Abstract:
The study conducted in Zalingei University in (2018) and aimed to investigate the
positive and negative usage of cohesive devices by graduate students in writing
essays in English and the investigation of the teacher’s role for encouraging the
students to write well using grammatical and lexical cohesion in writing essays. The
researcher used the analytical descriptive approach. First data collected through
questionnaire for (20) university teachers and an aptitude tests for (50) graduate
students and secondary information from books and relevant sources. It resulted to
teachers, answers in all items in the questionnaire were very clear that they generally
use the right methods to teach their students. The results revealed that most of the
students have problems that made them to misunderstand the linking words. In
several areas, the researcher found in many sentences of the tests answers were
wrong for identifying the functional words. Some content and functional words were
very clear to respondents thus they did not face any problem to categorize and
diagnose the functional words. The misunderstanding of functional word forms in
English writing essays were due to the lack of grammatical skills. It recommended
that the support for non-native of English learners for applying accurate ways of
learning English four skills to master the most important areas earlier as well as
spelling, parts of speech in grammar specifically functional, content words and their
meanings. Before students, admission to Universities there must be qualified
teachers in all levels who will strengthen the learners to familiarize the aspects of
English language words.
