i
VIETNAM NATIONAL UNVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

MAI THÀNH HẠNH

LEXICAL COHESION IN THE READING TEXTS OF
“INFOTECH” TEXT BOOK AND IMPLICATIONS FOR
TEACHING ENGLISH FOR IT AND COMPUTER LEARNERS

(LIÊN KẾT TỪ VỰNG TRONG CÁC BÀI ĐỌC CỦA GIÁO TRÌNH
“INFOTECH” VÀ GỢI Ý CHO VIỆC GIẢNG DẠY TIẾNG ANH CHO
SINH VIÊN NGÀNH CÔNG NGHỆ THÔNG TIN) M.A. Minor Programme Thesis Field: English Linguistics
Code: 60 22 15

Hanoi, 2010 vi
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT iv
ABSTRACT v
TABLE OF CONTENTS vi
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS viii
PART A: INTRODUCTION 1
1. Background to the study 1
2. Aims of the study 3
3. Significance of the study 3
4. Scope of the study 3
5. Methods of the study 4
6. Design of the study 4
PART B: DEVELOPMENT 5
Chapter I: Theoretical background 5
1.1. Discourse 5
1.1.1. Definitions of discourse 5
1.1.2. Text and discourse 5
1.1.3. Written and spoken discourse 7
1.1.4. Discourse analysis 8

viii
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

IT: Information Technology
ESP: English for Specific purposes
Hitech: Hanoi Institute of Technology
EFL: English as foreign language
GE: General English
LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

Table 1 – Sections and texts chosen for analysis from Infotech course book
Table 2 – Frequency of repetition in the six texts
Table 3 – Frequency of occurrence of synonyms
Figure 1 – Frequency of occurrence of lexical cohesive devices used in the sample texts
Figure 2 – Frequency of occurrence of different parts of speech in repetition1
PART A: INTRODUCTION

1. Background to the study

ability. Their cognitive ability, therefore, is another matter that leads to ineffectiveness in
learning.

Thirdly, Infotech is one of the few textbooks for IT and computer learners on the market now.
It was written by Santiago Remacha Esteras and published in 2001 by Cambridge University
Press. There are seven sections with thirty units about most basic aspects of computer. There
are sections dealing with the four skills of listening, reading, speaking and writing, grammar
and vocabulary in the book. However, these parts vary in different units. The problem is that
among the six parts, reading and vocabulary are the most applicable for teachers and students
at Hitech because of the following reasons:

The listening section is often put at the beginning of a unit, but this section is often long and
the language used is difficult. Besides, generally, the listening tasks compose of note taking
and question answering; Few tasks have multiple choice questions. Consequently, exploiting
the listening part is unfeasible for Hitech low-level learners. For speaking, there are not many
kinds of activities in Infotech and if there are, it is often for pair work and the tasks focus
mainly on technical description and comparison. It is not practical for a large class of about 50
students where the teacher’s role of a controller is vague. That is, it is quite hard for teachers
to cover all these numerous pairs simultaneously in speaking activities; In addition, Hitech
students are not competent and self-conscious enough to fulfill the task themselves. Therefore,
learning possibly turns out to private talking and disorder in class. As for writing, the tasks
often focus on technical description. Within 60 periods, teachers cannot carefully guide their
students to complete the tasks and students’ English level is not high enough to finish a
technical writing paper. More importantly, at this level of training at Hitech, students are not
required to be qualified at document writing. The main objective of this ESP course is only to
provide students with basic reading skills and IT vocabulary to work with specialist
documents. Grammar is quite important in understanding the texts. However, most

This thesis helps to gain an insight into the use of lexical cohesive devices in the texts of
Infotech course book. It will therefore not only figure out some discourse features in IT texts
but also assist ESP teachers and IT learners in understanding the texts and remembering new
vocabulary more easily.

4. Scope of the study
The study focuses on the analysis of the frequency of lexical cohesive devices in the six texts
of the course book Infotech. The study figures out how often lexical cohesive devices appears 4
and how it affects text understanding and vocabulary learning. After investigating and
analyzing the data, some implications will be drawn out for both teachers and IT students.

