Abstract:
This study linguistically analyzed the argumentative essays of engineering students for the school year 2022-2023. Specifically, it determined grammatical and lexical devices used and the overall cohesion in their written essays. A Convergent-Parallel research design was used in the study. The study considered the 168 second-year engineering students officially enrolled in Purposive Communication for first-semester S.Y. 2022-2023. Halliday and Hasan's (1976) taxonomy was used to describe and analyze the occurrence of the use of grammatical devices along reference, conjunction, substitution, and ellipsis, as well as lexical devices along collocation and reiteration (repetition, synonym, and superordinate). Findings show that all types of cohesive devices are present in the students' essays. Grammatical devices displayed that reference and conjunction are the most prevalent cohesive ties, while ellipsis and substitution are less recurrent. Lexical devices, on the other, revealed that repetition and collocation are the most prevalent cohesive devices, while superordinate and synonym are less recurrent. Further, the overall cohesion of the students' essays revealed that they are poor at constructing cohesive text, specifically in organizing their ideas logically.
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