Cohesion And Cohesion Errors In Chinese English Majors' Argumentative Essays Across Grade Levels

The thesis investigates (1) the trend of the change in using cohesive devices in Chinese English majors' English argumentative essays across four grade levels; (2) the trend of the change of cohesion errors in students' compositions across four grade levels and the main types of cohesion errors in English majors' argumentative essay.In this study, the cohesive devices based on Halliday and Hasan (1976)' classification in80 compositions written by English majors are analyzed to see if the frequencies of cohesive devices increase with the increase of students' grade levels. The developmental trend of cohesion errors is also investigated. The results do not show the same trend of development on different types of cohesive devices. Some grammatical devices that are comparatively used more in spoken discourse show the trend of decrease with the increase of grade levels. And some devices show the trend of increase across the four grade levels, like the lexical cohesion. The decrease of the spoken-style cohesive devices and the increase of lexical cohesive devices, especially complex lexical cohesive devices, show that in writing with the change of grade levels, the students' consciousness of style increases. The cohesion errors show the trend of decline from the first grade to the fourth grade. This corresponds to our common sense in language learning: the longer one learns, the fewer errors one makes. Yet only the reference errors and lexical errors show significant trend of decline with the increase of grade levels. The substitution and ellipsis errors and conjunction errors do not show the trend of decline, especially conjunction errors. This might result from the complexity of the conjunctions. The qualitative study of cohesion errors summarizes the types of cohesion errors that are often made by English majors'.The paper explores the developmental trend of the use of cohesive devices and of cohesion errors. It suggests that teachers and students should pay attention to some cohesive devices that characterize the spoke style. The quantitative study of cohesion errors show that the conjunctives are hard for students to command. Therefore English teachers should make more efforts in teaching students how use conjunctions. Moreover, the qualitative study on the main types of cohesion errors in English majors' writing calls for teachers' and students' attention on these kinds of cohesion errors so as to improve the coherence in students' English writings.