5. Methods of the study
To attain the aims of the study, the following activities were conducted:
- Reviewing the theories on lexical cohesive devices in discourse analysis and ESP
teaching.
- Collecting six medium-length texts from six chapters in the course book Infotech to
analyze in terms of lexical cohesive devices: reiteration and collocations – how often each
device is used within the texts.
- Making recommendations and conclusions on the basis of data analysis.
The approach to the study is both inductive and deductive, based on the collection and analysis
of sample texts.

6. Design of the study
This minor thesis consists of three following main parts:

sentences which are perceived as being related in some way”. Widdowson (1979) states:
“Discourse is a use of sentences to perform acts of communication which cohere into larger
communicative units, ultimately establishing a rhetorical pattern which characterizes the
pieces of language as a whole as a kind of communication.” Quite different from the others,
Halliday & Hassan (1976) give a simple definition: “We can define text (discourse) in the
simplest way perhaps by saying that it is language that is functional.” By functional, they
simply mean that language is doing some jobs in some contexts as opposed to isolated words
or sentences that one might put on the blackboard. So any instance of living language that is
playing some part in a context of situation, we shall call a text. It may be either spoken or
written, or any other medium of expression that we like to think of. (Halliday & Hassan 1989:
10 cited in Van, 2000)

Other definitions of discourse will be presented as follows when discourse is compared or
distinguished with text.

1.1.2. Text and discourse 6
It is important to distinguish between “discourse” and “text”. That is because some argue that
they are interchangeable while some insist that discourse is language in action but text is the
written record of that interaction.

Brown and Yule (1983: 6) states that “text is the representation of discourse and the verbal
record of a communicative act”. Nunan (1993) shares the same idea when he asserts that text
refers to “any written record of a communicative event” (event involves oral or written
language) while discourse mentions “the interpretation of the communicative event in

There is no doubt that spoken and written discourse has many differences. Brown and Yule
(1983) state that spoken discourse contains many incomplete sentences, simply sequences of
phrases. The speaker produces current utterances, monitors what has been said and orients his
next expressions. During the speech, he/ she has no chance to come back to edit what has
been uttered. However, he/ she could make himself/ herself clearer if the listener appears not
to understand. In addition, in spoken discourse, the speaker can change the voice in different
ways or add body languages, pauses or intonation to express himself/ herself better (Nguyen
Hoa, 2000: 16). On the other hand, written discourse consists of complete sentences which are
polished with various choices of language or structures. That is because the writer has time to
look back and cover what he has written to make necessary correction. The disadvantage is he/
she can not be sure whether what written is meaningful or not to the reader. Therefore, the
writer could not make things clear when necessary.

After reviewing the theory of Brown & Yule (1983: 4-18), Nguyen Hoa (2000: 18-20) and Mc
Carthy (1991: 12-18, 25-26), the dissimilarities between the two could be systematized as
follows:
- Grammatical features: Spoken discourse has fewer subordinate clauses, fewer
sequences of prepositional phrases, attributive adjectives but more active verbs.
- Lexical characteristics: Spoken discourse has more repetitions and the percentage of
different words is low.
- Structural features: Spoken discourse is more fragmented. It contains more simple
sentences and coordination words (and, but, so, because, etc.) while written texts use
richness of different structural forms. Besides, written discourse can be divided into
chapters, sections, units, headings, subheadings, quotations, etc.
- Functional features: Spoken and written discourse serves different functions. We use
speech (spoken discourse) largely for the establishment and maintenance of human
relationships (or we use it for interaction), whereas we use written language for working
out and transference of information (the purpose of transaction).
“Context refers to the situation giving rise to the discourse and within which the discourse is
embedded.” According to him, context consists of two types: linguistic and non-linguistic. The
former refers to “the language that surrounds or accompanies the piece of discourse under 9
analysis. The latter is the experiential context within which the discourse takes place. It may
include the type of communication, the topic, the setting, the participants, etc.
- Register
Halliday and Hassan (1976: 23) defines: “The register is the set of meanings, the configuration
of semantic patterns, that are typically drawn upon under the specified conditions, along with
the words and structures that are used in the realization of these meanings.” They interpret
'register' as 'the linguistic features which are typically associated with particular values of the
field, mode and tenor. According to the two authors, field is “the total event, in which the text
is functioning, together with the purposive activity of the speaker or writer; includes subject-
matter as one of the elements”. Mode is “the function of the text in the event, including both
the channel taken by language - spoken or written, extempore or prepared – and its genre, or
rhetorical mode, as narrative, didactic, persuasive ” The tenor refers to “the type of role
interaction, the set of relevant social relations, permanent and temporary, among the
participants involved”. It can be said that register reflects the degree of formality of the
particular text by using a characterized set of lexical and grammatical features that are
compatible with the particular register.
- Genre
Couture, 1986 (cited in Swales, 1990: 41) states: “Registers impose constraints at the
linguistic levels of vocabulary and syntax, whereas genre constraints operate at the level of
discourse structure.” Further, “[G]enre does more than specify kinds of codes extant in a group
of related texts; it specifies conditions for beginning, continuing and ending a text.” For

