Proposing a comprehensive model of cohesive devices to investigate the quality of students’ academic writing

The majority of the studies that analysed the use of cohesive devices relied on Halliday and Hasan’s (1976) model, which was acknowledged to be the most comprehensive model of cohesion. Reviewing the previous studies has revealed that research has fallen short of analysing the links between the text and the contextual world, including culture, for example. This paper introduces the concepts of the cohesive devices based on the 1976 model with reference to examples from English and Arabic. Then, the paper builds on the 1976 model and expands it based on suggestions proposed by different authors, and introduces the new tool: construction-based cohesion.  

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