Discourse Features of Students’ Essays on Flooding and Drought in Sokoto Secondary Schools

Cite this article as: Dantsoho, Z. A. (2026). Discourse features of students’ essays on flooding and drought in Sokoto secondary schools. Sokoto Journal of Linguistics and Communication Studies (SOJOLICS), 2(1), 123-137. https://doi.org/10.36349/sojolics.2026.v02i01.011

By

Zainab Aliyu Dantsoho
Brilliant Footsteps International Academy, Sokoto
zaliyudantsoho@gmail.com

Abstract

This study investigates the discourse features of secondary school students’ essays on flooding and drought in Sokoto State, Nigeria. The study is motivated by the growing interest in how learners use language to represent environmental realities within classroom writing. Drawing on Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), particularly the concepts of cohesion, lexical cohesion, and thematic development, the study examines how students organise ideas, deploy vocabulary, and construct meaning in essays on environmental issues that directly affect their communities. A qualitative descriptive design was adopted. Thirty essays written by Senior Secondary II students from three secondary schools in Sokoto metropolis were purposively selected and analysed. Data were coded and examined for cohesive devices, lexical patterns, thematic organisation, and evidence of first language influence. The findings reveal that students rely heavily on additive conjunctions, especially and, and frequently repeat lexical items such as farmers, rain, water, and crops. The essays generally follow a simple organisational structure comprising introduction, explanation, and conclusion, but many lack elaborate argumentation and logical development of ideas. The analysis also reveals the influence of Hausa on English sentence structure and lexical choices, reflecting the multilingual context in which the learners operate. Despite these limitations, the essays demonstrate strong environmental awareness rooted in students lived experiences of flooding and drought in Sokoto State. The study concludes that discourse competence in environmental writing can be enhanced through explicit instruction in cohesion, vocabulary expansion, and genre-based writing strategies.

Keywords: Discourse analysis, Systemic Functional Linguistics, environmental discourse, student essays, cohesion, Sokoto State.

1.0 Introduction

Writing is a fundamental component of language learning and an important medium through which students express ideas, organise experiences, and communicate knowledge. In second language contexts such as Nigeria, students’ essays provide valuable insights into their linguistic competence, discourse organisation, and ability to construct meaning. Beyond grammar and vocabulary, effective writing requires the ability to organise ideas coherently, employ appropriate cohesive devices, and adapt language to specific communicative purposes. Consequently, the analysis of students’ written texts has become an important area of inquiry in applied linguistics and discourse studies.

Discourse analysis focuses on language use beyond the sentence level and examines how texts achieve coherence, cohesion, and communicative effectiveness. Halliday and Hasan (1976) argue that a text is not merely a collection of sentences but a meaningful semantic unit whose elements are connected through cohesive relations. Thus, the study of discourse features in students’ essays provides important insights into how learners organise information, maintain thematic continuity, and express relationships among ideas, especially in multilingual contexts where first languages may influence writing in English.

In Nigeria, English functions as the official language and the principal medium of instruction beyond the early years of primary education. However, most students acquire English as a second language and use indigenous languages such as Hausa for everyday communication. This bilingual environment influences the structure and style of students’ writing. Studies have shown that second language learners often experience difficulties with cohesion, lexical variation, coherence, and argument development because they transfer patterns from their first language into English writing (Hyland, 2005; Kachru, 1992). Understanding these discourse features is therefore essential for improving writing pedagogy and learner achievement.

Environmental issues constitute one of the themes commonly explored in school essays. In northern Nigeria, flooding and drought are recurring phenomena with significant social and economic consequences. Although Sokoto State lies within the semi-arid region of north-western Nigeria and is generally characterised by low rainfall, the state has in recent years experienced seasonal flooding resulting from heavy rainfall, poor drainage systems, and overflow from rivers and streams. Conversely, prolonged dry seasons and irregular rainfall patterns frequently expose communities to drought and water scarcity. According to the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMet, 2022), Sokoto State receives approximately 500–800 mm of rainfall annually and experiences temperatures that often exceed 40°C during the hot season. These climatic conditions contribute to desertification, reduced agricultural productivity, and increased vulnerability to drought. Similarly, reports by the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA, 2021) indicate that flooding has affected several communities in northern Nigeria, causing damage to farmlands, displacement of residents, and loss of livelihoods. Because these environmental challenges directly affect students and their families, they are likely to shape the content and language of students’ written essays.

