Analysing Discourse Coherence in Students’ L2 Writing: Rhetorical Structure and the Use of Connectives

Studies of coherence and cohesion in learner writing report divergent results regarding the relationship between the two. What seems to be missing is an analytical level that allows for the investigation of the specific role that cohesive elements at the textual surface level play in the coherence structure of learner texts. To address this problem, a corpus of 30 argumentative essays written by first-year students of English at the University of Vienna is subjected to a multi-perspective analysis, including (1) global coherence ratings, (2) the description of the coherence structure, and (3) the analysis of connectives used. This chapter shows that the way coherence relations are signalled differs between coherent and less coherent (or incoherent) texts. It is found that there is a qualitative difference with regard to the types of connectives used, which can be related to their function in the discourse structure. The study also reveals that the amount of signalling varies between different types of relations.