Truong Phi Luan, MA (SLA)

“The assessment of the quality of writing requires an understanding of the context in

which it was written and especially the audience for which it was intended.” (Silva &
Matsuda, 2002, p. 257)
Abstract:
This paper will look at how the written essay by students is assessed in the western
writing styles. The context in which it is written and the audience for which it is intended
should be taken into consideration. From these two factors, the paper tries to advise the
writing teachers to teach written essays in a way of developing the essays in the logical
order for writing students. That is writing an academic writing involves an expository
writing model that includes a thesis statement in the introduction, followed by paragraphs
that start with topic sentences, and examples that support the thesis, which are then
followed by a logical conclusion. Particularly, the whole text of the essay needs to be
coherent, that is, various parts of the texts have to work together conceptually in the
particular rhetorical context. At the same time, cohesive devices should be employed by
writing students in order to create the unity and coherence between sentences and
sentences, between paragraphs and paragraphs. Finally, the paper concludes by
introducing some ways in which writing teachers can introduce some cohesive devices in
order to help their students’ essays to be better.
1. Introduction:
Traditionally, writing was not considered important. It was ranked to be the least
important in comparison with the other skills such as speaking skills, listening skills and
reading skills. It was assumed that any one who had the knowledge of spelling and
grammar would be able to write. Another conception was that writing was the
representation of speech. It was often assumed that the acquisition of spoken proficiency
had to take precedence over the learning of written language, and that students would be
able to write once they mastered spoken language and orthographic convention. In
general, these conceptions emphasized that a mastery of morphological, lexical and
grammatical knowledge together with a good command of spoken language was
sufficient for students to be successful in writing. Based on these conceptions, we can
easily realize that the writing teachers in Vietnamese junior and senior high school just
focus on the correction of the mistakes and errors of grammar and lexical choice for
students and sometimes writing is left forgotten. What’s more, they view that writing is
merely the reproduction of spoken language. Finally, one assumption holds that writing
is “decontextualized” (Ellis, 1994:188). According to this view, written communication
never takes place in the presence of writers and readers.
However, these above- mentioned conceptions are not enough, if not out of date, to
produce a good writing because, in reality, ,we can see many sentences in which they
are perfectly correct in grammar and lexis but can not make up a paragraph. The second
sentence has nothing to relate to the first sentence and so on. They are not combined by
cohesive devices such as reference, substitution, cohesive signals and so on. Therefore,
this makes readers unable to find out exactly what the writers want to convey simply
because these sentences are loosely linked together or they are written at random without
any signal devices in order to inform readers about its contents. In short, these kinds of
sentences cannot be said to make up a paragraph in particular and the whole text in

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general because a text is best defined as a semantic unit of language which results from
the group of sentences related among themselves by discourse devices. Some of these are
grammatical in nature, others are semantic, and others are logical. Literate native
speakers are aware of difference between a group of sentences that create a text and a
group that cannot be considered a text.
Moreover, the assumption that writing is an absence of readers is a wrong conception. In
fact, there is a close relationship between readers and writers. The writers write not only
for their own sake but for taking readers’ perspectives in their mind .Although, the writers
and readers do not share the same physical space; indeed, they may be distant from each
other in both time and space, a relationship still exists. In an essay, the writers utilize
syntactical, semantic, discoursal and logical devices to encode the messages in the form
of a written text. Before beginning to write, the writers must always ask themselves four
questions: what to write, to whom the writing aims, why to write and how to write. The
most important question is “to whom the writing mentions to”. By analyzing the
audience, the writers will know exactly what kinds of languages they will use, for
instance, grammar, lexis, cohesive devices besides the specialized knowledge and then,
the readers must use the same devices to interpret that message. Therefore, if there is a
parallel process between speech produced by the speakers and interpreted by listeners,
there will be a parallel process between text produced by writers and interpreted by
readers or in short, there will be a close relationship between writers and readers.
The second misunderstanding is that writing is a representation and reproduction of
spoken discourse. It is true that the spoken discourse assists a lot in the written discourse.
However, it is not enough to produce a writing successfully. In spoken language, the
speakers make use of additional meanings through prosodic features such as intonation,
pitch, volumes and pauses in order to make the listeners easily interpret the meaning,
Therefore, they have no difficulties in making their messages across. In contrast to the
spoken language, writers cannot use these prosodic features. So in order to make the
readers understand the messages encoded in the text, they have to use a lot of strategies
such as using various written discourse features and by aligning themselves with
certain discourse community etc to make the audiences understand their meaning
(Ivanic, 1998; Matsuda, 2001b).
Finally, one of the elements to decide whether writing is written well or not depends so
much on the context in which it is written. That is to say, every paragraph of an essay
must to be linked together in a way to create coherence. Specifically, in each
paragraph, there must be a unity in which it just focus on one main idea which we often
call a topic sentence and many other sentences that support it will be called supporting
ideas. The topic sentence is commonly placed at the beginning sentence of each
paragraph. If an essay has many paragraphs, it will have a thesis statement, many topic
sentences and many supporting ideas. These paragraphs must be linked together in a
logical framework to create a good development for the whole essay. In order to create a
unity and cohesion, a lot of cohesive devices are employed to cement the tie for the
whole text. It is only in this sense that the readers can detect the meanings of the whole
text easily. Unluckily, coherence is not universal. It can be different from culture to
culture, from language to language. If not trained in this matter, writing students whose
mother tongue is not English cannot write an academic writing successfully. As said by
Witte, Faigley, and Carrell “Although coherence and cohesion are related concepts,

