the use of cohesion markers. Thus such data tend to yield a
restricted range, which misses information about language learners who have not yet
reached the level of proficiency, typical of L2 learners such as EFL/ESL children. Data
from an L1 source would generally be inadequate as a variable, because a variable by
definition should have a property that varies. In the present study, the varying use of
cohesion and its influence on coherence is the heart of the study, and so L2 data are more
useful than L1 data.
The present study uses data collected from English language learners (ELL), whose
levels range from basic to highly-advanced, near native-speaker level (for elementary-
school-children levels). Because the data include a wide range of ability levels, this
study has the advantage of supplying more reliable data and generalizing more broadly
to a continuum of ability levels than L1 studies.

II. LITERATURE REVIEW: COHERENCE AND COHESION AND

THEIR RELATIONSHIP

Coherence is a property by which a text is held together. A text is considered coherent

to the extent that its explicit statements can be connected to each other conceptually
(Graesser, Wiemer-Hastings, & Wiemer-Hastings, 2001). If a text is coherent, all of the
parts, ideas, and steps are both logically and fluently connected and elaborated, so the
reader can make sense of the meaning of the text (Bae & Lee, 2011). Coherence, as a
semantic property, does not have overt linguistic markers, and as a result, cannot be
easily categorized.
Like coherence, cohesion also helps a text stick together and make sense. Both
qualities establish connections in meaning. However, coherence does so at the more
global discourse level, and cohesion at the more local, micro, textual level (Bae, 2001).
Writers achieve cohesion by using overt surface linguistic markers, which include a
4 Jungok Bae

broad range of grammatical items and vocabulary. These markers exist to connect a
language element to what has gone before or what follows (Halliday & Hasan, 1993).
Unlike coherence, cohesion does have several identifiable types of markers. Included
in the present study are references, conjunction, substitution, ellipsis, and lexical ties, all
of which are traditional categories in the discussion of cohesion. These cohesion markers
are defined and sub-categorized as below:

Types of Cohesion Markers12

References: Words that refer to something else in the text for their
interpretation
Demonstratives: e.g., the, this/these, that/those, here/there
Pronominals: e.g., you, I, she, their, my
Proper nouns: e.g., Daniel, Rosie, The Young Learners Program

Conjunctions: Connections between two independent sentences

Additives: e.g., and, or, by the way
Adversatives: e.g., yet, but, however, rather
Temporals: e.g., then, after that, soon, finally, immediately
Causals: e.g., so, therefore, thus

Substitution: The replacement of a word or structure with a dummy word

Noun substitution: e.g., I bought a white hat, and Jim bought a red one.
Verb substitution: e.g., Jane wanted to visit Rome, and she finally did.

Ellipsis: Elements left unwritten which are understood by the speaker/reader

Noun ellipsis: delete nouns. e.g., John is kind and (he) teaches well.
Verbal ellipsis: delete verbs, e.g., (Do) You want to come?
You speak English better than other students (do).
Clausal ellipsis: delete clauses, e.g., (I’ll) See you later. (I’m) Sorry.
(Do you) Get it? Sure (I do). (Do you) Want some more?
Structural ellipsis: I think (that) he is kind. He’ll come (on) Saturday.

1
List is organized from Bae (2001), Cook (1989), Greenbaum & Quirk (1990), Halliday & Hasan (1989),
Laufer & Waldman (2011), Schiffrin, Tannen, & Hamilton (2001). The language examples are mostly
from the data in the present study.
 Ten Cohesion Markers’ Relative Contributions to Coherence: Letters and Stories 5

Lexical Ties:
Synonym/Antonym: e.g., teacher/student, merrily/happily, fast/slow
Hyponym/Meronym (general-specific, whole-part relations): e.g., food (sandwich,
pizza, cider); family members (brother, mother),
Repetition: e.g., draw/draw/drew/drawing, flower/flowers, children/child
Collocation (lexical combinations that regularly and habitually co-occur):
e.g., my favorite car, fast food, best friend, so many, much more,
play games, trash can, come here, think about, a little bit, get in

It has traditionally been understood that coherence is built on cohesion markers. This
makes sense, because if phrases and sentences lack cohesiveness, a complete and unified
essay would be hard to achieve. A lack of cohesion markers has been indicted as a
source of incoherence: for instance, unclear references and a lack of signal words such as
pronouns and transitions have been found to be reasons for incoherence (Innajih, 2007;
Khuwaileh & Al Shoumali, 2000).
However, literature has also found that cohesion markers alone do not make a text
coherent. A text full of cohesion markers may be locally correct and comprehensible, but
still be incoherent at the global level (Oller & Jonz, 1994; Witte & Faigley, 1981).
This point is illustrated in the letter below, in which a young writer, one of the study
participants in this study, was asked to write a letter to a friend, recommending the
language program he was attending23(see “Method” for more about the task):

My favorite teacher Mr. Jang. Mr. Jang I like you. Because your kind and borrow the
English book. That story was fun. Maybe you don’t get story. But I am not punching you.
Because you are a kind teacher. I borrw your English book. I borrow your classmate. But I
am teaching John teacher. But I want to brow your English book. Today I saw John
teacher sing a song. I think he will be a singer. Sorry teacher. Now I asked animal. My
favorite animal is dasmisk lizard. This lizard is run to water. I will make a robot. Bye. –
Your close friend Sue -

The text in this letter has plenty of lexical repetition (e.g., multiple uses of the words,
“borrow” and “book,” “teacher” and their variations), references (e.g., “he,” “my”),
demonstratives (e.g., “this,” “that”), and conjunctions (e.g., “But,” “Now”). Nevertheless,
it still produces a text that is, in the end, relatively incoherent. The writer does use
cohesion markers on a local level, but the subject matter is somewhat disjointed and
needs more than the current links to establish the flow of ideas between sentences.

