Effect Of Multi-draft Writing On Senior High Students’ Application Of Cohesive Devices

As is known to us,an ESL learner’s writing ability can to a great extent show his general English proficiency.Therefore,teaching English writing to senior high students is of great importance,not to mention the big part that English writing occupies in National College Entrance Examination.Most teachers in senior high schools still employ the old fashioned one-draft model in teaching wiring.However,with this model,students feel it difficult to improve their writing ability;their writings turn out to be childish,loosely structured and incoherent.Therefore,we need to apply a new teaching model,namely,multi-draft writing,which includes the following steps:drafting,self-correcting,finishing the first draft,peer feedback,finishing the second draft,teacher feedback,and then finishing the final draft.Recent Research indicates that whether a Chinese student can effectively apply cohesive devices can make a difference in his writing.Through comparative experiment and interviews,this research aims to compare the different impacts of the two writing models on students’ ability to use cohesive devices,in the hope of guiding our teaching practice.The research questions are:1)What effects does multi-draft writing have on senior high students’ ability to apply grammatical cohesive devices?2)What effects does multi-draft writing have on senior high students’ ability to apply lexical cohesive devices?3)What effects does multi-draft writing have on senior high students’ awareness of applying cohesive devices?My findings suggest:Firstly,compared with one-draft writing,multi-draft writing can improve senior high students’ ability to apply grammatical cohesive devices,particularly conjunctions;not only do the students employ more conjunctions,but there is greater diversity in the types of conjunctions.As regards reference,no significant differences exist between one-draft writing and multi-draft writing,and the number of substitution and ellipsis is still limited in senior high students’ writing.Secondly,compared with one-draft writing,multi-draft writing does not make a significant difference in the students’ application of lexical cohesive devices,but it does reduce the students’ dependence on the reiteration of the same word,and develop their ability to apply other devices of reiteration.Even with the two different models,there’s no significant difference in students’ application of lexical collocation,and they rarely use complementary antonyms in their writings.Thirdly,multi-draft writing can to some degree raise the students’ awareness of applying more cohesive devices.With multi-draft writing,the students are able to apply ellipses and substitutions and strengthen the variety of conjunctions more self-consciously.However,the students’ awareness of applying other cohesive devices is not greatly affected by multi-draft writing.Therefore,while teaching writing,senior high school teachers are advised to adopt multi-draft writing method to improve the students’ ability to use cohesive devices and make the students aware that using a wide range of cohesive devices can improve the quality of their writings.During the process of multi-draft writing,teachers are supposed to emphasize the important points regularly,ensuring that the students can firmly grasp and employ them.