A Study Of The Cohesive Features In The Argumentative Writing Of The Chinese English Majors--And Its Pedagogical Implications For The Teaching Of English Writing In China

This study mainly investigated the use of cohesive features in the argumentative compositions written by Chinese undergraduates, using both quantitative and qualitative methods. Ninety-seven compositions were collected from the fourth-year English majors in one Chinese university and assessed by three English teachers. After the assessment 30 compositions were selected randomly as a sample and divided into two groups (G-group for highly-rated compositions and P-group for poorly-rated compositions) for statistical analysis according to the mean score (63.03). In quantitative analysis Halliday and Hasan's (1976) taxonomy of cohesive devices and their framework for analysis were used. This framework classifies cohesive devices into two main categories ------ grammatical devices and lexical devices. Grammatical devices involves substitution, ellipsis, reference and conjunction; whereas lexical devices involves reiteration (i.e., repetition, synonymy, antonymy, hyponymy and metonymy ) and collocation. Nevertheless, in this study we did not analyse the use of the two of all the cohesive devices ------ substitution and ellipsis because " they are more characteristically found in dialogues" according to Halliday (1994: 337). Based on this framework the number of cohesive ties used in the sampled students' compositions were calculated and the data were analysed statistically through the statistics program (SPSS 8.0). In the process of quantitative analysis descriptive statistics and inferential statistics were borrowed to evaluate the relationship of the cohesive ties used to the quality of argumentative writing. Based on the relevant researches conducted ever before we made four hypotheses: (1) the use of conjunction device has a statistical significant relation with the quality of argumentative writing; (2) the use of lexical cohesive devices has a statistical significant relation with the quality of the argumentative writing; (3) repetition, as one of the sub-categories of lexical cohesive devices is not significantly correlated with quality of argumentative writing; and (4) synonymy, antonymy and collocation are significantly correlated with the quality of argumentative writing. The final results of the study completely agree with the four hypotheses and we are also informed that the use of conjunction and lexical cohesion with synonymy, antonymy and collocation in particular has a statistically significant relationship with the quality of students' argumentative writing. After the quantitative analysis of the data certain cohesive features were identified by means of qualitative analysis in the students' argumentative writing including ambiguity in reference, overuse and misuse of conjunctions, and restricted use of lexical cohesion. Based on our findings the conclusion is drawn that the use of conjunction and lexical cohesion is the main cause to the quality of argumentative writing and much attention should be focused on how to teach the use of lexical cohesion and conjunction device so as to improve students' writing ability.