An Empirical Study On The Application Of Cohesion Theory In Improving EFL Writing Teaching

Cohesion and coherence are both key problems in the study of discourse. In the area of linguistics, there are still different ideas about the relationship of the two terms. These ideas mainly focus on the function of cohesion in the coherence. But Halliday and Hasan always think that cohesion plays very important role in the creation of coherence.English writing is one of basic skills in English teaching, and the necessary link in the teaching of foreign language. And in the English writing teaching, the key problem is how to correctly use the cohesive devices to get a coherent writing. But at present, the English writing teaching still focuses on the sentence-oriented level not on the text-oriented level, therefore, the organization and coherence of Chinese EFL learner's English composition needs to be improved. And whether the teaching of cohesion contributes to the improved writing performance has been studied by many linguists, but their conclusion has not been consistent. Taking these features into account, the author decided to engage an empirical study to improve their writing hi Chinese EFL learners, and it is expected that this study will provide reference data for the pedagogical reform of English writing course. Halliday and Hasan's cohesion theory, which has had a major impact on the understanding and the teaching of cohesion, was employed in the present study. According to them, cohesion is created by non-structural cohesion and structural cohesion.The study was designed to explore: (a) what procedures are effective if cohesion is teachable? (b) whether the teaching of cohesion contributes to the improved writing performance? (c) whether there is positive correlation between the number of cohesive devices and the quality of writing? (d) which cohesive device plays main role to the quality of writing? In this study, junior English majors in the experimental class (EC) were taught cohesion in addition to process method, while the students in the control class (CC) were taught only process method. Both classes did almost the same amount of exercises, but with different focus: the CC focused on writing skills, structures, etc., while the EC on textual cohesion. Each class wrote six papers, and the first (pretest), the third (Draft 3 and Draft 4) and the last paper (posttest) were rated by four experienced teachers independently with the rating scale for the writing item in TEM 4. The SPSS procedure was used to do the calculations. First, t-test was employed to make a general examination on the overall quality of the pretest, posttest, Draft 3 and Draft 4 in both classes. This result indicated, with all the other variables controlled, the instruction on cohesion facilitated the process by the students in the EC; second, to further examine whether there is correlation between the number of cohesive devices and the quality of writing and which cohesive device plays main role in the quality of writing, correlation analysis was used. This result indicated that there was positive correlation between the number of cohesive devices and the quality of writing, and in all the cohesive devices, lexical cohesion plays the greatest function, andthen conjunctionThe result of this study suggests that the students make improved performance in their papers after the instruction on cohesion. The students' success can be attributed to a number of factors: (a) teaching the students cohesive made them more sensitive to the reader's needs; (b) the knowledge of cohesion helped the students in Iheir revising processes; (c) teaching the students cohesion facilitated their peer editing activity. The findings demonstrate that teaching cohesion to advanced English majors can be regarded as an effective method improving their writing ability. The result of the study provides valuable implications for the promotion and reform of English writing teaching in the following five aspects: (a) it offers teacher a new perspective to look at writing process; (b) it supplies teachers with a feasible method to teach writing; (c...