Students’ essays on flooding and drought therefore offer a valuable opportunity to investigate how learners represent environmental experiences through language. Such essays can reveal patterns of cohesion, vocabulary choice, thematic organisation, and narrative perspective, as well as how learners negotiate the influence of Hausa while writing in English. Despite the growing body of research on second language writing in Nigeria, limited attention has been paid to the discourse features of students’ essays on environmental issues, particularly within the Sokoto context. Previous studies have focused mainly on grammatical errors, writing performance, and general composition skills, with relatively little attention to how students construct meaning in texts dealing with real-life environmental experiences. Moreover, few studies have employed discourse analytic approaches grounded in Systemic Functional Linguistics to examine the organisation and communicative functions of students’ environmental essays. This represents an important gap in the literature, especially given the increasing relevance of environmental education and climate-related issues in contemporary society.

Against this background, the present study investigates the discourse features of secondary school students’ essays on flooding and drought in Sokoto State. Specifically, the study examines how students use cohesive devices, lexical resources, thematic structures, and narrative perspectives in constructing essays on environmental issues and explores the extent to which Hausa influences students’ English writing. By doing so, the study contributes theoretically to discourse studies through the application of Systemic Functional Linguistics to learners’ environmental essays in a multilingual setting, provides empirical evidence on how students organise ideas and represent environmental experiences through language, and offers practical insights that may assist teachers, curriculum developers, and educational policymakers in improving writing pedagogy in Nigerian secondary schools. The study is guided by the following questions: What cohesive devices do students employ in their essays on flooding and drought? What lexical choices and vocabulary patterns characterise the essays? How are ideas organised and developed in the essays? What narrative stance do students adopt in presenting environmental issues? To what extent does Hausa influence students’ English writing?

2. Literature Review

Discourse analysis is concerned with the study of language beyond the sentence level and examines how speakers and writers use language to create meaningful and coherent texts. Unlike traditional grammatical analysis, which focuses primarily on sentence structure, discourse analysis investigates how ideas are connected across sentences and paragraphs to achieve communicative goals. Halliday and Hasan (1976) describe a text as a semantic unit characterised by cohesion and coherence, whose meaning derives not only from individual linguistic forms but also from the relationships among them. In educational settings, discourse analysis has become an important approach to understanding students’ writing because it reveals how learners organise ideas, construct arguments, and express experiences. Hyland (2005) argues that writing is a social and communicative activity in which learners make linguistic choices to achieve coherence and engage readers. Consequently, the analysis of students’ essays extends beyond grammatical correctness to include cohesion, thematic progression, vocabulary use, and rhetorical organisation.

Studies have shown that second language learners often encounter challenges in producing coherent texts. Hameed (2016) found that learners of English tend to rely heavily on a limited range of cohesive devices, especially additive conjunctions such as and, while underutilising adversative and causal connectors. Similarly, Bitchener and Ferris (2012) observe that many second language learners struggle with organising information logically and developing ideas in extended writing. These findings underscore the relevance of discourse analysis as a framework for investigating students’ writing because it reveals how linguistic choices contribute to or hinder effective communication.

A key concept in discourse analysis is cohesion, which Halliday and Hasan (1976) define as the network of semantic relations that link elements of a text and create textual unity. Cohesive devices include reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction, and lexical cohesion. Among these, conjunctions play an important role in organising information. Additive conjunctions such as and, also, and furthermore connect ideas of equal importance, whereas adversative conjunctions such as however and although indicate contrast. Causal conjunctions express reasons and consequences, while temporal conjunctions signal sequence and chronology. Research consistently shows that learners overuse simple conjunctions while avoiding more complex cohesive devices. Hameed (2016) reports that students frequently rely on and to connect multiple ideas, resulting in repetitive and less sophisticated writing. Similarly, Liu and Braine (2005) found that second language writers often demonstrate limited mastery of cohesive strategies despite possessing adequate grammatical knowledge. Closely related to cohesion is coherence, which refers to the logical organisation and meaningful flow of ideas. While cohesion concerns linguistic connections, coherence concerns the overall interpretability of a text. A text may contain many cohesive devices yet fail to achieve coherence if ideas are poorly organised or inadequately developed. Therefore, both concepts are essential for understanding the strengths and limitations of students’ essays.

