A study of cohesive devices in ielts listening tasks

Abstract

Cohesive devices play an essential role in creating organized speech and rendering speech content to listeners. Therefore, having a thorough understanding of cohesive devices helps language learners improve their listening skills. Based on the cohesion framework of Halliday and Hasan (1976), this study is aimed at finding out types of cohesive devices as well as examining syntactic and semantic features of cohesive devices commonly used in IELTS Listening Tasks. To conduct the research, 548 cohesive devices were identified from 92 tape scripts of IELTS Listening Section 4 in IELTS Listening Tasks. All of these samples were collected from updated IELTS test materials. It is hoped that the results of the study can be helpful for Vietnamese learners of English in improving their listening skills and for IELTS test takers in better tackling Section 4 of IELTS Listening Tests.