An Action Research On The Application Of Cohesion Theory To The Teaching Of Continuation Task In Senior High School

English Curriculum Standard for Senior High Schools(2017 edition,2020 revision)issued by the Ministry of Education regards discourse knowledge as an important part of senior high school English curriculum.It requires the mastery of explicit cohesion and coherence in the text.Moreover,with the advancement of the new college entrance examination reform,continuation task has become a new type of English writing in college entrance examination,and how to help students improve their scores in the continuation task has become the focus of attention.The scoring criteria for the continuation task requires that the content of writing have a high rapport with the given passage,that the opening words of each paragraph be connected reasonably,that the connecting elements between sentences be effectively used,and that the structure of the writing be compact.These requirements fully illustrate the importance of cohesion and coherence in the continuation task.Therefore,integrating cohesion theory into the teaching of the English continuation task in high school not only meets the requirements of the new curriculum standard,but also meets the needs of students to improve the performance of the continuation task.However,cohesion theory has not been paid much attention by high school teachers and students in the actual teaching.Few teachers will lead students to carry out relevant training,which leads to poor performance of students in the cohesion of the continuation task.Hence,based on Halliday and Hasan’s cohesion theory,this study aims to explore the effect of the application of cohesion theory on improving the performance of the continuation task through two rounds of action research,and explore some teaching strategies for the teaching of the English continuation task in high school.The main research questions include:1.What is the effect of the continuation task teaching combined with cohesion theory on improving students’ cohesive awareness in the continuation task?2.What is the effect of the continuation task teaching combined with cohesion theory on improving students’ performance on the continuation task?3.What are the students’ feelings or attitudes towards the continuation task teaching combined with cohesion theory?In this study,44 students from Class 5,Grade 2 of a senior high school in Shenyang,Liao Ning Province were selected as the research objects,and the action research was carried out for 17 weeks in two rounds.Firstly,in the pilot study,the current situation and existing problems of students on the continuation task were understood through the pre-test.Two rounds of action research were carried out to solve the problems.In the first round,cohesion theory and five cohesive devices were introduced,and students were asked to try to use the devices to complete the continuation tasks.At the end of the action,the author summarized and reflected on the first round of action through the two methods of middle test and interviews,adjusted the action plan according to the problems in the first round and started the second round.Compared with the first one,special training of cohesive devices was added in the second round,and one class of evaluation was added for each exercise.At the end of the second round,the results of the action were summarized through post-test and interviews.The results of three tests and two interviews in the study show that the teaching of the continuation task combined with cohesion theory is helpful to improve students’ cohesion awareness,and can obviously help students improve their performance of the continuation task from two dimensions of sentence cohesion and text coherence.At the same time,although there are boredom,difficulties or even tortures in the learning process,students have a generally positive attitude towards this teaching mode.They expressed their willing to study cohesion theory and put forward their own views and suggestions on this teaching mode.Based on the process and results of the action research,this study puts forward the following suggestions on how to apply cohesion theory to the teaching of the continuation task: 1)Pay attention to the knowledge accumulation of discourse cohesion and the cultivation of cohesion consciousness of students;2)The guidance of cohesion theory should be combined with special training;3)Teachers should timely give targeted feedback on students’ writing in terms of cohesion,and require students to revise according to the feedback.