Lexical Cohesion In English Text And Its Application To College English Reading Teaching

The concept of cohesion, firstly proposed by Halliday and Hasan(1976) and furtherelaborated by Halliday(1994), Halliday and Hasan(1985),has enacted an exceptionally key role inthe field of text analysis. The ability to recognize and use cohesive ties in texts is important forachieving reading comprehension successfully. However, most college students have a lot ofproblems in reading comprehension, especially when they are confronted with questionsconcerning the understanding of the text as a whole and the implied meaning in text. Thus, as animportant factor in text interpretation, enough attention should be given to lexical cohesion in thereading teaching practice.The study was based on Hoey‘s (1991) lexical cohesion, uses100non-English major studentsfrom Gansu College of Politics and Law to investigate the overall condition of lexical cohesion inEnglish text and its application to college English reading instruction. At the first step, aquestionnaire on the college English learners‘awareness of lexical cohesion was used to examinewhether the subjects have the training of lexical cohesion, whether the subjects know thesignificance of lexical cohesion and whether the subjects employ lexical cohesion in readingcomprehension. Then samples analysis of the lexical cohesion use in the textbook of New HorizonCollege English (second edition) was used to demonstrate Hoey‘s framework of lexical cohesion.At the last step, a lexical cohesion-based English reading teaching model was established based onthe results of Halliday‘s research, together with some of Hoey‘s viewpoints.The analysis of the questionnaire shows that non-English major students do not have a strongawareness of these cohesive devices. In the reading process, most of them can not recognize ortake advantage of these cohesive devices, including lexical cohesion, to construct and interpret acoherent text. Meanwhile, some college English teachers do not pay attention to cultivatingstudents‘awareness of lexical cohesion in teaching, not to mention putting these relating theoriesinto practical use. Therefore, in order to improve non-English major students‘cohesive awarenessand their reading ability at text level, further training on textual cohesion is quite necessary inEnglish teaching. The new teaching model emphasizes understanding a text as a whole in macrostructure andlinks of high-frequency words at text level. Through pre-reading, while-reading and post-readingactivities, the students actively make use of reading strategies and skills to get a thoroughcomprehension of a text. They can grasp comparatively fast the structure of the text, seize thetheme and potential meaning of the text, identify the details and understand the writer‘s attitudeand view.The lexical cohesion-based model is expected to be efficient in college English readingteaching, which clearly shows the requirement for improving English teaching from the textualperspective and also the importance and necessity of training on lexical cohesion awarenessamong the college students. However, this thesis has its own limitations and needs to be perfectedin future study.