Vocabulary also plays a significant role in the quality of written discourse. Lexical choice refers to the selection and use of words to express ideas appropriately and effectively. Rich vocabulary enables writers to avoid repetition, express subtle meanings, and create stylistic variety. Hyland (2005) notes that lexical diversity is an important indicator of writing proficiency because it reflects both linguistic competence and communicative ability. However, second language learners often possess limited vocabulary repertoires and rely heavily on familiar words and expressions, thereby reducing the richness and effectiveness of their writing. Nation (2013) observes that lexical repetition is one of the most common features of second language essays because learners often lack suitable synonyms or alternative expressions. In the Nigerian context, vocabulary limitations have been linked to inadequate exposure to reading materials, limited opportunities for extensive writing, and the influence of indigenous languages. Consequently, examining lexical patterns in students’ essays provides insights into their vocabulary development and communicative competence.

The influence of learners’ first language on second language writing has also received considerable attention in applied linguistics. This phenomenon, commonly referred to as language transfer, occurs when linguistic features of the first language affect the production of the second language. Kachru (1992) argues that English in multilingual societies develops distinctive local features as speakers adapt the language to their cultural and linguistic environments. In Nigeria, English coexists with numerous indigenous languages, including Hausa, resulting in various forms of language contact and transfer. Yusuf (2012) observes that Hausa-speaking learners of English sometimes translate directly from Hausa into English, producing expressions that deviate from standard English usage. Such transfer may manifest in lexical choice, sentence structure, and rhetorical organisation. Nevertheless, contemporary scholarship increasingly recognises multilingualism as a resource rather than merely a source of errors. Examining Hausa influence in students’ essays therefore provides a better understanding of how multilingual learners negotiate meaning in English writing.

Environmental discourse constitutes another important area relevant to this study. It refers to the ways language is used to describe, explain, and evaluate environmental issues such as climate change, flooding, drought, desertification, and environmental conservation. According to Stibbe (2021), environmental discourse reflects not only factual knowledge but also values, beliefs, and cultural experiences. In educational settings, environmental topics provide meaningful opportunities for students to connect classroom learning with real-life experiences. Sokoto State presents a particularly relevant context because of its vulnerability to drought, desertification, and seasonal flooding. Many students in the region are directly exposed to these environmental realities through farming activities, water scarcity, and changing climatic conditions. Consequently, their essays are likely to reflect both linguistic competence and lived experiences.

Despite the growing literature on discourse analysis, cohesion, vocabulary use, language transfer, and environmental discourse, there remains limited empirical research examining how secondary school students in Sokoto State use language to discuss environmental issues such as flooding and drought. Most studies in Nigeria have focused on grammatical errors, writing performance, and general language proficiency, with relatively little attention paid to discourse organisation and meaning-making processes. Moreover, few studies have employed Systemic Functional Linguistics as an analytical framework for understanding how students organise ideas, deploy cohesive resources, and represent environmental experiences in written discourse. This study seeks to fill this gap by analysing authentic classroom essays on flooding and drought produced by secondary school students in Sokoto State. In doing so, it contributes to discourse studies, second language writing research, and environmental communication in multilingual educational settings.

3. Theoretical Framework

This study is anchored on Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) developed principally by Michael Alexander Kirkwood Halliday. SFL views language as a social semiotic system through which speakers and writers make meaning in particular social and cultural contexts (Halliday, 1994). Unlike formal linguistic theories that emphasise the structural properties of language, SFL focuses on the functions language performs and the ways linguistic choices are shaped by communicative purposes. The theory is particularly relevant to this study because it explains how students organise ideas, construct meanings, and communicate experiences through written discourse. Essays on flooding and drought are not merely collections of grammatical sentences; rather, they are texts through which students represent environmental realities, express opinions, and organise information for readers.

