Analysis Of Foreign Students' Chinese Writing Based On Theory Of Discourse Cohesion

Discourse ability is an important part of language skills; Discourse (or textual) study plays an indispensable part in TCFL (Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language). TCFL in China has been making great progress for the twenty years, yet the teaching an research of writing, especially the discourse, has always been the weak part. There are not enough research products in this field for teachers to consult. Theory of discourse cohesion can improve teaching idea of writing and help the foreign students raise their Chinese writing proficiency. With discourse cohesion as directing theory, this dissertation applies Errors analysis and Description analysis to explore the cohesion errors in 100 compositions (about 40,000 words)made by intermediate and senior students (from Korea,Japan,Australia and etc.), and analyzes their causes and influential factors. It also puts forward some constructive countermeasures to raise foreign students' Chinese writing proficiency.This dissertation is mainly made up of six chapters.Chapter one is the introduction. The first part describes the significance of choosing this topic, followed by the main research content. The second part makes a literature review on English, Chinese and TCFL discourse study. The third part involves the research methods.Chapter two introduces the related theories about discourse (or text) and discourse cohesion. This dissertation firstly defines the concept of discourse, followed by a detailed classification of the seven discourse cohesion devices based on Chinese-English discourse cohesion theory:reference, ellipsis, substitution, conjunction, repetition, collocation, hyponymy.Chapter three makes an analysis on the cohesion errors made by foreign students in Chinese writing based on the collected corpus. The cohesion errors are lack of cohesion, misuse of cohesion and redundancy of cohesion. The errors are unbalanced. Among these unbalanced errors, the students make largest number of errors in using the devices of ellipsis and conjunction, while smallest number of errors in using the device of substitution. Some errors are fossilized in the process of writing.Chapter four analyzes the causes and influential factors from the following aspects: the interference of the native language, factor of target language, cultural factors of the psychological factors and deficiency of the teaching of writing in TCFL.Chapter five puts forward some constructive countermeasures. TCFL should strengthen discourse teaching consciousness at the primary stage, adjust teaching ideas, improve teaching methods, integrate teaching materials, cultivate Chinese language awareness and Chinese thinking ability, strengthen the ability of using cohesion.The conclusion part summarizes the achievement of the study, gives the shortcomings of present study and proposals for further research.