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

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I enjoyed reading this manuscript, it is a well-designed and written work and I believe it may contribute to existing literature. Here are some suggestions for the authors to improve the quality and readability of the mansucript. 

1. I suggest the authors put one sentence at the beginning of the abstract to point out the necessity to do this study.

2. Please clarify the research problem and especially the research gap in the introduction section, because these are very helpful for readers to understand the reasons for doing the longitudinal study.

3, Findings are not very surprising to me, especially the first one "1) Chinese English majors were capable of a variety of cohesive devices in their writing", maybe think of another way to present findings?

4.  How does your study contribute to existing literature? Please elaborate on the contributions, as well as practical implications. 

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer

First of all, we’d like to extend our heartfelt thanks to you for your review and suggestions. Our revisions of “Language Development for English-Medium Instruction: A Longitudinal Perspective on the Use of Cohesive Devices by Chinese English Majors in Argumentative Writing” are as follows:

 

1. I suggest the authors put one sentence at the beginning of the abstract to point out the necessity to do this study.

On Page 1, in the Abstract, the authors have added information in relation to the necessity to do this study:

 

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.

 

2. Please clarify the research problem and especially the research gap in the introduction section, because these are very helpful for readers to understand the reasons for doing the longitudinal study.

 

On Page 2, the authors have already clarified the research problem as well as the research gap from three perspectives:

 

To the best of our knowledge, previous studies on cohesion, or rather the use of cohesive devices, are mostly cross-sectional, where the use of cohesive devices is examined across different grades or proficiency levels at a given point of time [Error! Reference source not found.–Error! Reference source not found.]. As proposed by Crossley et al. [Error! Reference source not found.], longitudinal methods of data collection can help control for writer-specific variables (i.e. demographic differences), which is not possible in cross-sectional ones. Besides, previous studies are mostly focused on the analysis of some explicit types of cohesive devices such as logical connectors, which only touch upon surface cohesion [Error! Reference source not found.–Error! Reference source not found.]. In those studies, data are collected by means of manually marking and counting the number of cohesive devices in each writing, which involves a lot of time and effort. Moreover, deeper-level linguistic features are nearly impossible for researchers to recognize in this way. Therefore, it is of great necessity to probe deeper and draw a more complete picture by means of automatic tools like Coh-Metrix and TAACO, which make up for the deficiency of previous studies as well as making most of the work automatic.

 

3. Findings are not very surprising to me, especially the first one "1) Chinese English majors were capable of a variety of cohesive devices in their writing",maybe think of another way to present findings?

 

The authors have rephrased the sentence as (the emphasis is on the use of cohesive devices at three different levels, not just at the local level):

 

Chinese English majors are capable of using cohesive devices not only at the local level, but also at the global and text levels.

 

4. How does your study contribute to existing literature? Please elaborate on the contributions, as well as practical implications. 

 

The contribution of this study to the existing literature has been illustrated on Page 2 (before 1.1. Classification of cohesive devices) in the form of “significance”:

 

The significance of this study is two-fold. On one hand, unlike most studies stopping at only manually analyzing explicit cohesive devices, the use of advanced computational tools affords us a chance to dig deeper into the use of cohesive devices at three different levels, namely local, global and text levels in the EMI context. On the other hand, the longitudinal perspective adopted in this study renders it possible to track the changes in the use of cohesive devices by the same group of subjects. It is hoped that this one-academic-year longitudinal study may shed light on both EFL teaching and learning with regard to the use of cohesive devices.

 

The practical implications can be found on Page 12 from two different perspectives, one implication for teaching, and the other for learning (before 5. Conclusion):

 

The implications of this study are two-fold. On the one hand, the findings yielded in this study could help inform teachers of the possible learning trajectories of the use of cohesive devices in student writing in the EMI context. It may guide and improve their instruction in the specific areas of cohesion. For example, there is a need for teachers to avoid only focusing on the word and sentence levels but to go beyond to the paragraph and whole text level, assisting students in achieving unity as well as cohesion. On the other hand, in order to raise students’ awareness of cohesion, students should be encouraged to take full advantage of the EMI context, which can afford learners the most authentic situation and materials. For instance, apart from the EMI in classroom, texts written by native speakers can be used as another form of EMI to practice students’ critical and analytical comprehension, both in class and outside of class. After features of a reading material are learned and internalized, the students need to produce a writing modeled on the material. In this manner, the students are expected to make the best of EMI mode and become more sensitive to varied types of cohesive devices and more capable of creating writing of high cohesion.

