Appraising the impacts of cohesion and coherence in Benin SS3 EFL learners’ writing productions

A linguistic perspective

Abstract

This article aims at exploring and investigating linguistic coherence and cohesion in Benin EFL learners’ writing productions. Delivering this objective leads to putting forth two hypotheses. The first is that academically-oriented Second Language Learners need to develop L2 writing skills. In addition to that, Second Language (L2) teachers also need to know how to teach L2 writing (Grabe and Kaplan, 1996). But more often than not, most of EFL teachers find writing a complicated skill to teach. This mindset, in one way or the other significantly affects students learning outcomes. The ongoing research paper has gone about a field investigation through graded writing composition tests papers. The sampled study population has consisted of sixty (60) English language learners in Senior Secondary Three (SS3). Out of this handful but gender-inclusive (i.e., male and female) respondents, the findings reveal that very few students in the classroom, have succeeded in producing effectively understandable writings. One of the reasons behind such poor capacity is that little time is devoted to teaching writing skill during English language classes. Since writing is perceived by both EFL teachers and learners as a complex skill which requires mental effort in addition to the lack of adequate training in it, this article comes up with the conclusion that EFL learners’ writing productions could be improved with teachers devoting more time and effort to its teaching. This paper eventually suggests some operational solutions to improve learners’ ability to write coherent and cohesive texts.