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cohesive text is not necessarily coherent” (Witte and Faigley, 1981; and Carrell, 1982).
What is considered coherent differs from discourse community to another. Rhetoric is
concerned with what goes into writing: prescriptive rhetoric describes established
cultural norms for standards of good writing (Read 1952). Meanwhile, contrastive
rhetoric points out the culture-bound dimension to traditions of written expression (
Kaplan 1966, 1972) or research in contrastive rhetoric has shown, for example, that
the standards of coherence may vary from across languages and cultures (Connor and
Johns, 1990; Leki, 1991, Connor, 1996). The result of that is the teachers who teach
academic writing in the western writing style for the students must show the way of
accepted coherence in Western writing style because the eastern writing styles and the
western writing styles are very different in writing format.
Taking this viewpoint into consideration, the purpose of this paper will look at the
factors which influence the quality of good writing: they are the context and the
audiences. From that, this paper will explore coherence and cohesion in order to create a
good writing in the western context or academic discourse community. In order to
conclude the paper, it will introduce some cohesive devices in order to help the writing
teachers to teach writing successfully for the writing students.
2. Context and audiences: two factors affect the quality of a good writing.
2.1. Context:
Context or reality places an important role in producing a good writing. It is the
place where the writing is produced. It may be the community where the writers are
living or a foreign country such as England or Australia where these foreign students
are following an intensive course in English and are often required to write an
academic writing in English. This context factor affects too much to the way of
choosing the language of the writers toward their writing. For example, writing
students who are learning to write an English essay for the first time, they may be
constrained by many factors. Since they are used to the way of writing an essay in
their own tradition, they will meet many difficulties in writing in a new way.
When coping with learning to write in English, they must learn many things such as
vocabulary, grammar, the way of organizing an essay in the western writing styles if
they want to be successful and accepted in the academic writing. In theory, many
elements of texture are universal in nature, yet the technical devices being used in the
writing might be different from one language to another and from one tradition to
another. For example, in English, it is quite common to find that the referential
pronoun “This” in the first sentences of a new paragraph refers back to the whole
earlier paragraph. In other languages, however, one could not do this. It would be
necessary to use a phrase such as “All the fact mentioned above” or “Every thing was
said until now”. Therefore, students who are learning writing in a western writing
style must be equipped in this matter to produce a prose acceptably in the western
context. There is no doubt that many essays written by the non-native speakers of
English cannot meet the standards required by prescriptive rhetoric. One example is
that in English writing, all the sentences are arranged in a logical order to create a
paragraph in a narrow sense and in the whole text in a broad sense. All of this is built
in a unified network to create a unity and coherence. For example, many sentences
are linked together by cohesive signals to create a coherence and unity. The latter
sentence refers to the first and sometimes the first sentence signals what will be