Dear Reviewer

First of all, we’d like to extend our heartfelt thanks to you for your review and suggestions. Our revisions of “Language Development for English-Medium Instruction: A Longitudinal Perspective on the Use of Cohesive Devices by Chinese English Majors in Argumentative Writing” are as follows:

 

1. I suggest the authors put one sentence at the beginning of the abstract to point out the necessity to do this study.

On Page 1, in the Abstract, the authors have added information in relation to the necessity to do this study:

 

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.

 

2. Please clarify the research problem and especially the research gap in the introduction section, because these are very helpful for readers to understand the reasons for doing the longitudinal study.

 

On Page 2, the authors have already clarified the research problem as well as the research gap from three perspectives:

 

To the best of our knowledge, previous studies on cohesion, or rather the use of cohesive devices, are mostly cross-sectional, where the use of cohesive devices is examined across different grades or proficiency levels at a given point of time [Error! Reference source not found.–Error! Reference source not found.]. As proposed by Crossley et al. [Error! Reference source not found.], longitudinal methods of data collection can help control for writer-specific variables (i.e. demographic differences), which is not possible in cross-sectional ones. Besides, previous studies are mostly focused on the analysis of some explicit types of cohesive devices such as logical connectors, which only touch upon surface cohesion [Error! Reference source not found.–Error! Reference source not found.]. In those studies, data are collected by means of manually marking and counting the number of cohesive devices in each writing, which involves a lot of time and effort. Moreover, deeper-level linguistic features are nearly impossible for researchers to recognize in this way. Therefore, it is of great necessity to probe deeper and draw a more complete picture by means of automatic tools like Coh-Metrix and TAACO, which make up for the deficiency of previous studies as well as making most of the work automatic.

 

3. Findings are not very surprising to me, especially the first one "1) Chinese English majors were capable of a variety of cohesive devices in their writing",maybe think of another way to present findings?

 

The authors have rephrased the sentence as (the emphasis is on the use of cohesive devices at three different levels, not just at the local level):

 

Chinese English majors are capable of using cohesive devices not only at the local level, but also at the global and text levels.

 

4. How does your study contribute to existing literature? Please elaborate on the contributions, as well as practical implications. 

 

The contribution of this study to the existing literature has been illustrated on Page 2 (before 1.1. Classification of cohesive devices) in the form of “significance”:

 

The significance of this study is two-fold. On one hand, unlike most studies stopping at only manually analyzing explicit cohesive devices, the use of advanced computational tools affords us a chance to dig deeper into the use of cohesive devices at three different levels, namely local, global and text levels in the EMI context. On the other hand, the longitudinal perspective adopted in this study renders it possible to track the changes in the use of cohesive devices by the same group of subjects. It is hoped that this one-academic-year longitudinal study may shed light on both EFL teaching and learning with regard to the use of cohesive devices.

 

The practical implications can be found on Page 12 from two different perspectives, one implication for teaching, and the other for learning (before 5. Conclusion):

 

The implications of this study are two-fold. On the one hand, the findings yielded in this study could help inform teachers of the possible learning trajectories of the use of cohesive devices in student writing in the EMI context. It may guide and improve their instruction in the specific areas of cohesion. For example, there is a need for teachers to avoid only focusing on the word and sentence levels but to go beyond to the paragraph and whole text level, assisting students in achieving unity as well as cohesion. On the other hand, in order to raise students’ awareness of cohesion, students should be encouraged to take full advantage of the EMI context, which can afford learners the most authentic situation and materials. For instance, apart from the EMI in classroom, texts written by native speakers can be used as another form of EMI to practice students’ critical and analytical comprehension, both in class and outside of class. After features of a reading material are learned and internalized, the students need to produce a writing modeled on the material. In this manner, the students are expected to make the best of EMI mode and become more sensitive to varied types of cohesive devices and more capable of creating writing of high cohesion.

