A Study On The Correlation Between Lexical Cohesion Devices And The Quality Of Senior High School English Composition Of Different Genres

Writing,as a language output,reflects the writer’s language proficiency to a certain extent.A good English composition involves not only the use of vocabulary and grammar,but also cohesion and coherence.The lexical cohesion is the focus of discourse cohesion,so it plays a pivotal role in discourse coherence.With the help related theories of Halliday & Hasan and Hoey,this research classifies lexical cohesion into six categories according to the actual learning situation of senior high school students,namely,simple word repetition,complex word repetition,collocation,synonym,antonym,and hyponym.This study mainly describes the use of lexical cohesion in essays of different genres and written by different writing level students,as well as the correlation between the application of lexical cohesion and English writing scores,specifically to answer the following three questions:1.What are the differences in the means of lexical cohesion devices used by high and low level groups of high school students in different genres of composition?2.What is the relationship between the use of lexical cohesion devices and the quality of English compositions?This study takes the third grade of a senior high school in Fuyang City as the research subjects,and conducts argumentative writing and narrative writing tests,and collected 60 valid texts from both genres respectively.According to the test scores,it is divided into two groups: high level and low level groups,and collected data are processed and analyzed by Excel and SPSS.The research findings show that: 1.In argumentative essays,the highest frequency of use among the high level group of students is lexical collocation,while the low level group uses simple word repetition the most.The two groups of students also use different cohesion devices with the lowest frequency: the high level group is hyponym,while the low level group is antonym.In narrative essays,the highest level group uses the lowest frequency of antonym,while the low level group is antonym;2.In argumentative essays,there is some correlation between the use of various lexical cohesion devices and essay grades,with the most closely related being lexical collocation and simple word repetition;In narrative essays,except for the unclear correlation between the hyponym and the quality of the composition,the other five types of cohesion devices have a positive correlation with the composition grades.It can be concluded that although senior high school students can use some lexical cohesion devices in their English writing,they tend to avoid or use less,or misuse some lexical cohesion devices.Therefore,this research implicates pedagogically that teachers should effectively instruct systematic and comprehensive knowledge of lexical cohesion devices and emphasize the differences in writing of different genres,to cultivate students’ sensitivity to cohesion and coherence,so as to facilitate students’ discourse competency.