Tri Mulyani, MPd, Widyaiswara LPMP Jawa Tengah,Abstract Tri Mulyani,2012. THE USING OF COHESIVE TIES IN EFL TEACHERS'RECOUNT TEXT WRITING: The Case of English Teacher Training in Central Java Educational Quality Assurance Institution( LPMP Jawa Tengah).Laporan Penelitian Pengembangan, diajukan dalam rangka kegiatan pengembangan profesi Widyaiswara. This study was conducted to investigate the correlation between the cohesive devices found in the recount text writings constructed by the participants of teacher training in LPMP. The research problems were :(1) What kinds of cohesive ties were used in the recount text writing of participants;(2) How frequently were cohesive ties used in the recount composition of the participants ;(3)Is there any relationship between the type of cohesive ties used and the quality of the same recount compositions;(4) Does the using of reference ties show a relationship with the quality of the recount writing:(5)Does the applying of reference and conjunction ties correlate with the quality of the recount writing.
This research design is correlation. Twenty essays were collected and then analyzed by applying the frameworks of Halliday and Hasan (1976). In assessing the writing achievement, the ESL Composition Profile was used.
The findings show (1) all categories of cohesive devices were found in the participants' writings. (2)The reference category had the highest percentage of ties (55.5%), followed by the conjunction category (37.6%) then ellipsis category (5.1%), next substitution category (1.3%) and the last lexical category (0.6%). (3)The result of computation using Pearson formula shows that there is a high correlation between the number of cohesive ties and the quality of writing. The correlation coefficient of 0.71 at the significance level 0.05. It means that using cohesive ties contribute 71% to the quality of writing, and the rest is from the other factors.(4) The statistic computation result shows that there is no correlation between using of reference and the quality of writing.(5) The calculation also shows that the using of reference and conjunction has a correlation with the quality of writing.
The conclusion of the study reveals that the using of the number and kinds of cohesive ties has a high relationship with the quality of writing.
It is suggested that teachers should introduce all kinds of cohesive ties when they are teaching. It is expected that, with the integration of reading and writing, EFL learners would become aware of and more sensitive to the characteristic features of good English writing.
Key words: cohesive devices, recount writing Background of the study
There is no doubt that writing is one of the most difficult skills for foreign language learners to master. The difficulty lies not only in generating and organizing ideas, but also in translating these ideas into readable text. The skills involved in writing are highly complex. Second language learners' writers have to pay attention to higher-level skills of planning and organizing as well as lower level skills of spelling, punctuation, word choice and so on.
The main focus of this research is expressing opinions at the paragraph level. Therefore, paragraph writing or the organization of a paragraph is of primary importance. However, writing builds larger units from smaller ones; that is, writers use words to make sentences, sentences to make paragraphs, and paragraphs to make compositions.
Reasons for choosing the topic
This study is special from all of the previous researches because it examined the product of writing from the teachers. I try to find if teachers write text cohesively or not because teachers' compositions become the model of their participants' writing.
From my own experience in assigning participants to write out a certain topic, learners found some problems. It was very hard to construct an organized and coherent written text in English. When they did write a connected text or a composition, difficulties at the discourse level occur. For examples, on the organizational level, others involved poor topic continuance, inadequate use of examples and details, limited vocabulary, and the poor or inadequate use of cohesive devices. The last category, that is the use of cohesive devices is the concern of this study.
A number of studies on cohesion were done by several EFL practitioners. Zhang Meisuo from Xinzhou Teachers' college of China conducted research on cohesion analysis. The result of the study shows that participants employed in their writing various types of cohesive devices with some categories of ties used more frequently than the others did.
Inspired by the above research and some others, I am interested in doing this research for some reasons. First, there hasn't been such kind of research ever conducted in my institution, yet. Secondly, all researchers who examined cohesive features focused on participants' writing only, but I spotlight my research on teachers' writing. Thirdly, I hope the research findings will be useful as an attempt to improve the quality of teaching writing.