According to Halliday (1994), language simultaneously performs three broad metafunctions: the ideational, interpersonal, and textual metafunctions. The ideational metafunction concerns the representation of experience and reality and explains how language is used to describe events, actions, people, and circumstances. In students’ essays on flooding and drought, this metafunction is evident in expressions such as Flooding destroys crops and washes away fertile soil and Drought causes water scarcity and affects agricultural production. These clauses contain processes (destroys, washes away, causes, and affects), participants (flooding, crops, drought, and water scarcity), and circumstances that together construct meanings about environmental realities. The interpersonal metafunction focuses on how language expresses attitudes, judgements, evaluations, and social relationships. Statements such as Flooding is a serious problem that affects many families in our community and The government should help farmers to overcome drought show that students are not merely presenting facts but are also expressing concern and making recommendations. Through modal verbs such as should, evaluative adjectives such as serious, and first-person references such as our community, students position themselves in relation to the issues under discussion.

The textual metafunction is perhaps the most relevant aspect of SFL for this study because it concerns the organisation of language into coherent and meaningful texts. It explains how writers arrange information, maintain continuity, and establish relationships among ideas through linguistic resources such as Theme-Rheme structure, cohesion, and lexical cohesion. Theme refers to the element that serves as the point of departure of a clause, while Rheme refers to the information that develops or expands the Theme (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014). Thus, in the clause Flooding destroys crops and causes food shortages, Flooding is the Theme, while destroys crops and causes food shortages constitutes the Rheme. Similarly, in Drought affects farming activities in Sokoto State, Drought functions as the Theme and the remaining part of the clause as the Rheme. The analysis of Theme-Rheme structures enables the researcher to determine how students organise information and maintain thematic continuity throughout their essays.

Another important concept within the textual metafunction is cohesion, which refers to the linguistic resources that link sentences and clauses together to form a unified text (Halliday & Hasan, 1976). Cohesive devices include reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction, and lexical cohesion. Reference involves the use of pronouns and demonstratives to refer to previously mentioned entities, as in Flooding affects many communities. It destroys crops and houses, where it refers back to flooding. Conjunctions express relationships between ideas, as illustrated in Flooding destroys farmlands and causes food shortages and Drought reduces rainfall; therefore, agricultural production declines. Lexical cohesion refers to relationships created through vocabulary choices such as repetition, synonymy, antonymy, collocation, and superordinate relations. For example, in Flooding destroys farms. Flooding also affects roads and houses, the repetition of flooding contributes to textual cohesion, while in Farmers suffer losses. Agricultural workers are forced to seek alternative livelihoods, the relationship between farmers and agricultural workers creates lexical cohesion through synonymy.

The analysis of lexical cohesion is particularly relevant to this study because students’ essays frequently repeat words such as farmers, rain, water, land, and crops. Examining these lexical patterns provides insights into students’ vocabulary range and discourse competence. More broadly, SFL is appropriate for this study because it provides a comprehensive framework for analysing discourse beyond the sentence level and emphasises the relationship between language and social context. Since the essays analysed in this study are based on students’ lived experiences of flooding and drought in Sokoto State, the theory allows for an examination of how environmental realities shape linguistic choices. Consequently, this study adopts Systemic Functional Linguistics as the analytical lens through which the discourse features of students’ essays on flooding and drought are examined.

4. Methodology

This study adopted a qualitative descriptive research design employing discourse analysis as the principal analytical approach. The design was considered appropriate because it enables the researcher to examine how meanings are constructed and represented in naturally occurring texts without manipulating the writing process or learning environment (Creswell & Creswell, 2018). The study was conducted in Sokoto metropolis, Sokoto State, Nigeria, a semi-arid region characterised by periodic flooding and drought. The population comprised Senior Secondary II (SS II) students in selected secondary schools within the metropolis. Using purposive sampling, thirty (30) essays were selected from three secondary schools, including Brilliant Footsteps International Academy and two other comparable schools. Ten essays were selected from each school because they addressed the topic Flooding and Drought in Sokoto State and contained sufficient textual data for discourse analysis. Data were collected through a writing task administered under normal classroom conditions in which students were given forty-five minutes to write independently on the selected topic. The handwritten essays constituted the primary source of data for the study.

