A PRELIMINARY STUDY ON LEXICAL COHESIVE DEVICES IN READING TEXTS IN THE TEXTBOOK TIẾNG ANH 10 PUBLISHED BY VIETNAM EDUCATION PUBLISHING HOUSE

Abstract

The research examines the lexical cohesive devices in the textbook Tiếng Anh 10 published by Vietnam Education Publishing House. This study employs a documentary method of analysis to answer the research question. In particular, Halliday and Hasan’s framework of cohesion in discourse (1976) was adopted to investigate ten reading texts in the reading section. The findings show that in terms of reiteration, repetition is the most frequently used device in all reading texts to make the reading semantically related, while collocation cohesion produces cohesive effects among words and phrases in the same collocational environment. As a result, students will benefit greatly from such lexical cohesion in terms of grasping the meaning of the reading texts, and boosting their reading comprehension and theme-based vocabulary. Hopefully, this article is a preliminary study for further research on applying lexical cohesion in teaching and learning reading comprehension or writing skills.