An Analysis Of The Problems Of Coherence In Chinese Students' English Writings--A Tentative Study

In recent years, writing, as one of the most important communicative skills, is drawing more and more attention in English teaching in China. In this paper, an investigation is carried out, by using linguistic statistical methods, to analyze the features of textual cohesion and coherence. Based on Halliday and Hasan's cohesive concept and their categorization of cohesive devices, this paper analyzes 50 Chinese students' English writings, focusing on the following four aspects: substitution of synonyms, pronouns substituting nouns, connectives, and ellipsis. The results indicate that pronouns are most frequently used in their writings and that there exists the discontinuity of coherence. Therefore, close attention should be paid to the textual cohesion, which will be of significance to the teaching of English writing.