Examining Coherence in the Written Compositions of Second-Year Students of English at Laghouat University in Algeria

Abstract

This study is an investigation into coherence achievement in the written compositions of second-year students enrolled in English at Laghouat University, Algeria. It spots light on the major traits of coherence inadequacies that Algerian EFL learners may encounter in writing English essays. Descriptive essays of twenty-two students formed the corpus of the study. Coherence Problems were examined and evaluated, using an analytic rubric scale proposed by Hyland (2003). The results revealed that major learners‟ inadequacies appeared in displaying thematic progression, resulting in poor flow of the information; the fact that made them focus on transitions, references and key words repetition as an attempt to get logical relations between sentences and paragraphs. This finding can be attributed to the differences between the rhetorical patterns of the learners' mother-tongue, Arabic, and the target language, English. Finally, the study recommended that EFL learners‟ competence in coherence can be maximised by their exposure to the target language through extensive reading, listening and writing.