A Study On The Application Of Cohesion And Coherence Theory To Argumentative Writing Teaching In Senior High School

Since the publication of Cohesion in English by Halliday and Hasan in 1976,quite a few scholars at home and abroad have made supplement to cohesion and coherence theory.It has formed a relatively complete theoretical system.Many empirical studies have also confirmed that cohesion and coherence are determining factors of writing quality.In addition,a few researchers also applied this theory to English writing teaching successfully.The assessment criterion of the National Matriculation English Writing Test in Jiangsu province mentions that in the process of writing argumentation,students are supposed to employ cohesive devices effectively,form a compact structure,and make the content coherent to realize the writing purpose.It proves that cohesion and coherence are two critical factors influencing argumentative writing quality.However,the problems of cohesion and coherence are prominent in senior high school students’ argumentative writings.In addition,irrelevant and unconvincing argument data can also be detected.Unfortunately,the current English argumentative writing teaching did not solve these problems,thus leading to the overall low quality of students’ writings.Consider the great value of cohesion and coherence theory and the prominent problems in students’ writings,the present study applies cohesion and coherence theory to argumentative writing teaching in senior high school.The present study aims to explore the effects of the new teaching approach on senior high school students’ argumentative writings through qualitative and quantitative analysis.To be specific,its effects will be investigated in the process of answering the following three questions:(1)What effects does the new argumentative writing teaching approach have on the degree of cohesion in students’ writings?(2)What effects does the new argumentative writing teaching approach have on the degree of coherence in students’ writings?(3)What effects does the new argumentative writing teaching approach have on the degree of argument relevance in students’ writings?In the present study,82 students from a four-star high school in Nanjing volunteered to sign up for the argumentative writing lesson.They were divided into two parallel classes according to their scores of the English final exam in the last term.Before the teaching experiment,the pre-test was carried out and it was found that there was no significant difference between the two classes in English argumentative writing competencies.During the ten-week teaching experiment,students in EC received the new teaching approach which is based on cohesion and coherence theory.While students in CC still received traditional argumentative writing teaching mode.After the teaching experiment,the post-test was conducted in both of the two classes to explore differences between two classes.In addition,the author also distributed questionnaires in EC before and after the experiment so as to investigate their attitudes towards argumentative writing and their awareness of cohesion,coherence,and argument relevance.After the teaching experiment,the author also interviewed six students of EC so as to find out the advantages and limitations of the new argumentative writing teaching approach.After quantitative and qualitative analysis,the following conclusions were reached:(1)The new argumentative writing teaching approach can help students improve the degree of cohesion.The overall density of cohesive devices has increased notably and there appear greater varieties of cohesive devices in their post-test writings.To be specific,both grammatical cohesion and lexical cohesion have improved significantly after students received the new teaching approach.However,the improvement of lexical cohesion is not as evident as that of grammatical cohesion.Furthermore,divergences were detected in the improvement of cohesion among EC students of three proficiency levels.Students of the medium level made more progress in improving the degree of cohesion than those of high and low level did.(2)The new argumentative writing teaching approach helps improve the degree of coherence.The present study assesses the degree of local coherence,with the help of the online analytic program,Coh-Metrix.First of all,scores of LSA sentence adjacent increased significantly after the teaching experiment,which indicates that the new teaching approach is effective in improving local coherence.Secondly,improvement was also detected in one aspect of global coherence,LSA sentence all.However,there was no significant improvement in the other aspect,LSA paragraph.After the careful analysis of the pre-test and post-test,the author found out that the relatively rigid structure of argumentation and the limited length of students’ writing tests accounted for this result.In addition,divergences were detected in the improvement of local coherence among EC students of three proficiency levels.Students of the high level made the greatest improvement in improving local coherence.But there is no discrepancy among the three groups in the improvement of global coherence.(3)The new argumentative writing teaching approach is effective in the improvement of argument relevance.First of all,results of related questionnaire items prove that EC students are more aware of increasing the persuasiveness of argument data and its relevance to the central argument after the teaching experiment.Secondly,argument relevance of EC students’ post-test writings was improved significantly.They set various argument relations in their post-writings,thus improving the relevance and persuasiveness of argument data.Furthermore,discrepancies were found out in the improvement of argument relevance among EC students of three proficiency levels.The new teaching approach is more helpful to students of high level in improving argument relevance.According to the above findings,the present study drew the following pedagogical implications.First,English teachers are advised to incorporate knowledge of cohesive devices and argument relations in their argumentative writing teaching.Second,they should take full advantage of modal essays.Finally,it is indispensable to assign related exercises to help students consolidate knowledge of cohesion and coherence.Although the present study has a positive result in general,there are still limitations that need to be addressed.Future studies should increase the number of research participants and extend the experimental period.In addition,researchers should design targeted teaching activities according to students’ English proficiencies.