The Application Of Discourse Cohesion And Coherence To English Writing Teaching In High School

Writing is an important part of integrated skills for high school students. It is a process of recreation of the basic language knowledge that the students have learned. However, in the English comprehensive skills of students, students’writing ability is weak. The overall quality of discourse is not high, especially in cohesion and coherence. According to the author’s teaching writing experience in high school, she mainly finds some cohesion and coherence problems in students’English writing. The author chooses the study topic in order to improve students’current writing ability and skill.The thesis is mainly based on Halliday’s cohesion and coherence theory. Before the research study, the author gives a test of writing to the students as pre-test. In the research study, the author introduces the grammatical cohesion an lexical cohesion devices to the experimental students. The author explains the devices with samples in detail. And then the author gives the experimental class students some excises to let the students practice the different cohesive devices. After a period of teaching and practice, the author does a post-test and then collects the data and analyses the data with SPSS software in order to find the difference between pre-test and post-test.The main findings of the research study can be summarized in three aspects. Firstly, the teaching of cohesion and coherence theory do enhance students’awareness of using cohesive devices. Secondly, students’writing ability and skills are both improved. Lastly, after practice, students’ can use the cohesive devices properly in their English writing.The conclusion of the study is that the author has proved the hypothesis of her study. At the same time, the author discusses the inspiration and suggestion of cohesion and coherence theory to English writing teaching, and points out the limitations of the research.