2
All language samples provided in this paper use pseudo names to preserve anonymity, and their linguistic
errors are illustrated unaltered.
6 Jungok Bae

Conversely, literature has also found that a discourse containing missing or misused
cohesion markers may still be seen as coherent and comprehensible through means other
than text cohesion. Let us look at the following letter, taken from a young English
language learner in the present study (tasks and participants to be described in
“Method”):

Hi, Heeroo. I heard you’re looking for good English academy. I’ll introduce Kyungpook
National University English academy for you. There are basic, intermediate, advanced,
post-advanced. In post-advanced class, you can read interesting English book and write
RRJ. In KNU, Teachers are native. In 2 months, you can see your English growing up. If
you are worried about how to get to the KNU, don’t worry. I searched the bus for you. If
you attend this academy, me and friend will give you warm welcome. - Written by your
friend Jim-

This letter has missing and incorrect markers in cohesion (e.g., “the KNU,” “the
American,” “me”). It has no coordinating conjunctions. However the piece is perceived
to be a coherent whole by readers. When a text has few cohesion cues, readers
(especially high-knowledge readers) achieve comprehension using information outside
the explicit text. Such non-textual elements include background knowledge (Graesser,
Olde, & Klettke, 2002), and similarly, prior knowledge (Best, Rowe, Ozuru, &
McNamara, 2005; Voss & Silfies, 1996).
The letter above is comprehensible especially to those who are familiar with the KNU
(Kyungpook National University) academy introduced in the letter, including its various
class levels and the abbreviations KNU and RRJ (Reading Response Journal). The non-
textual element also includes the writer’s purpose, in this case, that of recommending the
KNU academy to a friend.
Consider, further, the following story composed by a young writer who was told to
make up a story based on a picture series in which a family is going to a restaurant to
have pizza.

One day, Billy, Jullia, dad and mom rode a car. The children didn't know they are going
where. Billy askd, "Father! where are we going?" Father said, "It is secreet!" "Mmm …….
amusament park?!" "No!" Father said. They went to the pizza hot! "Wow!" Billy said.
There car is in car park. "He-lo!" officer said. Father said, "Cheese pizza, cola one can and
seafood spaghetty please!" They waited to 30minite. "Mom, I'm hungry!" Jullia and Billy
said. "Oh! their a we've pizza!" mom said. First, Father picked up the biggest one. Mom
picked up the smaller than Fathers's pizza. Jullia picked up the smaller than Billy's pizza.
They were very happy. Dad put the chilly soas on His pizza, Billy put the cheese powder
on His pizza. they took the their jacket, Father paid the money. "have a nice night!" the
officer said.
 Ten Cohesion Markers’ Relative Contributions to Coherence: Letters and Stories 7

This story also has omitted or incorrect cohesion markers, but the story line is
generally comprehensible. Low-cohesion text requires reader effort including an
inference process from the reader (Best et al., 2005; McNamara & Kintsch, 1996). For
instance, the readers in this study who evaluated these compositions were given a copy
of the picture prompts to give them the same external referent that the writer had. The
knowledge about the world, in this particular case, about pizza-eating and the specific
context (restaurant) provided by the picture were therefore shared between the readers
and the writer. These made it easier for the reader to infer, for instance, what was meant
by “the pizza hot” [Pizza Hut], “officer” [waiter], and “soas” [sauce] in the written story.
According to Graesser et al. (2001), verbal cues signaling coherence are not always
necessary to establish conceptual coherence if these gaps can be filled in inferentially.
Readers search after meaning (see references quoted in Graesser, Singer, & Trabasso,
1994) and so require fewer explicit cues to the extent that they have background
knowledge about the content of the sentences (Graesser et al., 2001).
Similarly, according to the notion of coherence assumptions (Graesser et al., 1994),
readers routinely generate inference for coherent meaning unless the text is so disjointed
and half-baked that the reader gives up trying to construct a coherent message (Graesser
et al., 2001). In most cases a reader is willing, and expects that the text will make sense
and that the author has the ability to reason, all of which contribute to the text’s
coherence.
A text is also made coherent by the reader’s knowledge of genre organization. In
narratives, as well as argumentative writing, the reader’s comprehension of a text is
assisted by recognizing the extent to which the text is organized into a structure (opening,
main body, and conclusion). In a letter, for example, the reader understands who wrote to
whom based on the typical format of a letter. If this knowledge is shared between the
reader and the writer, comprehension is facilitated. Thus, to achieve coherence, a good
writer conforms to the reader’s expectations for a particular genre.
Finally, coherence might be spoken of as the reconstruction of a text in the mind of the
reader. It is what the reader does with the text (Carrell, 1982; Yeh, 2004). The writer
creates, and the reader re-creates when reading it (Hake, 1986). For this reason, some
texts may possibly be coherent for a particular reader and not for others.
To summarize, cohesion has surface linguistic markers and definable patterns. It
facilitates coherence, and is to some degree necessary for it. However, a good reader also
draws on his or her own knowledge to construct a coherent mental representation of the
text (Voss & Silfies, 1996). The coherent relations constructed in the mind of the reader
“depend on the skills and knowledge that the reader brings to the situation” (Graesser et
al., 2004, p. 1). Thus coherence is “a product of psychological representations and
processes” within the reader (Graesser et al., 2004, p. 2), who understands the text by
8 Jungok Bae

incorporating its textual cues through association to existing knowledge by inference.

