Matters of Cohesion in L2 Academic Texts.

This study presents a comparative analysis of medi an freq uency rates of explicit cohesive devices employed in academic texts of students who were speakers of such languages as English, Japanese, Korean, Indonesian, and Arabic. Sp ecifi cally, the study focuses on the median f requency rates of uses of explicit cohesion devices, such as phrase-level coordinators, sentence transitions, logicalsemantic conjunctions, demo nstrative pronouns, and enumerative and resultative nouns in academic texts of native speakers (NSs) and nonnative speakers (NNSs) . The purpose of this study is determine the spec ific differences and similar ities in the uses ofexplicit cohesion devices in a NS and NNS corp us of 897 academic essays totalling 265,812 words. This quantitative analysis of common cohes ive devices in NS and NNS academic texts indicates that even advanced NNS students who have completed their English as a second language (ESL) and composition training continue to rely on a restricted repertoire of f eatures in constructing unified text. The study shows that, regardless of their native language (LI), speakers of Japanese, Korean, Indonesian, and Arabic employ sentence transitions and demonstrative pronouns at significantly higher median f requency rates than do NSs. However, in second language (L2) texts the sentence transitions do not necessarily mark a contextualized flow of information. In fa ct, in L2 texts, the preponder ance of se ntence tr ansitions and demonstratives often refl ects NNS writers ' attempts to construct a unified idea fl ow within the constraints of a limited syntactic and lexical range ofaccessible linguistic means. Another issue that needs to be addressed in L2 writing instruction is the employment of coo rdinating conj unctions by speakers of Indonesian and Arabic.