A Study Of Grammatical Cohesive Devices Used In College English Writing

For EFL learners,writing is generally believed to be the most sophisticated and difficult for them to learn in that writing is a complex process which involves their foreign language competence,foreign language writing ability as well as their first language.However,writing has been one of the most important parts of many English tests,including CET-4 and CET-6.As a result,as a research focus of applied linguistics,numerous researchers have conducted various researches in order to better teaching writing.Just as Halliday and Hasan pointed out,?cohesion is the foundation of coherence.?(1976,p.13)Therefore,the use of cohesive devices in EFL learners' compositions is of great help to construct coherent discourses.The present study focuses on the different grammatical cohesive features used by college non-English majors to examine the true competence of EFL learners in using cohesive devices so as to provide some pedagogical implications of college English writing teaching.The participants in the present study are sophomores from two intact classes in Soochow University.60 compositions of argumentative writing and 60 compositions of expository writing were used as the data of the present study,totally 120 compositions.The present study adopted Yang and Sun's(2012)modification model as framework,which took Crowhurst(1987),Hu(1994)and Thompson's(1996)definition and examples into consideration.In order to investigate the true competence of grammatical cohesive devices used by college EFL learners,the present study is to answer the following research questions: 1).Are there any quantitative differences in grammatical cohesion,between EFL learners of different proficiency levels in terms of different types of writing? If yes,what are they? 2).Are there any qualitative differences in grammatical cohesion,between EFL learners of different proficiency levels in terms of different types of writing? If yes,what are they? 3).Do EFL learners have any problems in using grammatical cohesion in their writing? If yes,what are they?The major findings of the present study can be summarized as follows: among the three kinds of grammatical cohesive devices,reference devices accounted for the largest proportion of occurrence and frequency used by undergraduate EFL learners at different proficiency levels in both argumentative writing and expository writing,followed by conjunction devices and ellipsis/substitution;except ellipsis/substitution devices,the frequency and occurrence of grammatical cohesive devices used by students of low proficiency level outnumbered those of students of high proficiency level in both argumentative writing and expository writing,especially reference devices,which showed that the higher the learners' proficiency levels is the less grammatical cohesive devices they would employ in their writing,on the contrary,the overall frequency of errors declined with the increase of students' proficiency levels in both argumentative writing and expository writing;besides,from the perspective of different types of writing,EFL learners at different proficiency levels all employed more grammatical cohesive devices in argumentative writing than that in expository writing,and so was the errors;among all the specific cohesive devices,personal pronoun devices ranked the first by undergraduate EFL learners at different proficiency levels whether in argumentative writing or in expository writing,followed by additive devices.In addition,this thesis analyzed and classified the cohesion errors in the EFL learners' writings,based on which some pedagogical implications are provided.Due to the fact that all these inappropriate and incorrect use of grammatical cohesion are not only found in students of low proficiency level,but also in students of high proficiency level,these typical cohesion errors indeed warrant EFL learners' and teachers' attention.Thus,we suggested that cohesive devices should be given enough emphasis and trained systematically in the teaching and learning practice so that the correctness and coherence of the EFL learners' writing can both be guaranteed.The author also summarizes some limitations of the study at the end of the thesis,such as the exclusion of lexical cohesion and the sample size and so on,trying to provide some useful suggestions for future studies.