Teachers' perceptions of coherence in student argumentative essays at the Department of Basic English of Middle East Technical University

Abstract

Coherence in written discourse is a complex concept, involving both text-based and reader-based features. A reader-based theory of coherence asserts that a text alone cannot establish a standard understanding of coherence. There is disagreement among text-based theories regarding which features contribute more to coherence of a text, which indicates that a reader-based theory of coherence is likely to apply to an EFL context, where students’ writings are assessed. Therefore, this study investigated what coherence features the Turkish EFL teachers at the Department of Basic English (DBE) at Middle East Technical University (METU) consider while assessing student essays and the extent to which the teachers have a similar conception of coherence. The results of such a study were intended to form the basis of a discussion towards establishing a more standard specification of the term “coherence” at DBE, METU. Data were gathered through a survey administered to 59 teachers, who were asked to holistically rank-order six sample argumentative student essays in terms of coherence, and six interviews, specifying the coherence criteria the teachers employed. The findings suggested a low degree of agreement among the teachers in terms of their judgments of coherence and revealed that the teachers differed in their judgments mainly because they gave priority to either local or global coherence features. The results also revealed inconsistencies within individual raters in their application of the same coherence criterion. Ultimately, validating a reader-based theory of coherence in an EFL context, the findings implied caution towards a text-based understanding of coherence.