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors,

Please find the review of your article attached.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear Reviewer

First of all, we’d like to extend our heartfelt thanks to you for your review and suggestions. Our revisions of “Language Development for English-Medium Instruction: A Longitudinal Perspective on the Use of Cohesive Devices by Chinese English Majors in Argumentative Writing” are as follows:

 

Abstract

The abstract should be supported by a sentence of theoretical background. For the study are cohesive devices particularly important to work with? What do they add to students' essays? Are they a guarantee of language expertise?

 

Reply:

On Page 1, in the Abstract, the authors have added information in relation to the necessity to do this study:

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.

 

Introduction

 

The authors posit that English is widely used as a world language and that English proficiency has become a most coveted form of cultural capital in Chinese society. Expand. Why is English a particularly important language to master in China? The authors should support their argument with concrete examples to justify the value of such a study.

Reply:

The authors have expanded on the importance of learning English in China.

On P1-2

Because of the perceived importance of English proficiency, the current national college English curriculum issued by the Chinese Ministry of Education requires that college English instruction take up as much as 10 % of the total credit hours for undergraduate studies. At the national level, English is seen as having a crucial part to play in China’s ambitious development agenda to strengthen its innovation capacity, access cutting-edge knowledge available in English, enhance its competitive edge in international cultural and economic activity, and fully integrate into the world system.

 

 

The authors should give the full name of EMI the first time the acronym is used. English Medium Instruction (EMI) refers to the use of the English language to teach academic subjects (other than English itself) in countries where the first language of the majority of the population is not English, in this case China.

Reply:

On Page 1, in the Introduction, the authors have added English Medium Instruction before EMI, which is used for the first time in the article (apart from the Abstract).

 

The authors refer to Pun and Jin's (2022) study that investigated the structural relationships between L2 students' English proficiency, their use of the language in science class, their perceived difficulty in using English in science class, their conception of science learning, and their science achievement. It was found that mixed language instruction appeared to be more beneficial than pure English instruction in teaching science subjects. How do the authors explain this phenomenon and its results? What explanatory processes are behind these differences in science performance?

Reply:

The authors have added some information concerning Pun and Jin's (2022) study:

The path analysis revealed strong connections between the variables, suggesting that L2 students’ self-perceptions and their English competence play important roles in their acquisition of scientific knowledge. Although L2 students’ English proficiency was identified as a strongest predictor of science achievement, negative perceptions of EMI caused by lack of English competence to some extent also facilitate students’ academic outcome in science.

 

Classification of cohesive devices

This section lacks examples. The authors should add an example for each cohesive device in parentheses based on the category.

Reply:

On P3, the authors have added some examples as suggested.

…reference (e.g. reference by means of function in the speech situation, through the category of person), substitution (e.g. one, ones, the same), ellipsis (e.g. ellipsis within the nominal group), conjunction (e.g. and, nor, or, furthermore, likewise, that is), and lexical cohesive devices (e.g. same word, synonym or near-synonym, superordinate and general word).

 

• Previous studies in relation to the use of cohesive devices

Developmental studies focusing on the learning of these devices should be cited in order to understand, in native English speakers first, how these devices are acquired (at what age, the errors...) and second, whether this pattern of acquisition is identical in L2. In addition, explanatory hypotheses should be stated on the basis of linguistic similarity across languages. As it is, it is complex for the reader to find his way. To put it plainly, what are the particularities of language X that invite the idea that the use of cohesive devices is so. It does not seem relevant to me to compare, nor to put into perspective all the studies here stated because the languages are different.

Reply:

The authors have already cited some literature as regards the learning of these devices in L1 and L2. And all the studies reviewed are concerned with the learning of English, either as L1 or as L2.

On P4

For L1 writers, when they are young, they tend to use explicit cohesive devices that are local in nature to link sections of text together, e.g., referential pronouns and connectives [33]. However, around the 8th grade, developing writers begin to use fewer explicit cohesive devices to organize text [34]. This trend continues into high school and beyond. For adolescent and adult writers, the use of such explicit local cohesive devices is generally decreasing [35]. In other words, native writers experience a movement from explicit to implicit cohesion.

