A Study On The Usage Of Conjunctions In The English Writings By High School Students

English writing is taken as an embodiment of the integrated capacity of English learning.For that it is not easy for students in China to produce an English writing with clear ideas,a logical structure and coherent contents.And coherence is seen as one of the important criteria in assessing English writing.Therefore,cohesive ties raise increasing concerns among many scholars,especially,the use of them in English writings.Besides,conjunctions as cohesive ties also account for an important position in the organization of English writing and we should attach importance to them.Therefore,this paper focuses on the conjunctions employed in English writings written by senior high school students.This thesis employs cohesion theory proposed by Halliday and Hasan as the theoretical framework,and takes conjunctions used in 200 English writings written by senior high school students as the data.This study attempts to answer the following four questions:1)What is the frequency of conjunctions employed in English writings by senior high school students?2)Are there any differences in the use of conjunctions among compositions at different levels?And what are they?3)Are there any relationships between the use of conjunctions and the achievement of writings?And what are they?4)What problems do these students face in employing conjunctions to achieve cohesion?The research shows:1)a total of 835 conjunctions are employed in 200 English compositions,among which causal conjunctions are most frequently employed in writings,accounting for 30%of all conjunctions.Adversative conjunctions take up a relative small proportion,accounting for 27%.And additive and temporal conjunctions possess nearly the same percentage,accounting for 21%and 22%respectively.2)It is also found that 60%conjunctions are employed in compositions at good level,followed by compositions at intermediate level with the proportion of 28%.And compositions at poor and excellent level hold the proportion of 3%and 9%respectively.Besides,the overall conjunctions used in compositions at excellent level are higher than those in other compositions with the mean value of 6.90.To be more specific,among four subcategories of conjunctions,three kinds of conjunctions employed in compositions at excellent level are also higher than those in compositions at other levels.They are additive,causal and temporal conjunctions with the mean value of 2.00,1.60 and 2.20 respectively.While the adversative conjunctions applied in compositions at good level are higher than those in other compositions.In other words,conjunctions used in compositions at good and excellent level are more than those used in compositions at intermediate and poor level.3)There is a positive relationship between the score of compositions and conjunctions employed in compositions.And the data show that temporal conjunctions have the greatest impact on the dependent variable 'score',followed by additives,causal conjunctions and adversatives.4)It is found that three main problems exist in the process of conjunction employment.They are the imbalance use of different kinds of conjunction,the misuse of conjunction and the lack of conjunction.The significance of this study is to find out the relationship between conjunctions employed in English writing and the writing quality and discover some problems in the process of conjunction employment.Meanwhile,reasons that cause these problems are also summarized.In this way,this paper tends to show some inspirations to both senior high school students and English teachers to help them pay much attention to conjunctions in English learning and English teaching.