DEVELOPING UZBEK EFL STUDENTS' COMPETENCE IN THE APPROPRIATE USE OF COHESIVE DEVICES IN ACADEMIC WRITING THROUGH CORPUS-BASED FEEDBACK

Academic writing requires learners not only to produce grammatically accurate sentences but also to establish meaningful relationships between ideas across sentences and paragraphs. Cohesive devices, including reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction, and lexical cohesion, play an important role in creating textual connectedness. However, research on second-language writing demonstrates that EFL learners frequently misuse cohesive devices, overuse certain connectors, or employ cohesive forms without considering their discourse function. This thesis proposes a corpus-based feedback methodology for developing Uzbek EFL students’ competence in the appropriate use of cohesive devices in academic writing. The proposed approach combines learner-corpus analysis, concordance-based observation, comparison with reference corpora, teacher-guided interpretation, and revision. Previous research has demonstrated that corpus tools can provide teachers with systematic information about students’ linguistic choices and can support more targeted feedback. Studies of EFL writing have also shown relationships between appropriate cohesion and writing quality, while emphasizing that frequency alone does not guarantee effective textual cohesion. The proposed methodology therefore focuses on both quantitative distribution and qualitative appropriateness. It is argued that corpus-based feedback can increase learners’ awareness of authentic cohesive patterns, reduce inappropriate repetition and connector misuse, and promote more independent revision practices. The approach may be particularly relevant to Uzbek higher education, where corpus-based research on student academic writing remains comparatively limited.