Astudy Of Cohesion In Error Correction In CET-6

Error Correction is adopted in many kinds of proficiency tests because it is an integrative test, aimed to test not only the testees'knowledge about grammar, but also their reading and writing competence. However, after careful analysis of the test results, the author finds that the testees usually have poor performance in this partOn the basis of Halliday and Hasan's cohesion theory (1976), the author makes a detailed classification of the errors in CET-6 authentic papers, which shows that a large proportion of errors are closely related to cohesion. The present paper is targeted at non-English majors who can take CET-6 test and means to find out the sticking point of students'low marks in error correction and corresponding solutions to it.The whole research mainly contains two parts. One is the analysis of error correction in fourteen CET-6 authentic papers from 2000 to 2006, and the other is error correction test which uses the same materials as in the first part. The former analysis intends to classify errors and define the role of cohesion in error correction. This research tells that errors related to cohesion share a percentage of 61.4% on average. In the second part, the average score of all subjects in the error correction test is only 3.88 (The full mark is 10). Then the author analyzes the testees'papers and concludes that the testees have more difficulties in dealing with cohesive errors than other types of errors, especially reference, conjunction and lexical cohesion. At the end of the research, some practical suggestions on teaching and learning are offered.This study is quite meaningful for both teachers and students, and it indicates that the teaching of cohesion is necessary in EFL teaching in order to improve the learners'comprehensive ability in language learning.