III. METHOD

1. Research Questions

The present study uses stories and letters written by elementary school students (to be
described in the next section). With these data, this paper addresses questions:
1) To what degree do cohesion markers appear in letters and stories composed in
English?
2) To what degree do cohesion markers contribute to coherence? Specifically:
(1) Which cohesion markers are significant contributors to coherence?
(2) What are their relative strengths, and what is their collective contribution
to coherence?
(3) Are the findings above consistent across both tasks, letter- and story-
writing?

2. Context and Participants

The context of this study is a language program called English for Young Learners
(EYL) in South Korea. This program (Bae & Lee, in press) has been operating at a
university through its language institute, which has offered the EYL program as a service
for the city to which it belongs. The students are elementary school students, and they
participate in this program for five hours a week after finishing at their regular schools.
The program resembles an immersion program, so the students learn English via
learning several academic subjects (math, literature, English language arts, grammar, and
social science) through the medium of English. The teachers are native English speakers.
Further details of the curriculum are outside the focus of this paper, but they are
provided in Bae & Lee (in press).
The program implements English writing tests a few times a year to provide feedback
on students’ language learning. The data for this study came from letter- and story-
writing tests implemented as part of this larger assessment series.
The participants in the present study were all students enrolled in the EYL program
introduced above, except those absent on data collection days. The grade level of these
students ranged from third to sixth (ages 9 ~ 12).
These children represented a variety of levels: 21 basic, 22 pre-intermediate, 43
intermediate, 16 advanced, and 18 post-advanced level students. The students at the
 Ten Cohesion Markers’ Relative Contributions to Coherence: Letters and Stories 9

basic level can compose simple sentences with frequent errors. The post-advanced level
students can compose 2 to 3 pages of stories in English in 30 minutes. So this data has
the advantage of including a wide range of levels, creating an approximately normal
range of English proficiency, including cohesion marker use.

3. Instrumentation

1) Tests and Test Administration

Two English writing tasks were given to these students in September 2009. The first
task was story writing (narrative), and the second persuasive letter writing. These two
tasks were chosen because children hear, read, and write stories and letters at home and
schools, thus stories and letters become linguistic mediums of which children usually
have experience (Bae & Bachman, 2010). In investigating variability or stability of
cohesion-coherence phenomena across tasks, the present study wanted to give these
students the tasks which they are familiar with; inexperience in genres would make it
hard for the study to observe the students’ language use.
For letter writing, the students were asked to write a letter to a close friend persuading
him or her to attend the EYL language program, giving reasons why the writer thought
that the friend should become a student there. They were told to create the name of a
friend to whom the letter would be addressed. The persuasive letter writing with the
specified context was considered appropriate for these children because the language
program was the context the student writers were familiar with.
For story writing, they were asked to make up a story based on a sequence of five
pictures. Two picture series which were equivalent versions were used, and the students
used either version.34In one version, a family (a mother, a father, a boy and a girl) was
going to a restaurant and enjoyed pizza eating, and the children were walking around
while the father was paying money. In the other version, a class (a teacher and a few
students) was going on a picnic to a park, enjoyed lunch and drew pictures (this version

3
To explain why two versions were used, as mentioned (“Context and Participants”), the present data came
from a larger longitudinal assessment series for these students. In this longitudinal design, two picture
versions had to be administered at each testing occasion in which either form was simultaneously distributed
to every other student; this step followed a conventional method of proving equivalent test versions.
Following this procedure, a half group received the pizza version, and the other half the park version. What is
important for the present study is the fact that these forms were proven to be equivalent (interchangeable)
versions. For further information about the picture assignment design used in the process, see Bae & Lee (in
press).
The story data used in the present study was also used as a part of larger longitudinal data in Bae & Lee (in
press); however, the topic of the present study (i.e., 10 cohesion markers’ contributions to coherence) was
never covered in Bae & Lee (in press), whose topic was to evaluate the longitudinal growths of grammar,
content, coherence, text length, and spelling, measured at three testing points in time.
10 Jungok Bae

appears in Bae, 2000). In both sets, the final scene depicted a boy reflecting on the day
at night. The two picture versions were designed to be equivalent a priori in complexity,
number of main characters, number of panels (events) during the picture design process;
they were proven to be equivalent versions in terms of difficulty and discriminating
powers. For instance, the means for coherence for both forms (2.87 and 2.70, each) were
statistically the same (t = 1.48, p = .139), and the variances with regard to coherence for
both versions (.372 and .403) were the same (Levene’s test of variance equality, F
= .732, p = .394).
On day 1, students performed the story writing task in a group test environment (total
N = 130). On day 2, which was a week later, the same group performed the letter writing
task (total N = 125). The students were given 30 minutes to complete each task. Several
students were absent on one of the testing days, and thus performed only one task. The
majority of the students were present for both the letter and story tests (N = 120).
Trained teachers delivered instructions based on guidelines drawn up to provide a
consistent testing procedure.