 

Nonetheless, agreement has not been reached as regards the changes in the use of cohesive devices by L2 writers. Some researchers found a similar trend, that is, the use of explicit cohesive devices decreases as L2 writers become more skilled. For instance, Crossley and McNamara [14] examined 200 essays by Hong Kong high school students for the Hong Kong Advanced Level Examination (HKALE). Results showed that L2 writers categorized as highly proficient produce essays that are less apparently cohesive. Other researchers found that more proficient L2 writers used a greater number of connectives and thus produced more cohesive text. Yang and Sun [15] compared the argumentative writings of second and fourth-year Chinese undergraduates and found that more advanced learners used a greater number of cohesive devices and used them more accurately.

 

2. Methodology

2.1. Setting and Participants Although the study is longitudinal, and thus follows a within-subjects design (which is very relevant), the sample is very small (N=31). Thus, it seems mandatory to provide more information about the participants: gender, family situation, level of English in T1...

Reply:

Yes, the sample is indeed small. The number of English majors in one class is usually small in China, and the inclusion of participants from other classes (with other teachers) will bring about some other intervening variables, which will be hard to control.

 

Realizing this drawback, the authors have already included this point in the Limitations of the study.

On P13

First of all, the investigated corpus in this study is composed of 93 compositions, which is not a sizeable sample. Future studies would benefit from a larger sample size.

 

2.2. Materials

In what context were these writings requested? Was the writing graded? Did it count as a graduation exam or was it ungraded writing?

Reply:

As mentioned in the Setting, the study was positioned in a 1-year-long EMI Comprehensive English course, which was given to second-year English majors in a Chinese university.

 

As for the context of the writing, the authors have added some information in the Materials:

For English majors in mainland China, they are supposed to take the TEM (Test for English Majors)-4 in their sophomore year, which is composed of listening, reading, and writing. The genres of writing in TEM-4 are either argumentative or expository. Over the academic year, the participants had a lot of writing practices in the two genres in the course of Comprehensive English, of which the argumentative wring was selected as materials for this study. To be specific, the materials used in this study consist of 93 argumentative writings by 31 Chinese sophomores majoring in English.

 

The writings were graded by the teacher, who usually focused on the accuracy in the use of lexis and syntax, without particularly drawing students’ attention to the use of cohesive devices.

 

2.4. Data Analysis

What was the nature of the dependent variable? It is not clear. Was it the number of cohesion devices used, or the quality of the devices? Were errors recorded?

Reply:

The dependent variable is the number of cohesive devices, not the quality of the devices, which can be seen in Table 3 and Table 4.

 

The study does not record errors for analysis in that few errors were detected in the participants’ compositions. Besides, the data were collected and processed automatically by Coh-Metrix and TAACO.

 

Discussion

 « Secondly, the possible cause exists in the difference of subjects. Li (2017) examined non-English majors, Gu (2017) looked into senior high school students, Guo (2018) investigated junior high school students, while this study focused on English majors who are “more proficient and competent in using English” (Liu & Braine, 2005) ».

Why might this population difference explain the variations in results? Explain.

Reply:

The participants, namely English majors, in this study are, comparatively speaking, more proficient in the use of English language, including the use of cohesive devices, which renders the results different from those yielded in studies concerning high school students or non-English majors.

 

This study suffers from methodological weaknesses. Although the choice of conducting a within-subjects study is relevant, the condition is an impeccable control of the subjects upstream, and indeed, a maximum homogenization of the participants in the study. This is obviously not the case in this study.

Reply:

The study follows the same group of students in one given class over the course of one academic year, during which the authors had tried to avoid intervening variables, like different teachers (if students come from different classes), varied proficiency levels, and different L1 backgrounds.

Reviewer 3 Report

Taking second-year English major college students in China as research participants, this study examines the changes of the cohesive device uses in the students’ argumentative writings. It shows that in the EMI context, their abilities to use most of the English cohesive devices have shown clear signs of improvement. The research design is fine, and the research findings are clearly presented. There are some minor aspects in the manuscript that need to be reconsidered and/or revised before it can be accepted for publication.

First, in the Title, Abstract and the body, the authors claim that this is a longitudinal study. However, I’m not sure whether simply collecting students’ writing outputs for three times within one academic year can be called a ‘longitudinal’ study in methodology. This can be explained a bit further.