The collected essays were analysed qualitatively within the framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). The analysis involved repeated reading of the essays, identification and coding of relevant discourse features, categorisation and interpretation of the coded data, and comparison of findings with previous studies. The analytical categories included cohesion, lexical choice, thematic development, narrative stance, and first language influence. Particular attention was paid to additive, adversative, and causal conjunctions, lexical repetition, environmental vocabulary, thematic progression, personal and descriptive narration, and evidence of Hausa influence through lexical and syntactic transfer. To ensure trustworthiness, the essays were read repeatedly, representative excerpts were drawn directly from the data, and the analysis was guided by established concepts in discourse analysis and Systemic Functional Linguistics. Ethical principles were also observed through obtaining permission from participating schools, ensuring voluntary participation, maintaining confidentiality, and replacing students’ names with pseudonyms during analysis and reporting.

 

5. Data Presentation and Analysis

This section presents and analyses the discourse features identified in the thirty essays written by Senior Secondary II students on the topic Flooding and Drought in Sokoto State. The analysis is organised according to the research objectives and the categories derived from Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), namely cohesion, lexical choice, thematic development, narrative stance, and first language influence.

5.1 Cohesion in Students’ Essays

Cohesion refers to the linguistic resources that connect clauses and sentences to create meaningful and unified texts (Halliday & Hasan, 1976). The analysis of the essays reveals that students employ various cohesive devices, although with varying degrees of effectiveness. The most frequently used cohesive devices are additive conjunctions, particularly and, also, and because. However, adversative and causal conjunctions such as however, therefore, and as a result appear infrequently.

Table 1: Frequently Used Cohesive Devices in the Essays

Cohesive Device	Function	Frequency
and	Addition	86
because	Cause/Reason	18
also	Addition	14
but	Contrast	9
therefore	Result	4
however	Contrast	2
firstly/secondly	Sequencing	6

The table shows that students rely heavily on simple additive conjunctions, especially and. This tendency indicates an awareness of the need to connect ideas, but it also suggests limited control of more sophisticated cohesive strategies. Several essays relied heavily on additive conjunctions, as illustrated in expressions such as:

Flooding destroys crops and houses and roads and makes farmers poor and causes hunger.

and

Flooding and drought are two natural disasters that affect farming and economy and people suffer because of them.

These examples demonstrate an overreliance on coordination at the expense of more sophisticated cohesive devices. From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistics, students possess basic textual resources but have not fully mastered the range of conjunctions necessary for producing cohesive and mature academic writing.

5.2 Lexical Choice and Vocabulary Use

Lexical choice refers to the selection and use of vocabulary in constructing meaning. The analysis reveals that students frequently employ environmental vocabulary relevant to the topic under discussion, including flooding, drought, farmers, crops, rainfall, water, irrigation, hunger, poverty, and land. However, students tend to repeat these words excessively instead of employing synonyms or semantically related expressions.

Table 2: Frequently Repeated Lexical Items

Lexical Item	Frequency
farmers	54
flooding	47
drought	39
crops	33
rain/rainfall	31
water	26
land	18

For instance, one student writes:

Farmers lose income and farmers suffer and farmers cannot feed their families.

The repeated use of farmers creates lexical cohesion through repetition, but the absence of alternative lexical items such as agricultural workers, cultivators, or peasants limits lexical diversity. Similarly, another student writes:

Flooding can be defined as the overflow of water due to high rainfall. High rainfall causes destruction of crops and high rainfall can affect food production.

The phrase high rainfall appears repeatedly within a short stretch of discourse. While repetition contributes to cohesion, excessive repetition reduces stylistic elegance and demonstrates limited vocabulary range.

Nevertheless, the data show that students possess a reasonable understanding of environmental vocabulary. Terms such as irrigation, groundwater, soil fertility, and desertification are used appropriately in several essays. For example:

Farmers are forced to depend on expensive groundwater pumping during drought.

This sentence indicates that students are familiar with environmental concepts and can employ technical vocabulary relevant to local agricultural practices. Thus, the analysis suggests that students possess conceptual knowledge of environmental issues but require greater lexical flexibility and vocabulary expansion.

5.3 Thematic Development and Organisation of Ideas

Thematic development refers to the manner in which information is organised and expanded within a text. From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistics, effective writing requires logical progression from one Theme to another. The majority of the essays exhibit a simple three-part structure consisting of an introduction, explanation of flooding and drought, and a conclusion or recommendation.