2) Variables and Scoring

The same variables were measured for both the stories and the letters: coherence,
cohesion markers, and text length. The scoring procedure is shown below.

(1) Coherence
Coherence was measured on a 0 ~ 4 scale (Detailed scoring criteria appear in Bae &
Lee, in press, and thus are not provided here to avoid duplication). The same two native
speakers of English rated the stories and letters for coherence throughout the sample.
They were teachers in the Freshman English program at the same university. They had
been told that these students were given the story and letter tasks. Students were
identified only by identification numbers to avoid any bias. The readers were trained in
the property of coherence and how to assign scores, and worked independently of each
other after the training. When there was a discrepancy (≥ 1) between their ratings, the
readers were asked to re-score the papers without knowing which scores they previously
assigned. This process reduced the differences in the ratings.

(2) Cohesion and Text Length

There were more than 10 types of cohesion markers which may be considered
‘cohesion variables’ (see “Types of Cohesion Markers”). However, only references and
lexical ties occurred frequently enough in the sample to be sub-recognized into separate
variables for analysis. Thus sub-types of references (demonstratives, pronominals, and
 Ten Cohesion Markers’ Relative Contributions to Coherence: Letters and Stories 11

proper nouns) became study variables; likewise, sub-types of lexical ties (synonyms/
antonyms, hyponyms/meronyms, repetition, and collocation) became study variables
(Slashes were used to indicate addition). Among these types, collocation counts included
both grammatical and lexical collocations. Conjunction, substitution, and ellipsis had
modest-to-rare occurrences, so their sub-types were not used as variables because it
would be pointless to speculate based on so few occurrences.
Because cohesion has explicit linguistic markers, which are objective features, their
occurrences in the texts were counted. Korean raters who were graduate students in
English education were trained for the characteristics of these markers to count the
occurrences; however, native English speakers counted collocation and demonstratives.
Only one rater was used per marker because the judgments of these qualities are
relatively objective. Those that were misused or misspelled but presented no problem
with regard to reader comprehension were included in the count.
Text length is the total number of words appearing in a composition (Bae & Bachman,
2010) not including meaningless repetition of words. Text length was included as a
variable in order to assess cohesion marker occurrences while controlling for text length.
Counting the occurrence of markers is a relatively objective process, as is the number
of words in a composition. Therefore only one rater was needed for each cohesion type
and for text length on both genres throughout the sample.

4. Analysis

To address research question 1, descriptive analysis and repeated measures MANOVA

were used. Assumptions for using repeated measures MANOVA and path analysis (that
is, normality, interval scale, and linearity of the data) were checked. To address research
question 2, path analysis was used. For the estimation of model fit and parameters in
path analysis, the maximum likelihood method was used.
The advantage of path analysis should be mentioned. Path analysis (Lleras, 2005;
Loehlin, 2004; Olobatuyi, 2006) provides a suitable method when a researcher has a
proposed or existing theory about relationships between variables. In conformity with a
specific theory, a researcher specifies how the variables relate to one-another in the form
of a path model, identifies significant pathways, and estimates the relative sizes of
effects within the hypothesized model. Path analysis is therefore uniquely suited for
specifying a theoretical model (Halliday & Hasan, 1993) in which cohesion markers are
hypothesized to contribute to coherence.
12 Jungok Bae

IV. RESULTS

Linearity, checked using scatter plots of the variables, was maintained for all variables.
Skewness and kurtosis indicated univariate normality (ranges within ±2) for all of the
variables except for substitution, which occurred rarely in the essays. Indices of
multivariate normality, indicated by Mardia’s normalized estimates (10.81 and 21.63,
letters and stories, each), exceeded the criterion of +/-3. Thus, the Satorra-Bentler scaled
chi-square statistic, which is a robust statistic that adjusts for the violations of normality,
will also be reported.
Rater consistency was estimated for coherence ratings (Table 1). Alpha, Spearman,
and Pearson coefficients were well over .80, indicating acceptable degrees of rater
reliability.

TABLE 1
Rater Correlations for Coherence
α Pearson Spearman
Letter .948 .909 .903
Story .912 .838 .811

1. Research Question 1: Cohesion Marker Occurrences

Research Question 1, cohesion marker occurrences, was answered using students who
had written both a letter and a story (N = 120). To address this question, the frequency of
use of each cohesion marker was calculated per 100 words. This was to control for the
length of the texts. In other words, a writer would use more cohesion markers as he or
she writes more. A writer would sometimes produce a longer essay, and at other times,
shorter. Yet we should be able to assess the effect of cohesion marker frequency
independently of text length, and to do so, the influence of text length should be
controlled for.

