Boosting the English writing competence through the use of discourse connectors

rúbrica proporcionada por la misma universidad. Luego, con la información obtenida se elaboró una guía didáctica y los estudiantes tuvieron la oportunidad de aprender y practicar los conectores discursivos durante dos meses. Finalmente, se aplicó una prueba posterior para medir la relación de los conectores discursivos y la mejora de la competencia escrita. Resultados. Con la ayuda de las estadísticas se comparó la pre y post prueba. El estudio mostró que los estudiantes usan la puntuación y la ortografía correcta, Adicionalmente, eligen el conector apropiado. Además, eligen el lugar correcto del conector dentro de la oración. Finalmente, sus párrafos contienen oraciones temáticas con idea de control, ideas de apoyo y conclusiones. En consecuencia, mejoraron la competencia de escritura


Introduction
The occurrence of coherence and cohesion of ideas is one of the prerequisites for defining a text as intelligible.Discourse connectors are linguistic components that assist in achieving this key characteristic of a text.According to Dressler and De Beaugrande (1997), writers must use DCs to assist their readers.They also mention that DCs help to increase communication comprehension by preventing misconceptions and ensuring that sentences are connected properly.
Consequently, it is important to know some of the problems students face now to write to help them to became writers competent.Shastri (2010), explains in her book Communicative Approach to teaching English as a second language, that the most common problems students face when writing are spelling, vocabulary, sentence structure, punctuation, correct layout, coherence and cohesion, organization of content www.concienciadigital.organd sequencing of ideas, sentence connectors, and the ability to communicate convincingly using various writing functions.
Knowing that Daif-Allah and Albesher (2013), propose that one important principle for improving students' academic writing is to teach them discourse connectors as a condition for improving their writing fluency, and that the teacher should provide supplementary materials to help students practice DCs.Finally, Sadeghi and Kargar (2014), stated that explicit instruction aids in the acquisition of discourse connectors.
Therefore, the main objective of this research study is to analyze the relationship between discourse connectors and the improvement of writing competence.For this purpose, a didactic guide was elaborated to teach the writing process and discourse connectors using the intrinsic and extrinsic teaching strategy.The didactic guide contains interested reading passages about culture, art, tourism and social matters.Additionally, with the help of some applications such as Nearpod, quizzes and written dim prove applications students keep interested and motivated to practice the writing skill.
Through the years discourse connectors have received many names such as: cohesive devices, cohesive elements (Halliday & Hasan, 1976).Conjunctive adverbials / adverbs, connecting, adverbs, connecting words and phrases, connectives, connective adjuncts, connective adverbs, connectors, conjuncts, connectives, discourse connectors (Cowan, 2008;Prommas & Sinwongsuwat, 2011).Words of connection, words of transition, logical connectors and meta discourse markers.Despite that, for the purposes of this study, the term discourse connectors will be used.
A discourse connector's primary function is to indicate the connection between passages (Biber et al., 2002).Furthermore, Prommas and Sinwongsuwat (2011) define discourse connectors as words or phrases that connect information in one clause to information in a previous clause.They are also regarded as linguistic cues because they aid in text interpretation by signaling the relationship between prior and subsequent segments.
Moreover, Discourse Connectors are explored using three different approaches: Schiffrin and Hamilton (2003) coherence approach, Fraser's (1988) the grammatical pragmatic perspective and Halliday and Hasan (1976) systemic functional grammar approach.One of the functions of discourse connectors, according to Schiffrin, is to provide coherence to the text.Furthermore, according to Fraser, the purpose of DCs is not just to offer coherence to the text, but also to connect the first and second utterances.The other role of DCs, according to Halliday and Hasan, is to offer meaning construction.It implies that the speaker must be very cautious now to select DCs to achieve cohesion in their writing.
DCs are characterized by their flexibility.This means that they can appear at the beginning, middle, or end of a sentence (syntax,).However, the most usual place is at the www.concienciadigital.orgstart of the phrase to indicate that additional information will follow.When it comes to semantics, when they are eliminated from the discussion, they have no impact on the meaning of ideas.They are derived from verbs, prepositions, and modal words, among other terms of lexis.
There are numerous categories and taxonomies of discourse connectors, however they are still incomprehensible.That is why, for this research work the classification of Rezvani et al. (2012), has been chosen since it offers a current taxonomy to aid comprehension and application of DCs.Whether…or not, if, only if, unless, even if, whether, provided (that), in case, in the event(that) 9. Generalization DCs Overall, in general, generally, as a rule, in most cases, broadly speaking, to some extent, mostly, above all, chiefly, largely, primly, usually, essentially 10.Emphasizing DCs above all, after all, indeed, as a matter of fact, the main issue is, chiefly, especially the most significant, the chief characteristic, the major point, the most necessary, extremely, to emphasize, to highlight, to stress, by all means, undoubtedly, more importantly, most important of all, most of all, moreover, furthermore, significantly, without a doubt, certainly, to be sure, surely, absolutely, obviously, more and more, of major interest, to culminate, in truth, the climax of, to add to that, without question, unquestionably, as a result, probability, basically to deduce some linguistic properties of DCs.It's also a good idea to offer explicit instruction because some discourse connectors are tough to figure out what they represent.Consequently, the teacher must explain what DCs are and how to use them (Lee & Jung, 2005).
There are some recommended ways for teaching discourse connections that have proven to be effective.Consciousness raising, an emphasis on form, a focus on the environment, open-ended practice, and theme to be developed are a few of them.
Consciousness Raising: This method aims to raise learners' awareness of DCs.Students' capacity to infer, compare, and observe distinctions among DCs can be developed through activities that the lecturer can use.
Focus on form.-The major goal of this method is to improve students' grammatical skills in communication.
Pay attention to the environment.This method can be utilized by the teacher to help leaners understand that discourse connectors are only employed in certain situations.
This is an open-ended exercise.The goal of this method is for students to connect sentences using a discourse connector.
Given topic to be developed.-The major goal of this method is to have students produce an essay with an introduction, body, and conclusion, as well as to have them use discourse connectors in their writing.
Focusing on functions.This technique can be used by the teacher to teach discourse connectors based on their semantic linkages, for example, cause and effect discourse connectors.
Underuse, overuse, and misuse of discourse connectors are some of the most common issues students experience when writing fluently (Mateus, 2016).Furthermore, students face internal and external writing challenges.The former is linked to issues with syntax, cognition, and sentence structure, as well as a lack of motivation and word choice and vocabulary.The learners' external difficulties are caused by a lack of practice, which is caused by their laziness and motivation to practice.It is also stated that teachers do not provide adequate feedback to students on their written work.It means that teachers assign a grade to students without remarking on their writing errors.According to the study, students utilized the following tactics when writing in English: 76% of students think in Spanish first and then translate their ideas into English.
In addition, some other studies found that when students write in the target language, their L1 causes significant interference.Some common sources of interference were invented www.concienciadigital.orgtwo independent sentences are joined.The comma is omitted when it joins an independent sentence with a dependent one.
The results about the DC because, shows that it is overused, and that, not all the students use it to explain causes.About punctuation, students do not use the correct one.According to Zemach & Rumisek (2005), it is necessary to use a comma when a sentence starts with because, at the end of the first sentence, and it is omitted when because is placed in the middle of the sentence.
Students also have issues with sentence construction and grammar.The language structure is incoherent, making their thoughts difficult to comprehend.They also have issues with spelling.It was discovered that this is due to influence from the L1 language.Furthermore, they do not employ proper punctuation, particularly when ending a statement.They forget to finish a sentence with a period.They also write very long sentences because of the L1 sentence structure.Students in the Spanish language write extended sentences, which is different in English.The sentences in English are not particularly long.
Furthermore, not all students include a topic sentence in the paragraph with controlling idea.Furthermore, they neglect to include supporting concepts and examples.The text is disorganized, and at the end of each paragraph, they forget to put a concluding sentence.
To sum up, learners misuse DCs and because.They misuse but and because, as well as underuse also, so, therefore, consequently, as a result, whereas, and for example.Students should also work on improving their punctuation when using DCs and expanding their vocabulary about them.
After the pre-test, several lessons were implemented to assist students in correcting the errors discovered during the test.Those cover sentence structure and punctuation, topic sentences and controlling idea, supporting information, concluding sentences, DCs (and, but, because, so, therefore, whereas, and as a result), the writing process, and some capitalization rules using the Nearpod, quizzes and writeandimprove apps.
After the treatments, a post-test was applied to assess the students' improvement in writing competence.The outcomes are displayed below.According to the results, students' writing proficiency improved.The sentences, as well as the paragraphs, were logically ordered, making it easy to understand their ideas.They also reduced spelling issues.Furthermore, most of the students capitalized the words correctly.Moreover, they choose the correct DCs and place them in the right place with the correct punctuation.In addition, students use different DCs from each DCs' classification.Finally, the paragraphs contain topic sentence with controlling idea, supporting ideas and conclusion.