Most students begin by defining flooding and drought before discussing their causes and effects. Introductory clauses such as:

Flooding and drought are two natural disasters that affect many countries including Nigeria.

and

Flooding refers to the excess flow of water which destroys crops and properties.

establish clear Themes that are subsequently expanded through explanations and illustrations. This pattern contributes to textual coherence and thematic progression.

However, although students introduce topics effectively, many essays exhibit weak development of ideas. For example:

Flood causes lots of harm to farmers.

and

Drought causes hunger.

These statements are meaningful but lack elaboration because the students do not explain the processes through which flooding and drought affect agricultural production and food security. Only a few students provide extended reasoning, as illustrated below:

Rivers and other water sources dry up during drought, making irrigation difficult and reducing agricultural production.

This example demonstrates stronger thematic progression because it links environmental causes with their socio-economic consequences. The findings therefore indicate that students are able to identify important environmental issues but often struggle to sustain arguments and develop ideas systematically.

 

 

5.4 Narrative Stance and Representation of Experience

Narrative stance refers to the perspective from which writers present events and experiences. The analysis reveals that students frequently adopt a descriptive and experience-based stance. Many essays contain references to local communities, farming practices, and everyday experiences.

For example:

In our village there is no water and crops fail because of drought.

The use of our village demonstrates personal involvement and situates the discussion within the students’ social environment. Similarly:

When the flood washes away the farm products and the nutrients of the soil, many families suffer.

The student does not merely define flooding; rather, the writer presents it as an experienced reality with direct consequences for local livelihoods. The prominence of experience-based narratives suggests that students draw extensively on their social and environmental surroundings when constructing essays. This finding is consistent with the principles of Systemic Functional Linguistics, which emphasise that language reflects social experience and cultural context.

5.5 Hausa Influence on Students’ English Writing

One of the most significant findings of this study is the influence of Hausa on students’ English writing. The analysis reveals noticeable Hausa influence through lexical choices, sentence structure, and direct translation patterns.

Examples include:

That result to lost of lives.

instead of

That results in loss of lives.

and

Government are advice people.

instead of

The government advises people.

These expressions indicate lexical and syntactic transfer from Hausa. Another example is:

Farmers use their income on expensive groundwater pumping.

which reflects Hausa word order and collocational preferences. Such constructions suggest that students often formulate ideas in Hausa before translating them into English.

From a sociolinguistic perspective, this phenomenon is expected because Hausa is the dominant language of communication in Sokoto State and serves as the primary linguistic resource for most students outside the classroom. However, language transfer should not be viewed exclusively as a deficiency. The students’ ability to draw on both Hausa and English demonstrates the multilingual competence characteristic of many Nigerian learners. What is required, therefore, is not the elimination of first language influence but the development of strategies that help students negotiate effectively between their linguistic resources and the conventions of academic English.

The findings suggest that students possess emerging discourse competence shaped by their educational experiences, environmental realities, and multilingual backgrounds.

6. Discussion of Findings

This study investigated the discourse features of secondary school students’ essays on flooding and drought in Sokoto State with particular emphasis on cohesion, lexical choice, thematic development, narrative stance, and first language influence. The findings provide important insights into the discourse competence of learners operating within a multilingual educational environment.

The study found that students rely heavily on simple cohesive devices, particularly additive conjunctions such as and, while making limited use of adversative and causal connectors such as however, therefore, and as a result. This suggests that although students recognise the importance of linking ideas, they possess a restricted repertoire of cohesive resources. The finding corroborates Halliday and Hasan’s (1976) view that cohesion is central to textual organisation and that effective texts depend on a variety of cohesive relations. It also agrees with Hameed (2016) and Liu and Braine (2005), who found that second language learners often overuse simple conjunctions while underutilising more sophisticated cohesive devices. However, unlike earlier studies that interpret such overreliance as evidence of weak writing, the present study suggests that students consciously employ these devices to maintain textual continuity and ensure comprehensibility.