1) Within Each Task

As the first approach to address this question, mean occurrences were compared
within each task. Descriptive statistics were used for this purpose (Table 2).
Of all cohesion markers, repetition was predominant. Pronominal was the second most
dominant. The other markers had drastically lower occurrences, while showing more or
less similar degrees of occurrence. Synonym/antonyms had relatively few occurrences.
Substitution was most conspicuously rare. These findings applied to both task data.
 Ten Cohesion Markers’ Relative Contributions to Coherence: Letters and Stories 13

TABLE 2
Descriptive Statistics and Between-Task Correlations (N = 120)
Mean SD between-
Variables task
Letter Story Letter Story
correlation
Demonstratives 3.96 4.29 3.08 3.53 .019
Pronominals 13.92 13.19 4.88 7.43 .098
Proper nouns 5.72 3.72 3.22 6.64 .061
Conjunction 3.80 4.18 1.96 2.69 .337**
Substitution 0.02 0.02 0.12 0.12 -.033
Ellipsis 2.21 1.79 1.65 1.53 .142
Cohesion Synonyms &
1.04 1.02 0.78 0.90 .124
(Occurrences antonyms
per 100 words) Hyponyms &
3.58 3.58 1.86 1.90 -.007
meronyms
Repetition 16.62 22.11 6.39 15.13 .187*
Collocation 1.84 3.69 1.48 2.07 .044
Coherence (0 ~ 4 scale) 2.82 2.78 0.79 0.61 .571**
Length (# of words) 194.11 238.24 88.71 104.54 .732**
*Significant at α = .05, **Significant at α = .01

2) Between Tasks

As the second approach to address research question 1, the degrees to which the
cohesion markers occurred at similar or different rates across the two tasks were
inspected. Accordingly, a cohesion marker in one task was compared with its
corresponding marker in the other. For example, the mean occurrence of conjunction in
letters was compared with that of conjunction in stories, and likewise for the rest of the
marker pairs.
Repeated-measures MANOVA was used in which task was the independent variable,
and the dependent variables were all ten of the matched pairs of cohesion markers,
matched pairs of text length, and matched pair of coherence scores.
The multivariate test results, using the most widely reported Wilk’s lamda, indicated a
significant main effect of task, F (12, 108) = 19.43, p < .001, observed power = 1. In
conclusion, there was a significant overall effect of task which was revealed in the
differences between the paired dependent variables, taken as a whole. The effect size
was substantially high (η = .68).
To find out exactly which matched pairs were significantly different, post hoc
comparisons (Bonferroni) were performed. The results are summarized as follows.
The letters were significantly shorter (194.11 words) than the stories (238.24 words).
Prior studies have indicated that a picture-based task generated longer essays (Cumming
et al., 2005). The story task in the current study used a picture series, which provided the
14 Jungok Bae

basic story line. In contrast, in the letter task, the students had to create content without
any pictures. This contrast probably explains the shorter text length in the letters.
Markers of cohesion that occurred to a similar extent in both tasks were
demonstratives, pronouns, substitution, conjunction, synonyms/antonyms, hyponyms/
meronyms (p = .440, .347, .723, .136, .817, .982, respectively). The comparison of the
mean occurrences in Table 2 shows how these markers occurred in a similar degree
across both tasks.
With regard to the rest of the cohesion markers, the mean occurrences were
significantly different between tasks, which can be seen in the greater differences in the
marker occurrences across the two tasks (Table 2).
Specifically, the following markers occurred significantly more prominently in the
stories: repetition and collocation. Repetition was conspicuously more prevalent in the
stories (22.11) than in the letters (16.62). Similarly, collocations appeared more
frequently in the stories (3.69) than in the letters (1.84). The reasons may lie in the
inherent richness of the story context. When writing about something about which a
person feels interesting and positively, it is only natural to expand willingly in familiar
terms about it and repeat words. Collocations, a person’s habitual phrases, and
repetitions, are the basic form of such language. It is small wonder that they should
appear in greater abundance in the stories.
The reverse was true for proper nouns and ellipsis. Proper nouns occurred
significantly more frequently in the letters (5.72) than stories (3.72). This may have been
due to the characteristics of the particular letter task: in recommending the language
program to a friend, the students had to use proper nouns, such as the writer’s name, the
name of the letter’s recipient, and the names of teachers and of the program. By
comparison, the use of proper nouns in the stories was a matter of the writer’s preference.
Ellipsis, too, occurred more frequently in the letters (2.21) than in the stories (1.79).
Typically, ellipsis occurs in responses in spontaneous conversation but is rarely used in
formal writing (Bae, 2001). In this study, letters were addressed to a close friend to
persuade him or her to join the English program. Naturally, the children used a dialogue
style in the informal register: e.g., “See you later,” “Remember?,” “So hard but fun,”
“One more thing,” and “You want to come to KNU Academy?” In comparison, stories used a
relatively more formal style, and made less use of elements of conversational style.
Because of the varying degrees to which the markers appeared in the two tasks, the
correlations of the uses of markers in both tasks (e.g., pronouns in letters and pronouns
in stories) were mostly very weak and non-significant (Table 2).
The average quality of coherence was similar across the letters and stories (2.82 and
2.78, letter and story). At first glance, given the spread in the data regarding cohesion
markers, this might seem like a surprising finding. However, if one reflects on the human
 Ten Cohesion Markers’ Relative Contributions to Coherence: Letters and Stories 15

side of the equation, perhaps this should not be a surprising result. Are these not in fact
the same children performing both tasks? Certainly the skill of the artist is the same,
whether he or she is painting a red sunset or a gray city. The choice of words may be
different, but the ability to establish coherence is unlikely to vary.

