A Study Of Senior High School Students’ English Writing Based On Cohesion Theory

In Halliday and Hasan’s view, cohesion is much linked to coherence and it is an absolutely necessary section to construct coherence. Once the cohesion theory is posed, it is taken seriously and thought highly of by millions of specialists in language. Their main aim is to find a way which can effectively put the sentences in discourse coherence. However, in the research they find out that Chinese learners have much trouble in using cohesion devices and can not use cohesion devices properly. As a result, misusing cohesion devices even can do damage to continuity of the text.At present,cohesion theory is much too blank in how to be employed in writing.New English Curriculum Standard explicitly displays that one of tasks in High School is special to improve the abilities of thinking as well as expressing in English so as to lay the groundwork for the study in the days to come. Writing in English is not trivial capability in English teaching and learning.However, taking some certain causes into consideration, there remains to be a large number of issues about writing in both English instructing and learning. Many teachers are indifferent to writing instruction and they still adopt traditional approach, while quite a few students take little interest in writing and their writing efficiency is very low. Therefore, it seems not unnecessary attempting to seek a certain efficient method out of concern for improving writing instruction. The writings cover the current writing situations which exist in English teaching and learning in domestic senior schools by means of questionnaires conducted for students coming from Lin He No.3 Senior School. This study that is at the basis of cohesion theory attempts to study whether the application of writing strategies canstimulate the students’ interests of English writing and improve the students’ writing ability. The questionnaires concern teachers’ strategies of teaching writing, learners’ writing strategies and usual practice, the desire for cohesive devices as well as the positive results of our teaching and learning English writing. 280 Grade three students became the members of the investigation, whose outcome can be stated clearly from the below aspects.(1)A lot of students feel that they master the grammar and the words from the syllabus, but they don’t know how to make the text fluent.(2)Most teachers are aware that cohesion device is important to coherence of the text, but they can’t guide students to make use of cohesion device at all with the clear awareness.As a result, the research is in view of cohesion theory of Halliday and Hasan so as to make sure that the teaching of cohesive devices has influence on writing. Apart from it, the teacher wants to confirm two below hypotheses:(1) With the assistance of cohesion, the marks of students can be heightened.(2) The frequency of use of cohesive devices is improved and the awareness of students using cohesion is increased.Two classes in senior three, who are of approximate level,118students(Class 3, EC has 55 students, and Class 5, CC has 63 students.), are selected as the participants of the study. Select a class as the experimental class, the other class as the controlled class. In the first place, do the pre-test and record their results. Soon afterwards,author makes use of a new teaching method “Introducing the cohesion devices knowledge----Analyzing good examples----Giving the outline of the writing----Students’ exercising writing----Modifying the writing of their own---Self-rewriting---Evaluating the students’ writing” in the experimental class, while general teaching method isstill applied in the control class. After less than the term, do the post-test and collect the grades. Matched with the initial marks in the test, the students’ writing ability in experimental class is higher than the control class’ and increases a lot. Collecting 36 writings in post-experiment done by the members in experimental class, the author added up not only the amount of cohesion but the amount of separate cohesive devices in each of writings so that the second hypotheses was born testimony to.In a conclusion, using cohesion theory in English writing of the senior three will be conducive to every student’s urges to making use of cohesive devices. Besides, it also will leave the writing easy and smooth and advance the students’ writing level. Lastly, the writer makes a conclusion of the experiment; moreover, some suggestions with the limitations are also made clear.