The analysis also reveals that students possess a reasonable command of environmental vocabulary. Lexical items such as flooding, drought, farmers, irrigation, water, and groundwater appear frequently and are generally used appropriately. This finding indicates that students have acquired substantial conceptual knowledge of environmental issues through classroom instruction and lived experiences. Nevertheless, the study reveals frequent lexical repetition and limited vocabulary variation, a finding consistent with Nation (2013), who argues that second language learners often rely heavily on familiar lexical items because of limited vocabulary resources. Similarly, Hyland (2005) maintains that lexical diversity is an important indicator of writing proficiency and rhetorical sophistication. The implication is that vocabulary instruction should move beyond word recognition to include synonymy, collocation, lexical relations, and contextual variation.

Another important finding is that most essays follow a recognisableorganisational pattern consisting of introduction, explanation, and conclusion. This suggests that students possess a basic understanding of essay structure and are capable of organising information into meaningful sections. From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistics, the essays exhibit relatively clear Theme-Rheme structures in which topics are introduced and subsequently expanded through explanations and examples. However, many essays reveal weaknesses in the elaboration and development of ideas. Statements such as Flood causes lots of harm to farmers and Drought causes hunger are informative but underdeveloped because they do not explain the mechanisms through which these environmental problems affect people’s lives. This finding supports Bitchener and Ferris (2012), who observe that second language learners often struggle to sustain arguments and develop them logically.

Furthermore, the findings reveal that students frequently adopt a descriptive and experience-based narrative stance. Expressions such as In our village there is no water and crops fail because of drought demonstrate that students draw extensively on personal and communal experiences in constructing their essays. This observation aligns with Halliday’s (1994) view that language is a social semiotic resource through which individuals represent their experiences and realities. It is also consistent with Stibbe’s (2021) assertion that environmental discourse reflects not only scientific facts but also social experiences, cultural values, and personal perspectives.

Perhaps one of the most significant findings of this study is the noticeable influence of Hausa on students’ English writing. Expressions such as That result to lost of lives and Government are advice people reveal the influence of Hausa syntax and lexical organisation on English writing. This finding supports Kachru’s (1992) argument that English in multilingual societies develops local characteristics as speakers adapt it to their linguistic and cultural environments. Similarly, Yusuf (2012) observes that Hausa-speaking learners often transfer features of their first language into English, especially in sentence structure and lexical selection. However, contemporary scholarship increasingly views language transfer as a natural consequence of bilingualism rather than simply as a deficiency. Therefore, rather than discouraging students’ indigenous language backgrounds, teachers should adopt pedagogical approaches that help learners consciously manage the interaction between Hausa and English.

Overall, this study contributes to discourse studies by examining students’ essays on environmental issues within a multilingual Nigerian context and demonstrating the usefulness of Systemic Functional Linguistics in analysing learners’ written discourse. It also contributes to environmental discourse research by showing how students in Sokoto construct meanings around flooding and drought based on their lived experiences and socio-cultural environment. The findings have practical implications for English language teaching, particularly in the areas of cohesion, vocabulary expansion, thematic development, genre-based writing instruction, and effective management of first language influence.

7. Conclusion

This study investigated the discourse features of secondary school students’ essays on flooding and drought in Sokoto State, Nigeria, using Systemic Functional Linguistics as its theoretical framework. The study examined how students employed cohesive devices, lexical resources, thematic organisation, narrative stance, and linguistic patterns influenced by Hausa in constructing essays on environmental issues. The findings reveal that students possess appreciable awareness of environmental issues and are able to organise their essays into recognisable structures comprising introduction, explanation, and conclusion. The essays further demonstrate that students draw extensively on their lived experiences and local realities, making their writing socially meaningful and contextually relevant. However, students rely heavily on simple additive conjunctions, exhibit frequent lexical repetition and limited vocabulary diversity, and often fail to elaborate ideas or sustain arguments effectively, while Hausa influence is evident in sentence structure and lexical choices. These findings indicate that students’ discourse competence is still developing and is shaped by linguistic, educational, and socio-cultural factors. The study therefore concludes that improving students’ writing requires not only grammatical instruction but also explicit teaching of discourse-level features such as cohesion, lexical variation, thematic progression, and genre awareness. It also demonstrates the relevance of Systemic Functional Linguistics in analysing learner writing and contributes to discourse studies, second language writing research, and environmental discourse by providing empirical evidence from Sokoto State, a context that has received limited scholarly attention in previous studies.

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