Abstract:

Cohesion is related with the surface level of text and can be inferred through grammatical features. The main objective of this study is to determine the level of cohesion of texts written by international students learning Turkish as a foreign language. Furthermore, this study aims to compare and contrast the two different texts written by the learners based on the level of cohesion, and investigate the differences with determined variables. This study can be identified as a descriptive research that follows the survey method. Document analysis was carried out on the learner texts. The participants of the study are 280 international students from six different universities. There were 163 students with B2 and 117 students with C1 language proficiency levels. The data were gathered through three different forms given to the participants: general background information form, guided-writing form, and free-writing form. In order to carry out the data analysis procedure, qualitative data were digitalized. The results of the study; including both of the texts, the use of cohesion element per student was determined as 50,32. The results show that the level of cohesion in free-writing was higher than the level of cohesion in guided-writing. The results show that the level of using cohesive devices varies in terms of some variables.

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