2. Research Question 2: Significant Cohesion Markers and Their Relative

and Collective Strengths

To investigate this question, path analysis was used. In answering the previous
research question, students who missed either writing task were excluded from the data.
For the present research question, all subjects who wrote letters were used for letter
analysis (N = 125). Likewise, for story analysis, all those who wrote stories were used (N
=130). This strategy was to increase the N size for each data set. Even if students who
wrote both letters and stories were used, the conclusions about the relationship reported
herein remained the same.
Model 1 was specified initially in which coherence is the dependent variable, and all
of the markers of cohesion were hypothesized to be potential predictors of coherence
(Figure 1). At this stage of specification, the paths from all cohesion markers were

FIGURE 1. Models with All Cohesion Markers Freely Estimated

16 Jungok Bae

released to be freely estimated according to whatever magnitude they might have.45

In addition, text length was included in the model to estimate cohesion marker
occurrences controlling for text length. This was done, in line with path analysis
practices, by simply including the text length variable in the model. Consistent with path
analysis interpretations, the magnitude of any cohesion marker to be estimated thus
becomes its unique contribution to coherence, removing the influence of the text length,
as well as those of the other cohesion markers in the model. Therefore, the path analysis
here did not have to use marker occurrences per 100 words and instead used raw
occurrences.
Model 1 was initially tested to explore which markers have a significant influence and
which do not. Not all paths from the cohesion markers were found to be significant. It
was unnecessary to keep insignificant paths in the model, so only significant paths were
kept in the new model, which was re-evaluated.
The modified model produced a satisfactory overall fit for both the letter and story
data (Table 3). These models are represented in Figure 2, with the magnitudes of the
significant paths shown.
The equations beneath the figures also represent the linear relations between
coherence and significant cohesion markers. The parameters are reported in standardized
values in which all values were indicated on the common scale (i.e., a variance of 1).
Thus the relative strengths of the cohesion markers can be compared on the same scale,
making it easy to interpret their strengths.
R-squared was calculated, which indicates the variance of coherence accounted for by
the predictors in the equation. Values were obtained for all significant predictors: an R2
for text length alone, and an R2 for the significant cohesion markers taken together
excluding the R2 for text length (Bentler, 2004; G. Hancock, personal communication,
November, 2011). The results are shown in the table within Figure 2.

TABLE 3
Overall Fit Indices of the Final Models with Significant Paths Only
χ2 df p χ2/df CFI SRMR RMSEA
Letter data (N =125) 13.33 18 0.77 0.74 1.00 0.06 0.00
(14.64*) (0.69) (1.00) (0.00)
Story data (N = 130) 26.03 23 0.30 1.13 1.00 0.09 0.03
(24.51) (0.38) (1.00) (0.02)
*Values in the parentheses are Satorra-Bentler robust statistics.

4
At the initial stage of testing models, a model with a coherence factor, influenced by a set of cohesion factors,
each factor having two task indicators, was tested. Although theoretically more attractive, it failed to
converge: this result was expected given the low correlations of cohesion markers between the tasks (Table 2).
 Ten Cohesion Markers’ Relative Contributions to Coherence: Letters and Stories 17

FIGURE 2
Final Models with Significant Paths Only*
(a) Letter (b) Story

Equation:
Letter: Coherence = -.191 conjunction + .185 ellipsis + .291 collocation + .626 text length +
.573 residual
Story: Coherence = .201 pronominal - .191 conjunction + .189 ellipsis + .235 collocation +
.334 text length +.746 residual

R2 Letter Story
2
All predictors 1 - (residual) = .672 1- (residual)2 = .443
2
Text length only ** (.769) = .591 (.590)2 = .348
All significant markers .672 - .591 = .081 .443 - .348 = .095

*All estimated values, including the variances of all variables, are significantly different from zero at p < .05.
**R2 for text length was obtained by squaring the correlation between text length and coherence (cf. Appendix).
Correlations among the cohesion markers could not easily be shown in the figure, so these estimates are
separately reported in the appendix.
18 Jungok Bae

The results of the model fitting are summarized as follows:

First, in the letter data, significant predictors of coherence quality were conjunction,
ellipsis, and collocation, of which collocation was a relatively greater predictor. Second,
in the story data, additionally, pronominals also emerged as a significant predictor. This
makes sense if we consider the task characteristics. Anaphor is significant in linking
identical actors across panels. One wants to substitute pronoun phrases for nouns in
narrative. In contrast, in a letter, one is more interested in listing a variety of novel
aspects of the language program, rather than repeating the activities of the same actors:
therefore, instead of searching for pronoun substitution, a writer is looking for other
ways of establishing cohesion between novel nominal elements and hence coherence. As
with the letters, collocation was the best predictor of coherence.
Third, the influence of conjunction turned out to be over the threshold of significance,
but actually somewhat destructive to coherence. Fourth, the significant cohesion markers
together explained 8% (R2 = .081, letters) and 9.5% (R2 = .095, stories) respectively of
the total variance of coherence. Finally, text length was a significant factor in coherence
in both the letter and story data. Its contribution to coherence exceeded the collective
contribution made by all of the things traditionally thought of as significant cohesion
markers.

