The fabric of text: Cohesive ties at three grade levels

Using Halliday and Hasan's (1976) categories of cohesion, this study analyzed samples of narrative and persuasive writing in grades 2, 6, and 10 for differences due to grade, mode of discourse, and prompt (task or topic). Thirty students (ten per grade) responded to the same four prompts, two in each mode. Dependent variables were length of the samples in words; five types of cohesion (reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction, and lexical cohesion, taken as a multivariate set); and four kinds of cohesive distance (immediate, mediated, remote, and mediated/remote ties, taken as a set). All cohesion variables were calculated as frequencies per 100 words. Data were analyzed using three repeated measures analyses of variance. In each model, the between-subjects variable was grade, and the within-subjects variables were mode and prompt-within-mode. Main effects of interest were grade, mode, and prompt-within-mode.;Results of this study suggest that students is second grade can already use the five types of cohesion and the four kinds of cohesive distance. The frequency of the types does not increase significantly with age when the measures are adjusted for length of the papers. As writers mature, they write much longer pieces; they use remote ties more frequently while they use immediate and mediated ties less frequently. When they write narration, they write longer papers and use more conjunction and immediate ties; when they switch to persuasion, they use more reference and mediated/remote ties. The significant differences due to prompt suggest that future researchers should use more than two samples of writing within a given mode in order to generalize more reliably about patterns of cohesion in various modes of discourse.;Analysis of the data yielded significant grade differences only for length and cohesive distance. Significant mode differences were found for length, types of cohesion, and cohesive distance. Significant prompt-within-mode differences were found for length, types of cohesion, and cohesive distance, although these findings were difficult to interpret.