A Contrastive Study Of Grammatical Cohesive Devices Used In Cet4 And Cet6 Writings

Writing is one of the core skills emphasized in China's English language teaching. Research result reveals that college students have shown inadequate writing ability in some major English tests (Pan Jun, 1999; Cai Huiping, 2006). To solve the problem, studies on English writing have been conducted from various perspectives (Yao Lan, 2005). This paper, from the perspective of textual cohesion and on the basis of Halliday's cohesion theory, studies the CET4 and CET6 writing samples selected from Chinese Learner English Corpus (CLEC). A comparative study and error analysis of grammatical cohesive devices used in the samples are conducted after the samples are tagged and the numbers of cohesive devices are calculated with the software Antconc. The research aims to answer three questions:First, what are students'general performances in using grammatical cohesive devices in CET4 and CET6 compositions? What are the differences in using them?Second, what are the detailed differences in students'use of grammatical cohesive devices in CET4 and CET6 compositions?Third, what are the differences in students'incorrect usages of grammatical cohesive devices in CET4 and CET6 compositions?The research result has shown that CET6 students have generally outperformed CET4 students in the use of cohesive devices, with more cohesive devices used in their compositions. However, each cohesive device used in both groups follows the same frequency distribution order. Both groups have used"Reference"most, followed by"Conjunction,""Substitution,"and"Ellipsis."Detailed studies have shown the following differences. With regard to reference, CET6 students have used more such Pronominals as"he, him, his, they, their, them", definite article"the", and comparatives showing difference. As for Substitution, CET6 students have used more nominal substitute"one(s)."Both groups have used few"Ellipsis". As for"Conjunction,"it is found that CET4 students have used more such expressions as"for example; and; first, second…."The result from error analysis has shown that the rates of error of grammatical cohesive devices in CET4 samples are higher than those of CET6 samples. And the main errors are the inconsistency of Pronominals and their referents, the misuse of"the", and the misuse of"Conjunction."...