V. CONCLUSION AND DISCUSSION

1. Occurrences of Cohesion Markers

The results in the previous section suggest the following. First, regarding dominance,
Bae (2001) previously found that the most dominant type of cohesion markers were
lexical ties, followed by references. The present study is consistent with those findings
but provides details. Specifically, repetition, one of the types within lexical ties, was
found to be the most prevalent marker, followed by pronominals, one type within
reference. As in Bae (2001), the least-frequent type of cohesion was substitution. These
findings were consistent for both the letter and story tasks in this study.
The rank order of frequency of occurrence of the 10 cohesion markers in the stories
was more or less similar to that observed in the letters. However looking at the frequency
with which a given type of cohesion marker occurred in each task (e.g., conjunctions
appearing in letters vs. stories), six types of cohesion had similar mean frequencies, but
for four others, the mean frequencies were significantly different. Together, depending
on marker types, the use of the markers was either stable or variant across the tasks due
to task characteristics: a possible explanation was indicated previously.
 Ten Cohesion Markers’ Relative Contributions to Coherence: Letters and Stories 19

2. Contributions of Cohesion Markers to Coherence

In the letter data, only three types of cohesion were found to have had a significant
influence on coherence: these were conjunction, ellipsis, and collocation. In the story
data, in addition to these three, pronominals also exerted a significant effect: a possible
explanation was suggested previously.
Even the cohesion markers found to be significant predictors had weak magnitudes.
The variance of coherence accounted for by all significant cohesion markers taken
together was fairly small: only 8% (letters) and 10% or so (stories), compared to text
length, which, when weighed according to the same numerical standard, accounted for
59% (letters) and 35% (stories). These results were far below what we would expect if,
in fact, the view that coherence is founded on cohesion were true. According to the
present result, the idea that coherence is based on cohesion is simplistic. With closer
psychometric examinations into the sub-dimensions, not all cohesion markers were
significant and even those that were significant were weak in explaining coherence.
These results confirm the idea presented in many studies (cf. Introduction) that
cohesion by itself is not sufficient to explain coherence, and that sources outside the text
contribute to coherence. In the schematic theory of text processing, for example, what is
important is not only the text, its structure and its content, but what the reader does with
the text (Carrell, 1982). These sources outside the text are actually inside the mind, as
discussed previously: the reader’s prior knowledge, including knowledge about the
world, about the specific context, and about the purpose of the writing; the reader’s
perceptions of the text; the reader’s assumption that there is coherence (unless or until
that is broken), as well as reader inferences and effort.
One would think that if people used a piece of language all the time, they would do so
because it accomplished something. Counterintuitively, however, the most frequently-
occurring cohesion marker in both tasks, repetition, had little effect on coherence.
Pronominals were equally prevalent in both tasks; however they were significant for
coherence only in the stories, not in the letters (explained previously). It does make sense
that proper nouns, demonstratives, and hyponyms/meronyms were relatively less
prevalent, and that substitution rarely occurred, and so it seems to follow that these
would be, and indeed they were insignificant predictors.
Surprisingly, however, ellipsis and conjunction, although occurring only to a modest
degree, exerted a significant influence on coherence. Collocation was the third-least
frequent marker, yet it was the strongest predictor of all cohesion markers in both genres.
Interestingly, for both tasks, conjunction exerted a negative influence on coherence!
The implications of these findings are clear. First, this paper sides with Carrell’s
(1982) caution not to expect cohesion theory to be a solution to the problems of second-
20 Jungok Bae

language coherence. With regard to writing evaluation, this paper echoes Witte &
Faigley (1981), “cohesion-based distinctions between texts rated high and low in quality
can be misleading” (p. 200). Such an evaluation can be misleading, according to our
findings, because not all cohesion types were found to be significant. Simply saying that
writing quality such as coherence is built on cohesion is simplistic. Our conclusions
support prior studies that discovered either no or very low relationship between the
amount of cohesion markers and the quality of the writing (Johnson, 1992; Khalil, 1989;
Zhang, 2000).
If any aspects of cohesion are going to receive attention in language teaching and
learning, they should be collocation, ellipsis, and pronominals. Among these types,
pronominals typically are introduced early in language classes as basic building blocks
of language. Collocation, together with the recently-popular lexical approaches (e.g.,
Lewis, 2008), have lately been emphasized as central to language classes (Brown, 2007).
Ellipsis, however, has received relatively little attention: for instance, in a study (e.g.,
Spiegel & Fitzgerald, 1990), this marker was dropped in analysis for the reason that
ellipsis appeared rarely in data. This lack of attention is unfortunate if we take into
account that ellipsis has turned out to be a significant contributor to coherence across
both of the tasks studied! This marker clearly deserves further study and attention by
teachers.
Ellipsis may be typically divided into ellipsis of nouns, verbs and clauses. A language
analyst would be surprised to find that there are many further interesting categorizations
of ellipsis (e.g., Greenbaum & Quirk, 1990). Kyle (2008) comments, “So little is known
about ellipsis that even its taxonomy is up for grabs” (p. 3).
We now turn to the negative effect of conjunction, which is equally noteworthy. This
finding goes against common sense, which would suggest that conjunction does supply
cohesive ties between clauses and sentences. In Bae (2001), Hubbard (1993), and
McCulley (1985), conjunction was one of those non-significant predictors of coherence,
and the present finding, at first impression, seems to go even further to diminish the role
of conjunction by showing its slight, yet negative, effect.
Nonetheless, the negative effect of conjunction is only reasonable because conjunction,
if used excessively, may go against the axiom of writing: ‘Be concise.’ In many cases,
the relationship between adjacent sentences is clear without a conjunction and only
obscured when the reader is asked to sustain his or her attention unnecessarily across two
clauses. On a more basic level, conjunctions are the culprit in many run-on sentences.
Veronica (2005) comments, “in spite of the general scarcity of connectives” (p. 1247) the
texts in her study revealed a high level of coherence. The absence of connectives, she
suggested, may be “an advantage when storing information in the mental reservoir”
(Veronica, 2005, p. 1233).
 Ten Cohesion Markers’ Relative Contributions to Coherence: Letters and Stories 21

