A Research Of Lexical Cohesive Device In College English Writing

With the development of text linguistics, the attention of a lot of researchers turned to English writing teaching and their achievements are fruitful. One of the most important objectives of writing is to create texts that are coherent and cohesive in order to establish successful communication within a community. Cohesion, one important part of text, plays a great role in the process of creating text coherence. Lexical cohesion is one of the major types of cohesion which contributes greatly to the forming of multiple relationships and the major mode of creating texture. Thus, the analysis of the use of cohesive device has been great interest for researchers and language instructors involved in the study and teaching of writing. The teaching of lexical cohesive devices is often the center of ESL writing classes. Lexical cohesion, a necessary part of text linguistics has provided useful information in English writing. This study, based on the combination of theoretical contribution made by M.A.K. Halliday (1994) and Hoey, aims at exploring the characteristics of the adoption of lexical cohesive devices in compositions written by sophomore Chinese college students majoring in English and non-English.Using the quantitative and the qualitative method, the adoption of lexical cohesive device in 60 copies of compositions from three groups written by sophomore college students is analyzed. Meanwhile, a questionnaire is designed so as to get a better understanding of the present condition of lexical cohesion in college writing and contribute to the analysis. In terms of major, the thesis result shows that there is difference in the frequency of lexical cohesive device. The frequency of lexical cohesive device in college students of English majors is higher than that of college students of non- English students. In terms of kinds of lexical cohesive devices, the thesis result shows that differences only exist in the use of simple repetition and antonym between English majors and non-English majors. The thesis can provide teachers with some useful information on lexical cohesive device in the present college English writing. First of all, teachers could get a better understanding of the characteristic of lexical cohesive device in college students'compositions. Secondly, teachers could put the lexical cohesion theory into the teaching of English writing so as to improve the ESL writing.