The Application Of Cohesion And Coherence Theory To English Writing Teaching In Senior Ⅲ School Year

Since 1960s', textual cohesion and coherence has attracted growing attention from linguists of different schools. However, the theory has given rise to a lot of controversies, centering on the relation between cohesion and coherence. Its application to foreign language teaching is by far not satisfactory, especially in foreign language writing teaching. Most of the teachers in high schools haven't taken the cultivation of textual sense seriously. Consequently, how to change the situation in writing teaching is just one of the main issues the English teachers have to encounter in high schools. In this case, the thesis is intented to engage in empirical study to improve the high school students' English writing.Research methods used in the thesis are questionnaire, citing examples and experiment with which the writer analyzes and expounds the theory of cohesion and coherence, the present situation of the students' writing and the suggested teaching mode.Firstly, the writer performed a questionnaire survey where the subjects were all the students of Grade Three (oriented to liberal arts) in Jiaxian No. 1 Middle School and analyzes the cohesion and coherence in the students' compositions that were written during the final examination of the second term of the second school year. The results of the questionnaires and the analysis show that all the students found it difficult to achieve a high score in writing and that most of the teachers and students don't take the textual cohesion and coherence seriously in writing and teaching practice. The problems have become a great obstacle to the developing of students' writing competence. Based on the theory of textual cohesion and coherence and some research achievements gained from home and abroad, the thesis puts forward a hypothesis: combining the cohesion and coherence theory with the writing teaching and learning in high schools to improve the students' English writing competence, hoping to solve the present problems in the writing practice, i.e. disorder of structure, confusing reference, ambiguity of meaning, wordy sentences, misuse of conjunctions, etc.Secondly, starting from the concept of text, the writer expounds the basic theory of textual cohesion and coherence. The thesis defines the concept of cohesion and coherence from the perspective of the textual function. Then the writer expounds the nature of grammatical cohesion, lexical cohesion, conjunction and the coherence of a paragraph in details.It is of great importance to develop the students' writing ability in English teaching in high school. How to improve the students' writing effectively by applying the theory of cohesion and coherence is a very important matter. The thesis focuses on this topic. Throughout the four-month study both classes did about the same amount of work and had the same teaching hours. The writer suggested a new teaching mode, "Introducing the knowledge of cohesion and coherence-Analyzing good examples-Exercising students' writing-Commenting on the students' writing", which was only used in the test class, that is to say, the difference was that in a control and test class design, we carried out two teaching plans where only the test class received the knowledge and training of cohesion and coherence, while the control class didn't. The analysis of the result of the study indicates that instruction on the cohesion and coherence theory has significantly improved the writing proficiency of the students.From the above analysis, the thesis comes to a conclusion that it is workable and effective to apply the theory of textual cohesion and coherence to the high school English teaching in writing to improve the students' writing competence. Then the writeraddresses the limitation of the thesis.