Grammatical Cohesion in Graduate Students Writing in Zalingei University

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.