A Contrastive Analysis Of Grammatical Cohesive Devices In Application Essays By Chinese And American High School Students

In recent years,some Chinese high school students apply to U.S.universities to further their undergraduate studies.And in the fierce application competition,the application essays play vital roles.The current researches of cohesive devices have rarely focused on the application essays,and the emphasis has always been put on college students as the investigated subjects.In view of the above two reasons,this study focuses on the use of grammatical cohesive devices analysis by Chinese and US high school students in their application essays.It is expected that this study can help the students with their application essays and the teachers concerned.The research materials are 20 application essays collected from the Chinese Undergraduates in the United States Forum and the College Confidential Forum.The students are in Grade 3 of senior high schools in China and in Grade 12 in U.S.A.The research questions are as follows: What are the characteristics in their use of grammatical cohesive devices listed below? Are there any similarities and differences in their use of these grammatical cohesive devices?The research methods used in this study include textual analysis,corpus analysis and SPSS software statistical analysis.Through collecting the data and analyzing the results of chi-square and P-value,together with high frequency and low frequency words,it is intended to find out the similarities and differences between the two sides.The results of the study are shown as follows:1)Similarities —(1)seven words marking reference absent in the texts of both sides are: ours,yours,hers,theirs,identical,equal and likewise;the most frequent and least used words and the preference order in selecting the words show very high similarity;(2)substitution and ellipsis were rarely used by both sides;(3)eight words of the ten most frequently used conjunction words are the same with both sides: and,but,so,if,then,when and still.25 words marking conjunction were absent in the texts of both sides.2)Differences —(1)eight words show significant differences in reference,namely I,my,you,she,them,that,the and similarly;(2)substitution and ellipsis fail to show significant differences;(3)four words marking conjunction show significant differences: as well,also,but and if.It is also found that Chinese students have mastered the most basic and essential grammatical cohesive devices and can use them in their essays.However,some problems still exist in the use of grammatical devices by both sides.Based on the above findings,it is expected that English teachers can deal with the inappropriate use of grammatical cohesive devices and categorize the problems.Different teaching strategies are also suggested to be adopted by English teachers to help students to better command the use of grammatical cohesive devices in their application essay writing.