COHESIVE DEVICES IN ARGUMENTATIVE, DESCRIPTIVE, AND EXPOSITORY WRITING PRODUCED BY IRANIAN EFL UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

Using Halliday and Hasan's (1976) taxonomy of cohesive devices and their framework for analysis, this study investigated the use of cohesive devices in 180 compositions (argumentative, descriptive, and expository) produced by Iranian EFL university students. It was found that the students were able to use a variety of cohesive devices in their writing, among which lexical devices formed the largest percentage of the total number of cohesive devices, followed by references and conjunctions. The scores of writing were also revealed to significantly co-vary with the number of reference devices and the total number of cohesive devices used. Besides, mode of composition has some effect in the frequency of using cohesive devices. And topic of composition accounted for variation in using cohesive devices. Moreover, certain problems such as misuse, overuse, and restriction were identified in the compositions due to the use of reference, conjunction, and lexical devices.