Coherence in Engineering and Management Students' Argumentative Writing

Coherence and cohesion are necessary components of a text's unity. Cohesive devices assist the writer in connecting words, phrases, clauses, and sentences, thereby establishing cohesion between lexical elements and a logical organization that contributes to coherence. Coherence aids readers in deciphering a text. Because cohesive devices do not guarantee that a text is coherent, it is critical to learn how to use cohesive devices to achieve cohesion and coherence. This paper examines the use of grammatical and lexical cohesive devices as a linguistic tool in establishing the overall texture of the argumentative texts written by students of Engineering and Technology and Management domain, as well as the effect of discipline on students' ability to create coherent texts. A reader-based approach is used to select coherent text. The authors examine 168 texts that readers find coherent to identify the cohesive devices. The analysis reveals significant quantitative and qualitative differences in the use of reference, substitution, and ellipsis. Another intriguing finding is that both groups placed a higher premium on the use of grammatical cohesive devices.