Analyzing lexical cohesion in medical students’ writing

Abstract

"The overall purpose of this study is to analyze those features of lexical cohesion contained in English as a foreign language (EFL) in medical written texts in order to provide a better understanding of how cohesion functions within students’ writing inside the previously mentioned contex. The present study explored the lexical cohesive elements utilized in two genres written by EFL medical students. The study intended to analyze lexical cohesion, to determine to what extent this contributes to the perceived coherence of a text of student’s academic writing. The study has the general purpose of exploing the main lexical devices used in texts written by medical students. It aims to establish what features of lexical cohesion contribute to a text being perceived as cohesive and coherent as well as establishing the frequency with which each device is used. The study utilizes as its methodological foundation Discourse Analysis within a particular bounded context, which could be considered a case study. The results demostrate that lexical cohesion is a very importat tool for the development of cohesive writing. Furthermore, the three lexical devices that were most frequently employed were repetition, collocations and lexical fields"