Analysis Of The Use Of Cohesive Devices In Senior High School Students’ English Writing

It is very hard for Chinese students to produce a sort of sentences bothmeaningful and grammatical. What’s more, it’s even harder for them to combine thesentences into a logical cohesive composition of good structure and high quality.Researches have showed that there is a certain intimate relationship between cohesionand the quality of the composition. Halliday and Hasan (1976:13) point out thatcohesion is the foundation of coherence and that is the most important prerequisite forthe text. Therefore, this research desires to analyze the actual employments ofcohesive devices in English compositions conducted by senior high school students.How crucial cohesion is in writing can be clearly seen then.This thesis randomly choose60sample compositions written by students of thethird grade of High School Department, Experimental School Attached to JilinUniversity as the objects to analyze. The theoretical basis is the cohesion theory.Besides, error analysis is employed as well. Through the whole process of analyzingthe samples by quantitative research methods, the number of cohesive devices andcohesive errors made by the students are counted. Then, the reasons of conductingthose errors are explained, this thesis mainly answers the following three questions:1. What are the most frequently used cohesive devices in the sample compositions?2. What are the problems in students’ using cohesive devices in their compositions?3. What are the causes of the problems existed?This research aims to arouse the awareness of the students as well as the teachersto keep an eye on the cohesive devices. In addition, there will be certain implicationfor teaching.