A Study On The Application Of Cohesion Theory To Cloze Test In Junior High School

Cloze is one type of examination items. As it can evaluate students’ competence ofEnglish, it has been a core part of senior high-school entrance examination for decades.Reading and cloze are two types of low-score examination items. According to the survey onexamination, the author finds that much research has been done in reading, but the researchon cloze is still in the preliminary stage. There has been a small portion of research in cloze ofCET4, CET6, college entrance examination, and examination for graduate program, of whichthe research on cloze in junior high school is the least.Cohesion, a significant part in discourse analysis, plays an important role in context for itis helpful to cloze. In spite of the fact that the cohesion theory has been studied both at homeand abroad, there are a lot of researches carried out from different point of views. The theory,which is mentioned in the book of Cohesion in English by Halliday and Hasan, will bemost-frequently used in this thesis. A large amount of attention has been paid to the cohesiontheory in modern linguistics since Halliday and Hasan published Cohesion in English in1976.It is generally known that the emergence of the book, Cohesion Theory in English, marks theestablishment of cohesion. In this book they refer that the concept of cohesion is a mean or atool to connect all parts together tightly. The cohesion is classified into five groups byHalliday and Hasan, which are reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction and lexicalcohesion. Each model has its own linguistic function for some researches have been made toshow that the cohesion theory is helpful to the education of reading and writing. The clozemay solve the problems in terms of reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction and lexicalcohesion, which can help students score higher in the cloze test. But few have been carried inthe application of cohesion theory in cloze test. Thus, this thesis will discuss the cohesiontheory used in cloze test which has been ignored before.Chinese students hardly attain their desirable goals in cloze test in English exam, for they do not pay much attention to the cohesion theory. What the English educator needs to do is tohelp the students be aware of the cohesion theory and finish cloze test under the direction withthis theory. This will have a positive influence on teachers and students, respectively inEnglish teaching and learning. Every year around half million of students take the senior highschool entrance examination in Henan Province, and the number of the students is much morethan that of elsewhere in China. Compared with the well-developed coastal provinces, theHenan province is a big agricultural province and senior students in Henan province have lessproficiency in English. The difficulty of the examination in Henan would be loweredsubsequently. The test paper is always paying more attention to the grammar. Therefore, theimportance of applying the language into practice has been neglected.The thesis has conducted. Junior school students from Zhengzhou No.45Middle Schoolin Henan province are chosen as the subjects of this research. The research methods includequestionnaire, interview, and teaching experiment. By analyzing the results, this thesis tries tofind out some meaningful teaching implications in order to change the students’ attitudetowards cloze test. In this thesis, the cloze test papers are selected from the papers of seniorhigh school entrance.There are three questions discussed as follows:1. What are the difficulties in cloze test class in junior high school?2. Is it a better way for junior high school students to improve their ability to deal with thecloze test with cohesion theory?3. If it is useful, what should teachers do to put the cohesion theory into practice?The comparison between the experimental class (EC) and the control class (CC) showsthat students are affected not only by vocabulary and grammar, but also the mood. The thesisis mainly to study on how to lead the students to apply the cohesion theory.As an initial exploration of the cohesion theory, subjectivity of the author may bringinterference into the procedure of this thesis.