The Application Of Cohesive Mechanisms Of Discourse To English Language Teaching

Since the 1950s, discourse analysis has become a flourishing area of linguistic study and gained considerable achievements, which has received the international linguistic circles' attention. There has been a shift from the study of language system toward the study of language in use. The study of language exceeds the scope of sentence, which deals with the structure bigger than sentence梥entence group, paragraph as well as discourse and the relationships between sentences and paragraphs. Cohesion reflecting the connection between the structural components of discourse aroused the common interest in modern linguistics. And Cohesion in English by M.A.K. Halliday and R. Hasan in 1976 is the first choice for any study on cohesion. They systematically illustrated the basic concept of cohesion and five cohesive devices in English, which are classified into reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction and lexical cohesion. Moreover, Halliday proposed transitivity, mood, theme, information structure, etc. in 1985. Then Chinese and foreign scholars have all introduced, commented on the cohesive devices and elaborated their own views in succession, so that they can find more cohesive devices, and cohesion theory may advance in a deep direction. On the basis of the above theory, with Halliday's theoretical framework, this thesis is an attempt to initially classify the cohesive devices and apply them to English language teaching.According to Halliday's systematic function theory, cohesion exists in semantic system which consists of three meta-functions: ideational, interpersonal and textual function, realized respectively by transitivity, mood and Theme-Rheme, information structure and cohesive system. The thesis tries to classify the above cohesive mechanisms into non-structural cohesion and structural cohesion which make up a cohesive system network. In accordance with Halliday's cohesion theory, all the cohesive mechanisms in the network are explained briefly and systematically.With the development of cohesion theory, linguists have paid more attention to coherence. And their discussion usually focuses on the relationship between cohesion and coherence. Most coherent discourses also being cohesive does not imply that coherence is created by cohesion. Nevertheless, discourses are reflected by formal features after all. So far, the only way to studying coherence from the point of formal features is through analyzing cohesive mechanisms ofdiscourse.In order to prove the practical value of cohesion theory, a big part of the thesis probes into the application of cohesive mechanisms to English language teaching. On reading comprehension, chain analysis and thematic analysis making use of all cohesive mechanisms presents us the horizontal, vertical, static and dynamic analyses of discourses, which may help learners grasp the main idea and the organization of discourse. On writing, through analyzing thirty students' compositions I find three common cohesive problems: misuse of conjuncts, mismanagement of information and problems with the treatment of discourse topic. In view of these problems, the thesis shows two suggested teaching strategies with concrete examples and exercises. One is developing cohesion, teaching the correct use of conjuncts, the other is teaching topical structure analysis as a revision tool. This thesis only deals with the application of cohesive mechanisms of discourse to reading comprehension and writing due to its limited length, and the application to speaking, listening and translation will be discussed in the future study.The study of cohesive mechanisms of discourse has theoretical and practical significance. First, the study of discourse opens up a broader prospect for the development of theoretical linguistics. It provides concrete language material and enlarges the study scope of language. Second, the study of discourse cohesion has a directive instructive meaning for language teaching. It is proved that many linguistic phenomena in language teaching must be interpreted from...