COHESION DEVICES IN RELATION TO QUALITY OF ENGINEERING STUDENTS' GENRE-BASED WRITINGS

Writing skill is one of the four language skills in learning English in EFL context. In writing, cohesive devices are used to establish the links among the ideas in a sentence and paragraph. This study was aimed at investigating IT Del engineering students’ use of cohesive devices in genre based writing and the relationship between the number of cohesive devices used and writing quality. There were 30 writings selected out of 50 compositions written by the engineering students at IT Del. The quantitative analysis was performed to explore the results. The findings revealed that the students applied a variety of cohesive devices in their English compositions, among which reference category had the highest percentage, followed by lexical and conjunction categories. Furthermore, it was found that there is no significant relationship between the number of cohesive ties used and the quality of writing. The results have some important implications for learning English as a Foreign Language.