phenomenon and cannot be identified or quantified in the same way as cohesion.”

In fact, cohesion is the network of different kinds of formal relations that provide links among
various parts of a text. It is expressed partly through surface-structure features of grammar and
vocabulary. Coherence, on the other hand, is understood as the quality of being meaningful
and unified, which is perceived by listeners or readers. As for Nunan (1993), coherence is “the
feeling that sequences of sentences or utterances seem to hang together”. In other words, the
linguistic means that writers or speakers use to form coherence relations are called cohesion.
Generally, if cohesion refers to the linguistic elements that make a discourse semantically
coherent, then coherence involves with what makes a text semantically meaningful.

In summary, it can be said that cohesion is the relationship between words, whereas coherence
is a relationship between concepts and meanings. However, both cohesion and coherence 11
establish a connection between an element in one sentence with an element in a preceding
sentence.

1.2.2. Main principles of cohesion
According to Halliday & Hassan (1976), there are two major types of cohesive relation. They
are grammatical cohesion and lexical cohesion.

1.2.2.1 Grammatical cohesion
a. Reference
In the view of Halliday & Hassan (1976: 30), reference is “the specific nature of the
information that is signaled for retrieval”. They add:

Ellipsis is the case in which one of the identical linguistic elements is omitted. According to
Halliday and Hasan (1976:144), “ellipsis occurs when something that is structurally necessary
is left unsaid”. It can be seen as “substitution by zero”; yet, the missing part can always be
retrieved from another structure within a sentence or beyond a sentence. Like substitution, it
can be studied in terms of nominal ellipsis, verbal ellipsis and clausal ellipsis.

c. Conjunction
Halliday and Hasan (1976: 227) assert that conjunction is “a different type of semantic
relation”. It is “no longer any kind of search instruction, but a specification of the way in
which what is to follow is systematically connected to what has gone before”. Conjunction
specifies the relationship between clauses, or sentences. Most frequent relations of sentences
are: additive (e.g: nor, not, neither), adversative (e.g: yet, though, but, rather), causal (e.g: so,
then, because, as a result), and temporal (e.g: afterwards, then, next).

1.2.2.2. Lexical cohesion
Lexical cohesion occurs when two words in a discourse are semantically related in some way.
Halliday & Hassan (1976) categorize lexical cohesion into two main types: reiteration and
collocation. In this thesis, I will use this classification to analyze six sample texts in Infotech
course book.

Halliday & Hasan (1976) classify reiteration into types of the same word (repetition)
synonyms or near synonyms, superordinates and general words. In this thesis, we do not take
general words into consideration but add one more cohesive device of opposites. The reasons
are given while the theory about kinds of cohesion is presented.
Reiteration 13 14
We use synonyms and near synonyms to avoid repetition and boredom within a text and to
prove the writing skill of the author. Take an example from Nguyen Hoa (2000: 33) for
illustration, the writer makes use of synonyms as: drop out of, shut down, abandon and cancel
in a skillful way.
The US began dropping out of the program in 1977. France shut down its
commercial super Phonix breeder in 1990. Germany abandoned its completed
reactor in 1991. Last week, Britain cancelled that the technology was unlikely to
become commercially viable for 40 years.
In this thesis, the researcher does not distinguish between the two concepts of synonyms and
near synonyms but generally call them “synonym” because our students’ English competence
is not very high to separate the two.

- Superordinate
Another way of creating coherence for text is using what is called superordinate. For example:
“Brazil, with her two-crop economy, was even more severely hit by the Depression than other
Latin American states and the country was on the verge of complete collapse.” (Salkie, 1995:
15) The link here is the connection between Brazil and the country. The general word is called
superordinate and the more specific is called hyponym. Then, Vietnam, China, Japan, etc are
the hyponyms of country. In general, a word that presents the previously mentioned ones with
high generality is called super-ordinate.

