English-speaking Countries Students In Chinese Texts Cohesive Devices

TCSL(Teaching Chinese as a Second Language) in China has been making great progress for the twenty years, yet textual teaching in TCSL has always been the weaker part. There are not enough theoretical research products in this field for teachers to consult, therefore practically many teachers haven't been aware of the importance of TCSL textual teaching, or have no idea about what to teach and how to teach. Many errors made by foreign students in the Chinese text, however, make us realize TCSL textual teaching should be a highlighted problem. Based on the collected data, with textual linguistics, cognitive psychology, and inter-language theory as directing theories, this dissertation applies data-analysis, describe-analysis, and contrastive analysis to explore the cohesion errors made by senior students in English-speaking countries and analyze their causes. It also puts forward some constructive suggestions on the reform of teaching approaches to raising the proficiency of Chinese textual teaching to foreign students.This dissertation is mainly made up of five chapters including the introduction and conclusion.Based on the inductions about textual teaching study, textual cohesion study, and contrastive study on textual cohesion in English and Chinese writings both at home and abroad, the first chapter focuses on the textual cohesion errors in Chinese TCSL, where many problems still exist, then followed by the main contents, the significance, and the research methods of this study.Chapter Two gives detailed analysis on textual cohesion errors made by senior students in English-speaking countries based on the collected data. After defining the textual concept in this study, this chapter firstly classifies the textual cohesion errors based on Chinese-English textual cohesion theory, and then analyzes these errors from the perspective of grammatical approach, lexical approach, and cohesive elements.Chapter Three takes data-analysis on these textual cohesion errors to explore some common features of these errors, and then analyze the causes. The main features are the unbalanced errors and "fossilization" in the process of language learning. The causes which resulted in these errors might be analyzed from both the students' learning process and the text-teaching process. Given the students' learning process, firstly negative transfer of mother tongue happened in English speakers' Chinese writing for English and Chinese belong to different language systems. Secondly over- generation caused by intra-language interference happened to students whose Chinese have reached a certain degree; What's more, students may consciously or unconsciously take the avoidance strategy in the textual cohesion for their own sake. As for the text-teaching process, firstly many texts and exercises in the textbooks could not serve the purpose of facilitating students' textual learning. Secondly some teachers' teaching approaches are outdated: some are not aware of the importance of textual teaching and don't know how to conduct; others may be lack of theoretical research for the heavy burden of teaching practice.Chapter Four puts forward some constructive suggestions on the reform of teaching approaches to raising the proficiency of Chinese textual teaching to foreign students. Foreign students should change their thought pattern and adjust their study strategies in the Chinese-learning process to avoid cohesion errors. Besides, more theoretical researches on textual teaching should be conducted and better textual teaching plan be designed. Also the textbook must be improved to serve the purpose of textual teaching, and some suggestive teaching methods and exercises forms are provided.The conclusion part summarizes the present study, pointing out both the value of this study and existed problems for further research.