A Contrastive Study On Cohesive Devices In TEM-4Writing Between English Majors’ Compositions And Model Essays

Writing, one of the most important language skills in English learning, is usually used asan important means of measurement to check the students’ English proficiency in TEM-4.Writing quality depends on many factors, and cohesion has a strong relation with it. Theframework of cohesion adopted in this research is mainly based on Halliday and Hasan’sclassification, with some modification according to Hu Zhuanglin’s classification. Thiscontrastive study mainly examines the differences of cohesive ties between students’compositions and model essays, including personal reference, demonstrative reference,comparative reference, substitution, ellipsis, addictive conjunction, adversative conjunction,casual conjunction, temporal conjunction and similarity, based on30writing assignments(which are divided into three score sections) of English majors from He’nan NormalUniversity and30model essays from published books or English websites with the sameTEM-4writing titles. The results show that:(1) Both in students’ compositions and modelessays, the most frequently-used cohesive ties are addictive conjunction and personalreference, and the least commonly-used cohesive ties are substitution and ellipsis, whosefrequency of use is less than1. The frequency of all kinds of cohesive ties has reached1except substitution and ellipsis in model essays, while in students’ compositions, the lowerthe writing scores are, the fewer kinds of cohesive ties are applied.(2) The means of totalnumber of cohesive devices in students’ compositions and in three sections are less commonlyused than those of model essays. There is a positive correlation between the means of totalnumber of cohesive ties and the three sections’ scores of students’ compositions.(3)There is alittle difference between students’ compositions and the model essays in the means ofpersonal reference, substitution, ellipsis, adversative conjunction, casual conjunction andtemporal conjunction, while the means of demonstrative reference, comparative reference, addictive conjunction and similarity are markedly different. The cohesive devices ofdemonstrative reference, substitution, ellipsis and similarity are not found in the lowestsection of students’ compositions. The present research can help teachers have a betterunderstanding of the characteristics of Chinese college English majors’ adoption of cohesionin TEM-4writings. Teachers are expected to consciously increase the explanations andexercises of cohesion in their teaching practice, especially for the cohesive devices thatstudents are not good at and the students with low writing scores.