An Analysis of the Development of Grammatical Cohesion in persian-Speaking Student's Written Discourse

This research aims at analyzing and comparing the development of grammatical cohesive devices (reference, conjunction, ellipsis and substitution) in Persian-speaking students’ written discourse at primary level (9 to 12 years old) according to logical meta-function introduced in Halliday and Matthiessen’s systemic functional grammar (2004), by using a descriptive analytical method. 45 students (boys) studying at primary school (4th, 5th and 6th grades) in 2014-15 were selected through random-sampling. Two written tests in the form of picture stories were administered for gathering data from their writings. Frequency, percentage and pattern of development of using grammatical cohesive devices were compared in seeking the answer to the question of how age affects the frequency and the variety of grammatical cohesive devices. The frequency of grammatical cohesive devices among the 4th, 5th and 6th grade students was 1285, 1866, 2198 respectively. So the use of grammatical cohesive devices proved to increase in higher grades. Based on the Kruskal–Wallis test, the differences were significant (p≤ 0/05). The distribution of different cohesive devices showed some changes as the grades moved higher. In addition, more sophisticated devices were noticed . Personal references were the most and comparative references were the least frequent devices in the category of reference. In conjunction, additive, adversative, spatio- temporal and causal- conditional conjunction were the most and the least frequent ones. In ellipsis and substitution, nominal phrase deletion was the most, and verb phrase deletion was the least frequent one. The percentage of different devices were as follows: reference (62%), conjunction (22%), ellipsis and substitution (16%).