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In:Applying Corpora in Teaching and Learning Romance Languages
Edited by Henry Tyne and Stefania Spina
[Studies in Corpus Linguistics 122] 2025
► pp. 352–374

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Chapter 14
Examining coherence and cohesion errors in writing Catalan as an additional language

Some pedagogical proposals from a corpus‑based analysis

 | TÉLUQ University
 | Serra Húnter Fellow, Universitat Pompeu Fabra
 | Université de Montréal
Published online: 20 November 2025
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.122.14joa
Abstract
This study presents an analysis of a corpus of short texts written by French-speaking students of Catalan as an additional language. The research showed the frequent occurrence of errors of coherence and cohesion, though frequencies varied somewhat according to the student’s prior knowledge of other languages in writing. These results were the basis for online exercises featuring brief grammatical explanations for each error. The exercises were tested on French-speaking students of intermediate-level Catalan, who also answered an online questionnaire about their perceptions of the exercises as well as their use of first and additional languages. Scores and questionnaire responses together suggest that combining corpus-based error analysis and online exercises anticipating these errors may constitute a feasible and effective methodology to enhance language learning.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Coherence and cohesion in additional language writing
  • 3.Method
    • 3.1The corpus
    • 3.2Corpus annotation and analysis
  • 4.Results of the corpus analysis
  • 5.Coherence and cohesion training exercises
  • 6.Student evaluation and language use questionnaire
  • 7.Results of the exercises and the questionnaire
  • 8.Discussion
  • 9.Conclusions
  • References
References (84)
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