Second, the research questions to be answered in the study are given at the end of Section 1 (Page 4), and it would be better to say a bit about the significance of addressing such research questions.

Third, in the analysis, the general tendencies of cohesive devices use among the participants have been presented, yet the individual differences are not observed or discussed. Moreover, it is not clear what kind of interventions were given to the students in the whole academic year for the students to make improvements in this regard. Were the usages of different types of cohesive devices explained to the students in the instructions? Were the students reminded to pay particular attention to the cohesive devices in their writings? In fact, such interventions would make a big difference to the students’ language outputs.     

Fourth, this is mainly a quantitative analysis of the students’ writings regarding the use of cohesive devices. It would be more revealing if some concrete examples of students’ actual writings are provided in the analysis.

I hope these points are helpful for the authors to further improve the quality of the manuscript.

   

Author Response

Dear Reviewer

First of all, we’d like to extend our heartfelt thanks to you for your review and suggestions. Our revisions of “Language Development for English-Medium Instruction: A Longitudinal Perspective on the Use of Cohesive Devices by Chinese English Majors in Argumentative Writing” are as follows:

 

First (question), in the Title, Abstract and the body, the authors claim that this is a longitudinal study. However, I’m not sure whether simply collecting students’ writing outputs for three times within one academic year can be called a ‘longitudinal’ study in methodology. This can be explained a bit further.

Reply:

This is, indeed, a very good question. Since consensus has not been reached as to the length of longitudinal studies, or rather in what sense can a study be called longitudinal. The authors have read from the literature that the length of some longitudinal studies are as short as a semester, for example, Crossley, S. A., Kyle, K., & McNamara, D. S. (2016). Anyway, we shall include this in the “limitations” of the study.

 

On page 13, the authors have added the following information:

In addition, although one academic year is not short for a longitudinal study, it is still desirable that future studies conduct similar research over a longer period of time.

 

Second (question), the research questions to be answered in the study are given at the end of Section 1 (Page 4), and it would be better to say a bit about the significance of addressing such research questions.

Reply:

The two research questions are formulated on the basis of previous literature review, and the significance of addressing such research questions can, in fact, be referred to in “the significance of this study” on Page 2 (as follows):

 

The significance of this study is two-fold. On one hand, unlike most studies stopping at only manually analyzing explicit cohesive devices, the use of advanced computational tools affords us a chance to dig deeper into the use of cohesive devices at three different levels, namely local, global and text levels in the EMI context. On the other hand, the longitudinal perspective adopted in this study renders it possible to track the changes in the use of cohesive devices by the same group of subjects.

 

Third (question), in the analysis, the general tendencies of cohesive devices use among the participants have been presented, yet the individual differences are not observed or discussed. Moreover, it is not clear what kind of interventions were given to the students in the whole academic year for the students to make improvements in this regard. Were the usages of different types of cohesive devices explained to the students in the instructions? Were the students reminded to pay particular attention to the cohesive devices in their writings? In fact, such interventions would make a big difference to the students’ language outputs.    

Reply:

For the first part of the question, on P9-11, the authors have already presented information concerning both the general tendencies and individual differences.

On P9

According to Table 4, 18 out of the 30 cohesion indices demonstrate consistent growth patterns while the other 12 do not show ups or downs over one academic year. Among the 18 indices, 6 are at local level, 7 are at global level, 5 are at text level. Moreover, the results of pairwise comparisons show that 13 of the 18 cohesion indices displaying growth demonstrate significant differences.

 

Following this paragraph, differences as well as general tendencies are presented and illustrated (P9-11)

 

The second part of the question concerns “the interventions”. In fact, there are no interventions in the study, or rather, the authors did not investigate the effects of any “interventions”. The purpose of this article is intended to explore “the changes in the use of cohesive devices by Chinese English majors in argumentative writing over one academic year”. As pointed out in the Setting, the study was positioned in a 1-year-long EMI Comprehensive English course (natural class), which was given to second-year English majors in a renowned comprehensive university in Jiangsu province, mainland China. The students were reminded to pay attention to the use of lexis and syntax in their writings, but not “particularly” to the use of cohesive devices. Put another way, the usages of different types of cohesive devices were not explained to the students in the instructions. Writing was only part of the Comprehensive English Course, which was mainly centered on the reading and appreciation of English texts.

