Cohesion in Engineering and Sciences ESL Spontaneous Texts

The unity of a text relies heavily on its coherence and cohesion. Cohesive elements play a vital role in facilitating the connection between words, phrases, clauses, and sentences, resulting in a cohesive structure that contributes to a logical and coherent organization. The comprehension of a text is greatly aided by its coherence. In this study, we delve into the utilization of grammatical and lexical cohesive devices within spontaneously written texts by students in the domains of engineering and physical science. Furthermore, we examine how the discipline of study influences the students' capacity to generate coherent texts. A reader-centric approach is employed to identify coherent texts for subsequent analysis. 197 texts that are found coherent by readers are examined to identify cohesive devices used in these texts. The analysis reveals that cohesive devices are employed with notable quantitative and qualitative distinctions. Additionally, an intriguing observation is that both groups exhibit a greater emphasis on employing grammatical cohesive devices, with repetition being the sole lexical cohesive device employed to achieve coherence. The discipline has an impact but not a strong impact on the use of cohesive devices. The study's findings suggest potential implications for teaching pedagogy.