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mentioned in the next sentence. The native speakers of English will employ many
cohesive devices in order to create this logic. Maybe, they use this device in order to
avoid repetition or in order to highlight some thing; they use another word which has
the same meaning as the first word and so on. If the non-native speakers are not
taught in this, they cannot produce a good essay. Instead, they will create a massive
number of sentences which cannot be linked together in a good way. Many essays
written by Vietnamese students if picked out to correct, teachers can realize many
sentences not linked by these transitional devices. For example, when they introduce
a new paragraph, they jump very suddenly without any cohesive signals so that the
readers who read this paper do not know where the writers are leading them.
According to Halliday and Hasan (1976), texture consists of both structural and
non-structural text-forming relations. Such non-structural elements may link
together sentences within the same paragraph or pharagraphs within a larger
text, and are often refered to as cohesive signals. Native speakers master these
cohesion elements just as they do other elements of language. Grimes emphasize
this point:
“I think it must be granted that part of the speaker’s or hearer’s knowledge
of his language includes the capacity to assign or interpret correctly the
features that signal cohesion, to recognize aberration, and to disambiguate-
in short, if there is a basic for talking about linguistic competence in the
area of content where most of the discussion has taken place, whatever
arguments justify it there, also support it in the area of cohesion” (1975:
272).
Taking the viewpoints of these two authors into consideration, we can easily realize
how important it is to master the cohesive devices in the western context in order to
produce a good writing. In short, the assessment of the quality of writing requires an
understanding of the context in which it is written. By applying the way in which the
writing is written is the western styles, the students can have a good standing in academic
writing. Therefore, the quality of the writing assessed by their professors will be better
and at the same time, any one who reads their paper will understand the messages
encoded in their own text. The result of that is now this paper will move on to another
aspect of influencing the quality of a good writing product: the audiences who will digest
the products of the writers.
2.2. Audiences:
Before the writer sets out to create the text, the audience for whom the text is
intended must be considered. One writes differently for a specialized audience as
opposed to the general one.
“It is useful to think of two broadly different kinds of readers; specialized
and general….. The specialized reader is one who already knows a good
deal about the subject. The psychologist writing for professional journal
does not have to define technical terms….. The general reader is the reader
that most writing is addressed to.” (Leggett, Mead, Charviat 1978: 160)
In an essay of students, the first reader who will read the text of the students must
be the writing teacher (Such as the college and university professors) whom the text aims
to. This reader is a specialist in writing skills who masters well how good the writing is.
Other general readers who can read the text may be their friends, classmates, bystanders,

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critic, couch and so on. In order to make the text easy to be understood, the writers must
employ many cohesive devices to encode the messages in it, and then the readers use the
same devices to decode and interpret the text. Therefore, the writers must keep these
things in their mind: “first, tell the readers what they want to say, second, say it, third
remind them what they have said”.
A unified point of view: along with a plan, the writers must have a point of view,
a maxim expressed by various handbook authors:
“Your readers should know from what perspective you are describing the material”
(Crosby and Estey, 1975: 49).
“What attitude am I going to take toward the material ……? How much do I want to
cover? What one point do I want to make” (Zinsser 1976: 48).
Above all, in order to produce a good writing prose, the writers should never
forget to create the textual meaning (the meaning that helps the readers navigate through
the text) as well as interpersonal meaning (the meaning about the relationship between
the writer and the reader (Halliday, 1973) in addition to the ideational meaning (the
meaning of the ideas encoded in the text). In order to do that successfully, especially in
the rhetorical styles, the writers must use many cohesive devices and organize the essay
in a logical order as said above. That is to say sentences need to be cohesive, that is,
they have to be connected by cohesive devices in ways that can be followed by readers
(Halliday and Hassan, 1976). The whole text also needs to be coherent, that is, various
parts of the text have to work together conceptually in the particular rhetorical context.
Infact, the mature readers easily recognize whether a paragraph and the whole
essay to be well- organized or not. they will base on the elements such as whether the
whole essay has a thesis statement, topic sentences and many supporting ideas or not. In
each paragraph, there must be a unity and coherence. This is recognized by developing
only one idea in each paragraph, each sentence in a paragraph must be linked together by
cohesive signals and broadly, every paragraph must be tied by cohesive devices to create
the clarity and coherence for the whole text. Just by writing in this way can writing be
said to be good. As (Legget, Mead, Charvat 1978: 191) puts it: “A good paragraph has:
unity, coherence and adequate development …… to support a topic sentence clearly and
persuasively, you must develop a paragraph adequately and connects its sentence in an
orderly way”
3. Pedagogical implication
As mentioned above, the two factors which affect the quality of a good writing is
the context and the audiences that the text aims to. The context here is the western
context where the writing is assessed and the audiences here are the mature readers who
have good knowledge of textual and rhetorical styles. That means that a writing which is
considered to be good should conform to the way of the logical order and the way of
employing many appropriate cohesive devices. Therefore, this paper will explore these
elements to produce a good writing.
3.1. Coherence:
Coherence refers to the overall connectedness of the ideas in a piece of writing.
When sentences, ideas and details fit together clearly, readers can follow along easily,
and the writing is coherent. The ideas tie together smoothly and clearly. Specifically,
a paragraph has coherence if it is a series of sentences that develop the main ideas
(i.e. with a topic sentence and supporting sentences which relate to it.

