Aspects of Cohesion and Coherence in Context: Investigating Causes of Difficulty for Israeli University Students Reading Texts in English.

A study investigating the influence of certain features of cohesion and coherence on Israeli college students' difficulty in reading English expository texts examined the reader's ability to understand sequences of propositions and familiarity with markers of cohesion. Three methods were used to investigate the problem: application of a readability formula to the texts, several reading comprehension tests of original and altered versions of texts, and discourse analysis. The subjects were 3,600 freshmen at Haifa University attending a required English reading comprehension course. The students' native languages were generally Hebrew and Arabic, and most of them had had seven or eight years of English instruction. The readability formula and discourse analysis were applied to the texts used, and the comprehension tests were administered as a regular part of the course. The findings emphasize the importance of context in reading comprehension by showing that difficulties are not limited to lexical items but are related to the connection between ideas in sentences and paragraphs. Improved instruction in recognition of markers of cohesion and increased focus on relationships between sentences are recommended. (MSE)