Language Development for English-Medium Instruction: A Longitudinal Perspective on the Use of Cohesive Devices by Chinese English Majors in Argumentative Writing

In alignment with a strong increase of fully or partially English-taught programmes worldwide, intense research interest has been drawn to English as a medium of instruction (EMI) in higher education. In the meanwhile, much research has been done concerning cohesion and coherence in second language writing, which reveals that the appropriate use of cohesive devices will ultimately lead to text coherence. This study adopts a longitudinal perspective to examine the use of cohesive devices by Chinese English majors in argumentative writing in the EMI context. Thirty-one second-year Chinese English majors participated in this study. They were given three writing prompts at the initial, middle, and final time-points of one academic year, respectively. Altogether, 93 argumentative writings were collected, and 30 cohesion indices were selected and investigated at local, global and text levels via two automatic computational tools: Coh-Metrix and TAACO. The major findings of the study indicate (1) Chinese English majors were capable of a variety of cohesive devices in their writing. They tended to use local cohesive devices, especially connectives, more than global and text cohesive devices; (2) Most of the cohesion indices demonstrated growth. Of the 30 selected cohesion indices, 13 presented significant development over one academic year, and among them, 3 were at local level, 10 at global level and 3 at text level. Informed of the possible learning trajectories of cohesive devices, teachers may be guided to focus on their teaching in some specific areas of cohesion, and students may be more aware of what contributes to their writing performance and what to emphasize when writing in English.