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This following sample paragraph is said to be coherence because it contains a

topic sentence and many supporting ideas.
 Topic sentence:
Smoking in restaurants should be prohibited for several reasons.
 Supporting ideas:
a. It pollutes the air.
b. It can affect diners’ appetites.
c. It can cause fire due to the carelessness of the smokers.
If it is developed into the whole essay, it can be divided into many subparagraphs in
which the writers can have introductory paragraph, body paragraph and concluding
paragraph. The introduction is often introduced by many general statements at first and
then it is included by the thesis statement at the last sentence of the introductory
paragraph. The thesis statement names the topic and the controlling ideas for the whole
essay. Followed by the introductory paragraph are the body paragraph in which it is
divided into many subparagraphs, each of which has a topic sentence and the supporting
ideas. Finally, the essay is concluded by the concluding paragraph which summaries all
the ideas discussed in the body paragraph.
This specimen outline of an essay below will illustrate what this paper has just
discussed.
Introductory paragraph:
General statements:
Thesis statement:
Smoking in restaurants should be prohibited for many reasons
Body paragraph:
Par 1:
Topic sentence: the first reason against smoking in restaurants is that it pollutes the air.
a. Dense smoke makes the surroundings dirty and not beautiful.
b. The stain of the smoke will be left remained forever on the other furniture and on
the walls of the restaurants.
Par 2:
Topic sentence: the second reason against smoking in restaurants is that it can affect
diners’ appetites.
a. Non smokers will have the feeling of disgust toward the cigarettes.
b. The smoke will ruin their delicious meal completely.
Par 3: Finally, smoking can cause fire due to the carelessness of the smokers.
a. Unlit cigarette which is thrown carelessly can make the whole building on fire
easily.
b. The damages are not only for human lives but for the material as well.
Concluding paragraph:
In conclusion, heavily polluted environment, public interest infringement and fire
risks are extremely important factors to ban smoking completely in restaurants.
If we look at the outlines of the paragraph and of the essay above, we can see that all
of them are written in a logical order. The paragraph has a topic sentence and three
supporting ideas and from this paragraph, it is organized into the whole essay in which an
introductory par has a thesis statement and in the body par, it has three pars in which each
par has a topic sentence and many supporting ideas. Finally, the concluding par

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summaries all the information discussed in the body par. This writing is said to be well-
written in a western writing style. The result of that is the writing teachers should teach
students how to write in this way in order to make the readers understand the orderly
arrangement of the whole essay easily.
However, a paragraph and an essay only have coherence when each sentence in a
paragraph can be tied with one another by the cohesive devices in order to create the
interdependence in a paragraph. In turn, in a higher level, many paragraphs connect one
another by transitional devices in order to create the links for the whole text. Therefore,
cohesive devices are extremely important in building a text.
3.2. Cohesion and cohesive devices:
If coherence refers to the overall connectedness of the ideas in a piece of writing,
cohesion refers more specifically to connections between sentences. There are many
ways to create that link. Here are just some examples.
One way to achieve coherence is through the use of transitional devices or
cohesive devices.
Transitional devices are like bridges between parts of your paper. They are cues that help
reader to interpret ideas a paper develops. Transitional devices are words or phrases that
help carry the thought from one sentence to another, from one idea to another, or from
one paragraph to another. And finally, transitional devices links sentences and
paragraph together smoothly so that there are no abrupt jumps or breaks between ideas.
Such transitional devices should be introduced to the writing students.
For example:
To indicate Addition: again, also, and, besides, furthermore …….
To indicate Concession: after all, at the same time, of course …….
To indicate Contrast: although, for all that, after all, in contrast ….
To indicate comparison: whereas, but, yet, on the other hand, nevertheless, however, on
the contrary, by comparison, conversely ………
Indicate repetition: in brief, as I have said, as I have noted, as has been noted …….
To summary or conclude: in brief, on the whole, to conclude, on the whole …….
Besides, other devices could be employed to create the links among the sentences.
As Zinsser advises the writers in using the transitional devices in order to make the
readers follow their flow of ideas easily:
“Learn to alert the readers as early as possible in a sentence to any change in
mood from the previous sentence. At least a dozen words will do this job for you: but,
yet, however, nevertheless ……. I can not overstate how much easier it is for the reader
if you start with but when you are shifting direction, or, conversely, how much harder
it is if he must wait until the end to realize that you are now in a different gear (
Zinsser, 1976: 98)”.
So, obviously, the transitional devices are very important in order to create the links
between paragraphs. The learners of English should be taught in this to produce a well-
organized essay in English.
Using referencing words and pronouns:
Referencing words and pronouns are words that point back to words in previous
sentences. The, the other, another, the others, some, this, these, that, those, he, she, it,
we, they etc are some examples of reference words.

