An Analysis Of The Application Of Cohesive Devices In Writing An English Abstract Of Research Paper

is an essential part of research paper. It is meant to be a condensed representation of the contents of an article and gives the reader a concise knowledge of the full article. Therefore, abstract is important in a research paper. However, there exist some problems in English abstract writing, especially in the perspective of textual cohesion, which affects the quality of research papers.The study takes the cohesion theory proposed by Halliday and Hasan, the relationship between cohesion and coherence, Halliday and Hasan’s taxonomy of cohesive devices, Zhang Delu’s ten principles for use of cohesive devices and as well as error analysis theory as theoretical basis and conducts quantitative and qualitative analyses on the use of cohesive devices in English abstracts of graduation papers written by undergraduate English majors. It aims to find out: 1. What are features of cohesive devices in the English abstracts writings written by English major undergraduates? 2. What are the problems in using cohesive devices in the English abstracts writings written by English major undergraduates? The research results are expected to be useful in improving English abstracts quality written by Chinese English major undergraduates.In the study,117 English abstracts are collected, all written by English majors from 2011 to 2014 in Inner Mongolia Normal University and then 110 are randomly selected to be a corpus as sample. On the basis of Halliday and Hasan’s taxonomy of cohesive devices, the cohesive devices are tagged first and then statistical findings are collected. Through quantitative and qualitative analysis,11 problems are found:(1) Misuse of first personal reference;(2) Ambiguity in the use of third personal reference;(3) Improper use of the;(4) Misuse of this and that;(5) Overlong distance between reference items and the referents;(6) Underuse of substitution;(7) Underuse of ellipsis;(8) Overuse of conjunction;(9) Misuse of conjunction;(10) Overuse of repetition;(11) Misuse of repeated abbreviation.At the same time the causes of the problems are analyzed and the ways of how to solve the problems are provided, such as how to increase the awareness of the importance of cohesive devices, to know more about the differences between Chinese and English language, and to identify the characteristics of abstract writing and enlarge vocabulary.As there is no research related to abstract writing conducted by postgraduate in Inner Mongolia Normal University, this study is the first one to present problems in English abstract writing from the perspective of cohesion and coherence. And this study can provide some advises in teaching and learning for students and teachers in Inner Mongolia Normal University.