An Empirical Study On The Explicit And Implicit Cohesive Devices In English Major Graduate Theses Writing

English writing ability plays a significant role in communication. To Chinese English learners,making cohesive sentences is one of the most challenging difficulties in their writing. Thereforecohesion plays an important role in texts’ organization which deserves our attention.Based on Halliday and Hasan’s (1976) cohesion theory, this thesis is intended to explore theexplicit and implicit cohesive devices in the theses written by Chinese postgraduates in Englishmajors with the application of Antconc3.2.1to search for the cohesive devices needed in thisresearch. And this investigation tries to answer the following questions:(1) What are the featuresof the explicit and implicit cohesive devices in the theses produced by Chinese postgraduates inEnglish majors?(2) Do Chinese postgraduates in English majors have any problems with the useof the explicit and implicit cohesion in their theses?(3) What are the underlying factors in the useof the cohesive devises, especially the implicit ones? Are there any implications to be drawn thatwill benefit English writing instruction in China?We have found that English major postgraduates apply various cohesive devices in theirtheses writing, among which the number of explicit cohesive devices was far more than that of theimplicit ones. English postgraduate students preferred to use the third person pronouns whichseemed objective in the theses’ writing. With respect to demonstratives, they employed “this” and“these” more often than “that” and “those”. As far as the comparative devices are concerned, theexpressions “more” and “the most” are always wielded in students’ theses. In the utilization of fourtypes of conjunction devices, students were inclined to select the linking words such as and, or, but,however, because, so, first and firstly that they formerly learned, while giving up the later acquiredones, for example, in addition, on the contrary, consequently and in short etc. As to substitutionand ellipsis, postgraduate students had the tendency to choose “one” or “ones” as the substituted words, and they inclined to select the verbal ellipsis. As for the implicit cohesive ties, moststudents tended to add the negative prefix in the words to form antonyms, whereas derivativeswere created by adding suffix to the end of words.Of course, there were still some problems related to the use of the explicit cohesive devicesand implicit ones, that is, the inconsistent pronominal references, the incorrect use of the definitearticle and the frequently emergence of comparative devices “more and more”, the false use ofadditive devices and adversative devices; the highlighted issue of the same words repetition andunderuse of synonyms and antonyms, and some mistakes related to collocations and derivatives.Finally, we have revealed the potential factors which influence the mistaken use of the explicitcohesive ties and implicit ones, that is, language transfer, thinking differences, lack of vocabularyand psychological avoidance. And we put forward some educational suggestions such as Englishteachers should improve their lexical teaching, encourage students to read extensively and attachimportance to chunk learning.