Conclusions
 After Teaching DCs to students of the third semester of the Carrera de Pedagogy de los Idiom's nationals y estrangers, the following conclusions can be mentioned. Discourse connectors can help students improve their writing skills by allowing ideas to flow freely, increasing communication understanding, and ensuring that ideas are connected properly. Student's overuse DCs such as and, so and because in their writing.It was also discovered that a small percentage of students misuse the words but and because.Furthermore, students underuse therefore, consequently.Finally, it was discovered that many students do not include any CDs in their written work. Students may misuse DCs for a variety of reasons, they do not the meaning of some DCs.Furthermore, they are unsure of their place in the sentence and do not know the correct punctuation of them.Furthermore, students underuse discourse

Table 1
Classification of discourse connectors 1. Sequential DCs a. Ordering first, firstly, second, secondly, third, thirdly a, b, c one, two, three in the first place, in the second place first, second for one thing, for another thing to begin with, to start with b.Timing in the end, at the same time, in the meantime, meanwhile, meantime, simultaneously, initially, before, earlier, previously, formerly, recently, not long ago, at present, presently, currently, now, by now, until, today, immediately, at the same time, during, all the while, in the future yesterday, tomorrow, henceforth, after, after a short time, after a while, soon, later, later, following, the following week, suddenly, all at once, instantly, immediately, quickly, directly, soon, as soon as, just then, when, sometimes, altogether, overall, then, therefore, thus, (all) in all, in conclusion, in sum, to conclude, to sum up, to summarize, finally, in summary, anyway, briefly, in short, to get back to the point, to resume, in a word.4.Apposition DCsNamely (viz), thus, in other words, for example, as an example, for instance, that is (i.e.), that is to say, specifically, more precisely, what is to say, for one thing, to put it another way, to put it bluntly/mildly, what I am saying is, what I mean is, which is to say, in this case, to illustrate, such as, to demonstrate, as revealed by, to show, suppose that, specifically, to be exact, as

Table 1
Classification of discourse connectors (continuation)