EVALUATING COHESION AND COHERENCE FAILURES IN GRADUATE THESIS DISCOURSE

Abstract

In academic writing, quality is an important indicator of research competence, especially at the postgraduate level. Master’s theses are expected to meet established standards of academic style and discourse organisation; however, many texts show persistent stylistic and discursive deficiencies. This research identifies the most common stylistic and discursive errors in master’s theses and examines their impact on textual coherence, clarity, and academic credibility. Employing a qualitative research design, the study analyses a corpus of master’s theses written in English by non-native speakers through stylistic and discourse-oriented textual analysis. The findings reveal that some common stylistic errors may include inappropriate lexical choice, redundancy, informality, and syntactic complexity, while discursive errors primarily include weak cohesion, unclear thematic progression, and inconsistent argument development. Various studies argue that these issues are closely linked to insufficient academic writing training, limited genre awareness, and the influence of native-language discourse patterns. The article summarises by emphasising the importance of systematic academic writing instruction and suggests pedagogically relevant strategies to develop stylistic accuracy and discourse competence in postgraduate education.