- General words
According to Halliday & Hassan, general words are cohesive devices only when they have the
same reference as what they are presupposing. Besides, they are accompanied by a reference

we say “make an omelet” but “do your homework”.
- The semantic approach: “This approach goes beyond the sheer observation of collocations
and tries to determine their specific shape”. Their main goal is to figure out why words
collocate with certain other words such as we can say “blonde hair” but not “blonde car”.
- The structural approach: “Collocation is determined by structures and occurs in patterns.”
Collocation is divided into two categories of lexical and grammatical collocation.
Grammatical collocations usually consist of a noun, an adjective and a verb plus a preposition
or a grammatical structure like “to + infinitive” or “that-clause”. Meanwhile, lexical
collocations do not contain grammatical elements, but are combinations of nouns, adjectives,
verbs and adverbs.

Lewis (2000: 62) arranges collocation in the following ways: 16
Grammatically: sections such as noun+noun, adjective+noun, verb+noun, etc.
By common key word: collocation with do, make, get, up, speak, etc.
By topic: collocations to talk about holiday, travel, work, etc.

In this study, the author just focuses on collocation by topic because of two reasons. The first
reason is the limitation of time. We cannot analyze all the cases in this thesis because
collocation is quite a big area, especially grammatical collocation. The second reason is the
level of students at Hitech. It can be said that they are of low-level of English competence and
are not very hard-working. They have just passed 150 periods of general English with above
average marks. It is, consequently, not effective to force them to realize or remember such
complicated collocation of common key words with many accompanies.


establish the need for ESP. Consequently, the need for ESP will vary among study purposes.
Meanwhile, Streven (cited in Dudley-Evans, 1998) does not provide a brief definition about
ESP but lists out its characteristics instead. This author brings forward four absolute
characteristics and two variable characteristics.
Four absolute characteristics
- designed to meet specified needs of the learner
- related in content to particular disciplines, occupations and activities
- centered on language appropriate to those activities in syntax, lexis, discourse, semantics
and so on, and analysis of those discourse
- in contrast with “General English’
Two variable characteristics
- may be restricted as to the learning skills to be learnt (for example reading only)
- may not be taught according to any pre-ordained methodology
Dudley-Evans (1998) claims that Streven’ view is the most comprehensive definition of ESP.
However, he makes some changes to make it less confusing.
Absolute characteristics
- ESP is designed to meet specific needs of the learners
- ESP makes us of the underlying methodology and activities of the disciplines it
serves;
- ESP is centered on the language, skills, discourse and genres appropriate to these
activities.
Variable characteristics
- ESP may be related to or designed for specific disciplines; 18
- ESP may use, in specific teaching situations, a different methodology from that of


19
presented by a subject specialist or assumed to be known by a subject specialist.” (Dudley-
Evans, 1998: 81) However, in most situations, the subject specialist is not present.
Consequently, the language teacher needs to have a right look at the importance of the role of
technical vocabulary. The teacher should check whether learners fully understand the term and
if not, he/ she has to explain the word meaning for their students. Technical vocabulary in IT
area may include the followings as an example: computer, software, hardware, Internet,
printer, keyboard, main memory, bit and byte, etc. Secondly, the main concern should be paid
to semi-technical and core business vocabulary. However, there are not yet satisfactory
definitions for these two concepts. Later, Dudley-Evans suggests dividing vocabulary into two
broad areas only. They are: “vocabulary that is used in general language but has a higher
frequency of occurrence in scientific and technical description and discussion; and vocabulary
that has specialized and restricted meanings in certain disciplines and which may vary in
meaning across disciplines”.

- Reading skill in ESP
Among four skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing, reading plays an important part
in teaching and learning ESP due to the following reasons. As a matter of fact, ESP is a
combination of subject matter and target language. It means students are shown how the
subject matter is expressed in English. Therefore, after reading each text, they are supposed to
get not only language issues of English but also the content. Therefore, it cannot be denied that
the role of reading skill in teaching and learning ESP is very important.

- Discourse and genre analysis
Discourse and genre analysis has particular influence on the development of research in ESP.
However, there are some different reflections on these two overlapping concepts and this part