| The Ministry of Education of our country formulated and implemented English Curriculum Standards for Senior High School in 2003, which further emphasizes that the senior high school curriculum should concentrate on the development of the students'comprehensive ability to use a foreign language. The purpose of the entrance examination cloze is to meet the requirement. As one of the most important items of college entrance examination, cloze has been paid much attention to but it is still difficult for the students to work with. How to improve the cloze score has been a hot issue among senior high school teachers. In recent years, cohesion theory has been studied in many aspects in English teaching. However, relatively few studies have been conducted in terms of the application of cohesion theory to cloze. In order to know about the application of cohesion theory to teaching and learning of cloze at senior high schools, the present study proposes three research questions.(1) What are types of cohesive devices which occur in cloze in college entrance examination in recent years?(2) What is the difference between the students with higher scores and the students with lower scores in using cohesion theory when doing their cloze?(3)What is the situation in senior high schools in regard to the application of cohesion theory to the teaching of English cloze?To solve the above three research questions, this study collects and analyzes the recent six years'entrance cloze and then selects 23 English teachers and 81 students from No.1 Senior High School in ZhouKou city, Henan province as the research objects. At last, the study uses the Excel office software for the analysis of the data. The major findings of the study are summarized as follows.(1) The main types of cohesion theory which are found in college entrance examination cloze are reference, conjunctions, reiteration and collocation which belongs to lexical cohesion.(2) A significant difference exists between the higher level students and the lower level students in that the former have adopted more reference relationship of cohesion theory in doing their cloze.(3) Quit a few high school teachers do not possess sufficient knowledge about cohesion theory, and few adopt the methods to solve cloze problems in their classroom teaching. Based on the major findings, the present study puts forward some pedagogical implications in English teaching. Firstly, it is of necessity for the teachers to acquire sufficient knowledge about cohesion theory. Secondly, it should be ensured that the students acquire cohesion knowledge in class. Finally, the cultivation of the reading habits of the students should be of initial importance in English teaching, especially to the students with low scores, the teachers should guide them to cultivate effective reading habits in time.Five chapters are included in the thesis. Chapter One introduces the research background, motivation, significance and objectives, and the overall structure of the paper as well. Chapter Two is the review of theoretic basis of this thesis, including some previous studies of cohesion theory at home and abroad. Meanwhile, some important terms related to the study are reviewed. Chapter Three presents the research methodology of the thesis, which consists of the research questions, participants, methods, procedures and data collection. Chapter Four is the central part of the study, which makes an analysis of the data and a discussion of the result. Chapter Five is the conclusion of this study. It summarizes the major findings of the study, provides some pedagogical implications, states the limitation of the study, and some prospects for further study at the end. |
PDF Full Text Request