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Example: when scientific experiments do not work well as expected, they are often
considered failures until other some scientists try them again. Those that work out better
the second time around are the ones that promise the most rewards.
Actually, the elements that signal reference within the text enable the writers to avoid
repetition of something mentioned earlier (anaphoric), or something which will be
mentioned subsequently (cataphoric) or even something which is known from the
situation of context outside (exophoric) the text itself. (Halladay and Hasan, 1976).

Using synonyms:
Synonyms are words that have essentially the same meanings, and they provide some
variety in your word choices, helping the readers to stay focused on the ideas being
discussed.
Example: Myths narrate sacred histories and explain sacred origins. These traditional
narratives are, in short, a set of beliefs that are a very real force in the lives of people
who tell them.
Using summary words: beginning the new sentence with the word that summaries
several words in the previous sentences or the whole ideas. The referential device
“This” and “These” are often employed.
Example: at any one point in time, there is a fixed amount of labor, land, capital, and
entrepreneurship. These resources can be used to produced goods and services……. (Mc
Taggart et al. 1999, P.2.4)

Transition from old information to new:

Place known information at the beginning of each sentence and place new information at
the end of each sentence. The new information that is placed at the end of first sentence
then becomes known information at the beginning of the next sentence.
Example: To stop the outbreak of the unknown disease, two medical teams were sent
immediately to the affected area in Sichuan to diagnose the disease. Each medical team
was formed by ten doctors selected from the first-rate hospitals across the country. The
expertise of all the doctors was well- known in China and some was world-famous.
(Lixia Wang, 2007.P.169).
4. Conclusion and Suggestion:
4.1. Conclusion:
All in all, in order to help students produce a good writing in a western style, writing
teachers should teach students how to develop an essay in a logical order, namely,
introduction, body and conclusion as mentioned above. That is the way in which most
of academic writing is often written. At the same time, the cohesive devices should be
taught to writing students. However, teachers should be careful in teaching these
cohesive devices. If using the cohesive devices in an inappropriate way, students can
produce writing with a lot of redundant cohesive devices. The result of that knowing
when and where to use the cohesive devices are very important for writing students.
In fact, a good piece of writing, like a well- constructed freeway, shouldn’t need a lot
of signposts to keep the readers on the right track. And if writers use the wrong
signpost, the results can be disastrous. At all costs, they need to avoid sending the
readers’ comprehension off the wrong direction. Therefore, teachers have to teach
students how to use the cohesive devices in the right position of the text.

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4.2. Suggestion:
In order to help students produce a good writing for academic purposes, teachers can
select some topics relevant to their students’ interests such as: smoking should be
banned in public places in Vietnam, pat-time jobs are necessary for university
students, should students love when they are still at school?, vehicles should be
banned in the city centre during rush hour and so on. After that, teachers ask them to
work on the outlines which focus on the thesis statements, topic sentences and many
supporting ideas. Finally, students are required to produce the full essays which
require the coherences and cohesive devices accordantly to the western writing styles.
The teachers’ last responsibilities are to help students correct the mistakes of
grammars, lexical choices and contents. But above all, Teachers should check
whether the students’ essay has three pars which are linked with one another in a
good, logical order or not. Is the whole text connected by the cohesive devices and
are the cohesive devices appropriate?. Teachers can also let students correct among
themselves. By letting the students do in this way, students’ essay will be better.
Therefore, in the near future, students have no difficulty in producing writing in the
academic discourse community.

References:
Dubin, F., & Olshtain, E. 1980. The Interface of Writing and Reading. Tesol Quarterly,
volume 14, Number 3. Pp. 353-365.
Heffernan, N. 2006. An integrated Approach to Teaching Academic Writing.
Asian EFL Journal, volume 8, number 3. Pp. 249-257.
Silver, T., & Matsuda, P.K. 2002. Writing. Pp. 251-256. In N. Schmitt(Ed.). An
introduction to applied linguistics. London: Arnold.
Wang, L. 2007. Theme and Rheme in the thematic Organisation of the Text:
implications for teaching Academic Writing. Asian EFL Journal, Volume 9, Number
1.Pp.164-175.

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