Texture in EFL Learners’ Expository Essays: An Exploratory Approach

Although grammatical range and accuracy have been widely explored in EFL learners’ expository essays, texture, which is realized through linguistic resources related to cohesion, has remained relatively unexplored. Guided by Halliday and Hassan’s (1976) model, this study aimed at exploring the frequency and use of these resources by analyzing a random sample of essays written by MA TEFL students at Shahrood University of Technology. Analyses revealed that the participants overused common forms of lexical cohesion, such as repetition and synonymy, but rarely did they use grammatical cohesive ties such as ellipsis and comparative references; hence, the analyzed essays were found to be underdeveloped as far as texture is concerned. The findings of this study have clear implications for materials developers, language teachers, and educators who are involved in second language writing instruction.