Finally, text length was a significant predictor of coherence; its influence was far
greater than that of all cohesion markers taken together. This finding is not surprising. To
make ideas flow well, to elaborate and clarify takes more ink, and many studies have
shown that essay quality is highly correlated with text length (e.g., Grant & Ginther,
2000).

3. Scope and Future Prospects

As a final comment, this paper observed the EFL students’ responses in letters and
stories and has concluded that the usefulness of cohesion markers for improving writing
quality is fairly low across the two tasks. Only collocation, ellipsis, and conjunction
among cohesion markers are suggested for attention in future theoretical and
pedagogical practice.
In future studies a few questions could be inquired with respect to the findings of the
present study, and the author acknowledges that these insightful perspectives are from
the reviewers of this paper.
First, if the significant markers in the present study do indeed relate higher coherence,
additional studies could be conducted that could determine if specifically teaching these
markers can boost coherence. It would be interesting to test if inserting or deleting some
of these markers into or from existing texts influences coherence ratings. For instance, a
reviewer of this paper suggested that a possible source of the negative influence of
conjunction found in this study might be due to the lack of explicit instruction on
conjunction use. A future study could therefore create an environment where students are
explicitly taught the proper use of conjunction and test whether conjunction has a
negative, trivial, or positive effect.
A second question to be raised would be what would happen to letters and stories
composed by native speakers. Our study did include advanced EFL students (see
“Method”), yet these were not native speakers. A future cohesion study would conduct
cohesion-coherence analysis with a group of native English speaking children and
examine whether the findings of the present study hold true.
A third question to be raised would be what would be the case (1) if data are divided
into different proficiency levels. The present study did not analyze cohesion marker use
according to proficiency levels; the volume with the two tasks and the ten cohesion
markers was already large enough to deal with. However, analysis with proficiency
levels is an important area which would reveal educationally interesting results about
how learners reach an advanced level in the use of cohesion markers. Similar benefits
would result from an analysis with longitudinal data.
Finally, a question could be raised as to whether results about significant cohesion
22 Jungok Bae

markers would be different if other genres are used. For instance, if learners have an
experience in a variety of genres, a different writing task might be set up for
investigations, such as expository writing or a task that requires students to compose
essays on history and science topics.
Findings from such investigations will bolster conclusions about the roles of cohesion
markers as to which markers have stronger, weak, or even trivial influence on writing
quality. It is hoped that the present study has provided a substantial foundation for such a
future investigation.

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APPENDIX
Correlation Matrices*
1. Letters (N = 125)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

Demonstra 1 1
Pronomi 2 .487 1
Proper N 3 .136 .276 1
Conjunct 4 .447 .580 .297 1
Substitute 5 .083 .043 -.113 -.233 1
Ellipsis 6 .394 .634 .138 .410 .076 1
Syn/anto 7 .394 .638 .422 .573 -.008 .425 1
Hopo/mer 8 .208 .490 .326 .427 -.020 .384 .366 1
Repeat 9 .518 .719 .341 .619 .001 .376 .525 .481 1
Collocate 10 .302 .551 .126 .482 -.135 .404 .410 .377 .360 1
Length 11 .594 .898 .459 .719 .001 .611 .721 .606 .807 .548 1
Cohere 12 .438 .736 .235 .483 .000 .638 .513 .538 .599 .568 .768
 26 Jungok Bae

2. Stories (N = 130)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

Demonstra 1 1
Pronomi 2 .372 1
Proper N 3 .131 .180 1
Conjunct 4 .358 .545 .235 1
Substitute 5 .088 .065 .038 .087 1
Ellipsis 6 .330 .442 .340 .480 .091 1
Syn/anto 7 .361 .578 .438 .373 -.030 .435 1
Hopo/mer 8 .328 .489 .200 .272 .054 .308 .471 1
Repeat 9 .421 .570 .256 .498 .010 .409 .513 .474 1
Collocate 10 .372 .495 .191 .425 -.008 .378 .391 .338 .476 1
Length 11 .521 .716 .293 .574 .022 .507 .575 .517 .736 .542 1
Cohere 12 .291 .562 .202 .289 .045 .437 .452 .478 .417 .458 .583
* Raw occurrences were used for cohesion markers because text length was also included as a variable in the
correlation matrices to examine its correlations with other variables.

Applicable levels: elementary, secondary, and tertiary education

Key words: cohesion, coherence, demonstrative, pronoun, proper noun, substitution, conjunction,
ellipsis, hyponym, synonym, repetition, collocation

Jungok Bae
#507 Department of English Education
Kyungpook National University
Daehak-ro 80
Daegu, 702-701, Korea
Tel: 053) 950-5833
E-mail: jungokbae@knu.ac.kr

Received on March 30, 2012

Reviewed on May 11, 2012
Accepted on June 9, 2012

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