 

Fourth (question), this is mainly a quantitative analysis of the students’ writings regarding the use of cohesive devices. It would be more revealing if some concrete examples of students’ actual writings are provided in the analysis.

Reply:

This is, indeed, a very good question. In our original version (before submission), we did have some concrete examples of students’ actual writings with detailed analysis. However, the examples and detailed analysis (following from the examples) would render the article quite lengthy (not appropriate for publication), and therefore we decided to remove the examples as well as the detailed analysis from the manuscript. Anyway, we could provide readers with sample writings if need be.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for your answers to my questions.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 2

First of all, we’d like to extend our heartfelt thanks to you for your review and suggestions. Our revisions of “Language Development for English-Medium Instruction: A Longitudinal Perspective on the Use of Cohesive Devices by Chinese English Majors in Argumentative Writing” are as follows:

Abstract

The abstract should be supported by a sentence of theoretical background. For the study are cohesive devices particularly important to work with? What do they add to students' essays? Are they a guarantee of language expertise?

 

Reply:

On Page 1, in the Abstract, the authors have added information in relation to the necessity to do this study:

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.

 

Introduction

 

The authors posit that English is widely used as a world language and that English proficiency has become a most coveted form of cultural capital in Chinese society. Expand. Why is English a particularly important language to master in China? The authors should support their argument with concrete examples to justify the value of such a study.

Reply:

The authors have expanded on the importance of learning English in China.

On P1-2

Because of the perceived importance of English proficiency, the current national college English curriculum issued by the Chinese Ministry of Education requires that college English instruction take up as much as 10 % of the total credit hours for undergraduate studies. At the national level, English is seen as having a crucial part to play in China’s ambitious development agenda to strengthen its innovation capacity, access cutting-edge knowledge available in English, enhance its competitive edge in international cultural and economic activity, and fully integrate into the world system.

 

 

The authors should give the full name of EMI the first time the acronym is used. English Medium Instruction (EMI) refers to the use of the English language to teach academic subjects (other than English itself) in countries where the first language of the majority of the population is not English, in this case China.

Reply:

On Page 1, in the Introduction, the authors have added English Medium Instruction before EMI, which is used for the first time in the article (apart from the Abstract).

 

The authors refer to Pun and Jin's (2022) study that investigated the structural relationships between L2 students' English proficiency, their use of the language in science class, their perceived difficulty in using English in science class, their conception of science learning, and their science achievement. It was found that mixed language instruction appeared to be more beneficial than pure English instruction in teaching science subjects. How do the authors explain this phenomenon and its results? What explanatory processes are behind these differences in science performance?

Reply:

The authors have added some information concerning Pun and Jin's (2022) study:

The path analysis revealed strong connections between the variables, suggesting that L2 students’ self-perceptions and their English competence play important roles in their acquisition of scientific knowledge. Although L2 students’ English proficiency was identified as a strongest predictor of science achievement, negative perceptions of EMI caused by lack of English competence to some extent also facilitate students’ academic outcome in science.

 

Classification of cohesive devices

This section lacks examples. The authors should add an example for each cohesive device in parentheses based on the category.

Reply:

On P3, the authors have added some examples as suggested.

…reference (e.g. reference by means of function in the speech situation, through the category of person), substitution (e.g. one, ones, the same), ellipsis (e.g. ellipsis within the nominal group), conjunction (e.g. and, nor, or, furthermore, likewise, that is), and lexical cohesive devices (e.g. same word, synonym or near-synonym, superordinate and general word).

 

• Previous studies in relation to the use of cohesive devices

Developmental studies focusing on the learning of these devices should be cited in order to understand, in native English speakers first, how these devices are acquired (at what age, the errors...) and second, whether this pattern of acquisition is identical in L2. In addition, explanatory hypotheses should be stated on the basis of linguistic similarity across languages. As it is, it is complex for the reader to find his way. To put it plainly, what are the particularities of language X that invite the idea that the use of cohesive devices is so. It does not seem relevant to me to compare, nor to put into perspective all the studies here stated because the languages are different.

Reply:

The authors have already cited some literature as regards the learning of these devices in L1 and L2. And all the studies reviewed are concerned with the learning of English, either as L1 or as L2.

