A Survey Of The Application Of Textual Cohesive Devices In Senior High School Students’ Writing

Written English is an important embodiment of students’ competence of applying language comprehensively.The English curriculum standard for senior high school(2017)points out that students should establish logical relations with the help of connective words,demonstrative pronouns,lexical cohesion and other language means in written expression;students can use discourse cohesion to construct written discourse to express meaning.According to the curriculum standard,we can see the importance of discourse cohesion in English writing.However,through the observation of students’ compositions,it is found that students often make mistakes such as incoherent cohesion and disordered discourse structure.It is of great significance to cultivate students’ discourse cohesion ability for improving the overall writing level and promoting the coherence of the articles.At present,the domestic research on cohesive devices mainly focuses on the applied research,and the research objects are mostly college students,while there is relatively little research on the current situation of high school students’ use of cohesive devices.Based on the theory of discourse cohesion and error analysis,this paper takes two classes of grade two in author’s internship high school as the research object.By collecting the students’ writing texts,issuing questionnaires to the students,interviewing the teachers and students and classroom observation,the research questions are as follows: 1.What is the current situation of the use of cohesive devices in senior high students’ English writing? 2.What are the existing errors in the use of cohesive devices? 3.What are the reasons for the errors?Through the investigation and research,the author finds that the most frequently used cohesive devices are reference and conjunction,followed by lexical cohesion.Ellipsis and substitution are the least used;In terms of cohesion errors,lexical cohesion and reference have the highest error rate,followed by conjunction,and ellipsis and substitution have the least errors;Through questionnaire,interviews and classroom observation,the author finds out the causes of cohesion errors come from teachers,students and objective examination factors.Teachers are lack of understanding of the theory of cohesion and the guidance of cohesion theory in writing teaching,and the feedback on cohesion is not enough.Students’ writing habits,insufficient understanding of cohesive theory and negative transfer of mother tongue also affect the rational use of cohesive devices.The fixed form of writing test makes teachers ignore the importance of structure,and the rigid teaching method only focuses on fixed sentence patterns,so the students are affected negatively.In addition,the author also puts forward some teaching suggestions and learning strategies for teachers and students.