Measuring the knowledge of textual cohesion and coherence in learners of English as a second language (ESL)

Second language research has shown that the knowledge of cohesion and coherence which support text structure is an important feature of both reading comprehension and writing ability. Despite the fact that this knowledge is widely recognized as being important in reading and writing ability, very little research has been conducted into how best to measure it.; The present study examines the knowledge of textual cohesion and coherence of ESL learners and how best to measure it. To this end, a composition, a summary and gap-fill task was used to measure the knowledge of textual cohesion and coherence. Thus one purpose of this study was to investigate tasks that measure this knowledge. Another objective of the study was to examine if performance of ESL learners differed due to task type and a final objective was to study the processes of test takers as they use their knowledge of textual cohesion and coherence.; Data were collected from 153 learners who took the composition, summary and gap-fill as part of the ESLPE and also from four of those text takers who volunteered to provide verbal protocols of the their processing while they engaged in the three tasks. The study describes the test takers' performance quantitatively through structural equation modeling, generalizability theory and analysis of variance and qualitatively through the analysis of verbal protocols.; Based on the quantitative and qualitative analyses, the four major finding in this study are as follows. First, that the knowledge of textual cohesion and coherence though distinguishable, has a strong correlation. This correlation indicates that another factor such as language ability is necessary to explain the construct of textual cohesion and coherence. Second, the knowledge of textual cohesion and coherence can be measured by the composition and gap-fill task but that the summary task is not a valid measure of this knowledge. Third, the three tasks measure the knowledge of textual cohesion and coherence differently as the attributes specific to each task have an effect on test takers' performance. Finally the results of the verbal protocols suggest that the processes of test takers are similar across the three tasks, meaning that they rely on or pay attention to both the cohesive elements and the overall coherence of the text while writing or reading or doing a gap-fill. More importantly, the verbal protocols suggest that language ability may be a factor in an ESL learner's knowledge of textual cohesion and coherence.