THE ROLE OF SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR APPROACH TOWARDS TEACHING CONJUNCTIONS ON DEVELOPING COHESIVE DENSITY OF IRANIAN EFL LEARNERS’ WRITING

This paper investigated the impact of formal instruction of SFG on developing cohesive density of ESL learners’ written performance. To this end, two different forms of conjunction teaching which included systemic and non-systemic approach were used. Students were chosen after assigning a (PET) test and a writing task (pre-test) for having homogeneous groups. The researcher randomly assigned them as two comparative groups. The results indicated that the performance of the two groups on written performance was significant. The group receiving the non-systemic form of conjunction instruction outperformed the other group. It was concluded that formal instruction of systemic and non-systemic approach towards conjunction is helpful in increasing the cohesive density of written performance. However, SFG is not necessarily better than non systemic approach.