THE EFFECTS OF LEXICAL COHESION IN MAINTAINING COHERENCE IN THE EFL JORDANIAN STUDENTS’ WRITING

Abstract

Lexical cohesion is one of the key issues that has received much attention from linguists due to its importance in maintaining coherence in discourse. However, many researchers claim that EFL Jordanian students could not write coherent pieces of writing because of their limited awareness of lexical cohesion. Therefore, this article investigates lexical cohesion’s role in creating coherence in the EFL Jordanian students’ writing. To achieve this goal, 20 written pieces have been analyzed based on Hoey’s (1991, 2005) model of lexical cohesion. Importantly, the article highlights how lexical bonds emerge and hold relations between the sentences in writing. It, more specifically, underlines the significant sentences and how the reader can apprehend them. As for coherence in the Jordanian students’ writing, the article indicates that the students can still not write fully coherent texts due to their poor knowledge of lexical items and training.