Cohesion And Coherence Analysis Of EFL Writing Of Chinese College Students

Cohesion and coherence play critical roles in effective EFL writing and the quality of an essay depends, to some extent, on overt cohesive and coherence tires employed by the writer. This thesis examines the cohesion and coherence features of Chinese EFL writings, the roles of language transfer and F1 language thinking play in the cohesion and coherence achievement in EFL writing by analyzing the writing products and the writing process of two Chinese EFL college students. They share similar English language proficiency in terms of lexicon, grammar and reading. However, they differ in Chinese language proficiency. They are required to compose four expository essays, two in Chinese and two in English and their writing processes are videotaped.Four Chinese essays and four English essays are analyzed in accordance with Function Unit analysis and five cohesive ties introduced by Haliday and Hasans. Stimulated recall and post interviews are conducted to detect the writing behaviors: pauses, F1 language and English language thinking while they are composing.Findings indicate that lexical cohesive ties prevail in eight essays, suggesting Chinese transfer in terms of cohesion approaches. Four English essays develop in linear way, indicating the English transfer into Chinese writings. However, two subjects differ greatly in the use of cohesive ties. Subject with better Chinese proficiency is less influenced by Chinese interference, which is proved by the lower percentage of lexical cohesive ties, high portion of references and conjunction cohesive ties in his two English essays. On the other hand, the subject with low Chinese proficiency is greatly influenced by Chinese interference, which is evidenced by the high frequency of lexical cohesive ties and deficient use of conjunction and reference cohesive ties in her two English essays.The composing process analysis, stimulated recalls and post interviews show that both subjects use Fl to generate ideas but the discrepancy lies in the different distribution of F1 language use. Subject with better Chinese proficiency transfers his F1 writing habits into EFL writing. For example he makes outlines in Chinese before hand He makes conscious effort to make connections within and between sentences and paragraphs by the employment of overt cohesive ties. All these efforts contribute to the cohesion and coherence achievement of his essays. While Subject with poor Chinese proficiency pays more attention to the vocabulary variety and the content of the essay.All in all the significance of this thesis lies in the fact it explores the cohesive and coherence features of EFL Chinese writings and detects what factors influence the cohesive and coherence effectiveness of a expository essay by combining the writing products analysis and writing process analysis.