Textual discourse competence of ESP students in technical text

The aim of this paper was to investigate textual competence in the English and Persian using professional texts. Textual discourse competence refers to the ability to understand and construct written texts of different genres. As there is an interactive relationship between reading and writing, summary writing is a way to determine whether the learner has understood the material he/she has been reading. Data on use of discourse markers, linking words and phrases for maintaining flow and establishing cohesion in the students’ summary papers are discussed. The analysis of the results on discourse markers shows that students have the ability to use discourse markers both in English and Persian so they can establish cohesion in constructing the text; however they need to improve this ability as the use of discourse markers were not so extensive, also they are more proficient using discourse marker for constructing the text in their mother tongue than in English. Use of the writers’ own words when paraphrasing the main ideas of the original text is also examined. The result reveled that the students need to develop their skills in writing effective summaries both in English and Persian to more or lesser degree

کلیدواژه ها:

textual competence ، cohesion ، discourse markers