On P4

For L1 writers, when they are young, they tend to use explicit cohesive devices that are local in nature to link sections of text together, e.g., referential pronouns and connectives [33]. However, around the 8th grade, developing writers begin to use fewer explicit cohesive devices to organize text [34]. This trend continues into high school and beyond. For adolescent and adult writers, the use of such explicit local cohesive devices is generally decreasing [35]. In other words, native writers experience a movement from explicit to implicit cohesion.

 

Nonetheless, agreement has not been reached as regards the changes in the use of cohesive devices by L2 writers. Some researchers found a similar trend, that is, the use of explicit cohesive devices decreases as L2 writers become more skilled. For instance, Crossley and McNamara [14] examined 200 essays by Hong Kong high school students for the Hong Kong Advanced Level Examination (HKALE). Results showed that L2 writers categorized as highly proficient produce essays that are less apparently cohesive. Other researchers found that more proficient L2 writers used a greater number of connectives and thus produced more cohesive text. Yang and Sun [15] compared the argumentative writings of second and fourth-year Chinese undergraduates and found that more advanced learners used a greater number of cohesive devices and used them more accurately.

 

2. Methodology

2.1. Setting and Participants Although the study is longitudinal, and thus follows a within-subjects design (which is very relevant), the sample is very small (N=31). Thus, it seems mandatory to provide more information about the participants: gender, family situation, level of English in T1...

Reply:

Yes, the sample is indeed small. The number of English majors in one class is usually small in China, and the inclusion of participants from other classes (with other teachers) will bring about some other intervening variables, which will be hard to control.

 

Realizing this drawback, the authors have already included this point in the Limitations of the study.

On P13

First of all, the investigated corpus in this study is composed of 93 compositions, which is not a sizeable sample. Future studies would benefit from a larger sample size.

 

2.2. Materials

In what context were these writings requested? Was the writing graded? Did it count as a graduation exam or was it ungraded writing?

Reply:

As mentioned in the Setting, the study was positioned in a 1-year-long EMI Comprehensive English course, which was given to second-year English majors in a Chinese university.

 

As for the context of the writing, the authors have added some information in the Materials:

For English majors in mainland China, they are supposed to take the TEM (Test for English Majors)-4 in their sophomore year, which is composed of listening, reading, and writing. The genres of writing in TEM-4 are either argumentative or expository. Over the academic year, the participants had a lot of writing practices in the two genres in the course of Comprehensive English, of which the argumentative wring was selected as materials for this study. To be specific, the materials used in this study consist of 93 argumentative writings by 31 Chinese sophomores majoring in English.

 

The writings were graded by the teacher, who usually focused on the accuracy in the use of lexis and syntax, without particularly drawing students’ attention to the use of cohesive devices.

 

2.4. Data Analysis

What was the nature of the dependent variable? It is not clear. Was it the number of cohesion devices used, or the quality of the devices? Were errors recorded?

Reply:

The dependent variable is the number of cohesive devices, not the quality of the devices, which can be seen in Table 3 and Table 4.

 

The study does not record errors for analysis in that few errors were detected in the participants’ compositions. Besides, the data were collected and processed automatically by Coh-Metrix and TAACO.

 

Discussion

 « Secondly, the possible cause exists in the difference of subjects. Li (2017) examined non-English majors, Gu (2017) looked into senior high school students, Guo (2018) investigated junior high school students, while this study focused on English majors who are “more proficient and competent in using English” (Liu & Braine, 2005) ».

Why might this population difference explain the variations in results? Explain.

Reply:

The participants, namely English majors, in this study are, comparatively speaking, more proficient in the use of English language, including the use of cohesive devices, which renders the results different from those yielded in studies concerning high school students or non-English majors.

 

This study suffers from methodological weaknesses. Although the choice of conducting a within-subjects study is relevant, the condition is an impeccable control of the subjects upstream, and indeed, a maximum homogenization of the participants in the study. This is obviously not the case in this study.

Reply:

The study follows the same group of students in one given class over the course of one academic year, during which the authors had tried to avoid intervening variables, like different teachers (if students come from different classes), varied proficiency levels, and different L1 backgrounds.