The Application Of Cohesion Theory To English Teaching

Cohesion theory is an important component of systemic functional linguistics. This thesis mainly expounds the concepts, components, classifications of cohesion theory and many foreign and Chinese linguists' expositions of cohesion theory. Then cohesion theory is applied to reading, writing, translating and listening in English teaching. A large amount of English examples are analyzed in the thesis according to non-structural cohesion including grammatical cohesion, lexical cohesion and structural cohesion including transitivity, mood, theme-rheme structure, information structure, parallel structure, etc.By a great number of analyses, the thesis demonstrates that cohesion theory has a direct instructive meaning for English teaching. Cohesion theory is a beneficial complement to traditional teaching methods which only function on the strata of words and clauses. The theory can be employed to make deeper analysis and better interpretation of discourse and can be used to instruct reading, writing, translating, listening courses of English teaching on the textual stratum. Cohesion theory can be used not only to describe discourse, but to explain discourse on the macro-stratum as well. It is very helpful to improving students' abilities of creating and decoding discourse. Cohesion theory is also beneficial to developing students' pragmatic competence and communicative competence.