Levels of Pre-service Teachers' Use of Cohesion Elements in their Written Expressions

Abstract

The concept of cohesion is a semantic concept, it expresses the meaning relations that exist in the text and define it as a text. It occurs when the interpretation of some elements in the discourse depends on another element. This is one of the main features of the text. In this study, it was aimed to determine the level of use of cohesion elements in the written expressions of pre-service teachers. Qualitative research method was used and document analysis was done. The study group consists of 69 students, 53 female and 16 male, studying at the education faculty of a state university. “Cohesion Level Evaluation Scale” was used as data collection tool. Within the scope of the research, it was determined that the pre-service teachers used the conjunction item the most, followed by the reference item, the lexical cohesion item, the elliptical item and the substitution item, respectively. It has been concluded that the use of elliptical expression element is used very little and the usage is insufficient. It is noteworthy that the use of the replacement element is negligible. Using cohesion tools in copywriting is important for creating coherent text. Writing education should be shaped with this situation in mind.