The Application Of Cohesion Theory In Non-English Majors’ English Writing

Writing, as one of the most important skills in English, plays a great important role instudents’ English learning and is given extraordinary attention. However, the students alwaysfeel it difficult to write well and the teachers also can not find the right method to teach thestudents. In fact, the teachers just correct the vocabulary and grammar mistakes in thestudents’ writing, but not pay much attention to teaching the students how to use cohesivedevices to make the writing coherent. Consequently, applying cohesive devices to the Englishwriting becomes an unavoidable choice to improve the students’ ability of writing.Cohesion theory, as functional grammar component, is put forward by Halliday andHasan in their book Cohesion in English. Since the publication of Cohesion in English,researches on cohesion theory, especially the relation between the cohesion theory andEnglish writing, have become a new buzzword in the field of functional grammar throughoutthe world. On the basis of the previous studies, the non-English majors lack awareness ofapplying cohesive devices to their writing. After analyzing the previous relevant studies madeat home and abroad, the conclusion can be drawn that, on the one hand, few researchers focuson dynamic analysis of the students’ cohesive features in the practical writing. On the otherhand, the vocational college students are seldom considered in the previous studies. Therefore,with the consideration of these disadvantages, the author intends to testify whether theapplication of cohesive devices in practical writing can improve non-English major students’writing quality, and the relationship between the use of cohesive devices and English writingquality.This thesis begins with an introduction of the background, significance and organizationof the present study. Then the literature review of the concept of cohesion theory is discussed,in which Halliday and Hasan’s taxonomy of cohesive devices is emphasized. After a fulldiscussion of the related theories of the present study, the previous relevant studies both at home and abroad are elaborated.After the discussion of cohesion theory at the theoretical level, the thesis analyzes theuse of cohesive devices in practical writing written by non-English major students based onsurvey research. By instrument of questionnaire, the author investigates the first-yearnon-English majors in Qingdao Harbor Vocational and Technical College in order tounderstand their existing level of cohesion theory and the mistakes they made when theyapply cohesive devices in their English writing and the reasons behind them. The resultsshow that the students as a whole think it necessary to use cohesive devices in their Englishwriting and believe the application of cohesive devices can improve their writingperformance. Yet, they lack, to some extent, knowledge of using cohesive devices and theteachers have not paid enough attention to the application of cohesive devices during theirprocess of writing teaching. Then the qualitative and quantitative analysis of the samplesshows that there are cohesive problems in the students’ pre-test writing, but after five-monthcohesive devices training, in the post-test, the writing quality of the experimental group has agreat improvement while the controlled group has no significant difference. Through theresearch, the author finds out that in order to improve the students’ quality of writing,teaching cohesive devices consciously is one of the most effective ways.At last, a conclusion is drawn and some pedagogical suggestions are provided with thehope that students’ textual coherent awareness can be strengthened, and as a result they canuse cohesive devices to serve their English writing to improve the writing quality.