Cohesion and Coherence in Essays Generated by ChatGPT: A Comparative Analysis to University Students’ Writing

Abstract

ChatGPT is a natural language processing tool that can assist in many language-related tasks (ChatGPT, personal communication, May 20, 2023). It can also produce human-like writing. Cohesion and coherence are major requirements of any piece of writing, and it is assumed that ChatGPT can generate successful essays regarding these language requisites. Adopting Halliday and Hasan’s (1976) theory of cohesion and van Dijk and Kintsch’s (1983) cognitive situation model to achieve coherence, the researcher investigates cohesion and coherence in essays produced by ChatGPT compared to essays produced by students with respect to the same language features. The current study revolves around two major research questions: how are cohesion and coherence manifested in essays produced by ChatGPT, and how do these same language features resemble or differ from essays written by students? To answer these questions, students’ essays from first and fourth years in the English Department at one of the Egyptian private universities and essays produced by ChatGPT on the same prompts were assessed by the two courses’ instructors, qualitatively analyzed by ChatGPT and quantitatively analyzed using Coh-Metrix software version 3.0, and then compared. Findings revealed that ChatGPT can produce human-like essays not only in terms of cohesion and coherence, but also regarding lexical choices and advanced grammatical structures, which poses a great challenge of how to avoid having students plagiarizing from ChatGPT. Accordingly, the article concludes with some recommendations that utilize ChatGPT to enhance learners’ linguistic proficiency without sacrificing the integrity, honesty and reliability of the learning process.