An Empirical Study On The Application Of Textual Cohesion Theory To English Paragraph Writing In Senior High School

In the process of English learning,writing is considered as an important standard that can help teachers measure whether students have the comprehensive language skills.In the form of writing,we can examine whether students can use the language that they have already learned to express their thoughts or to deliver certain messages.Through the test of writing we can also find students' ideations in English and their language expression ability.In recent years,with the development of English curriculum reform in our high school,combined trainings focused on students' listening,speaking,reading,writing skills have been strengthened.As a result,students' practical ability of using English is better than before.However,their writing ability is not that optimistic.Through the observation and analysis of students' writing exercises and other relevant researches,we have found that on the one hand,the teaching of textual cohesion theory is so little,and there is a lack of focus on the coherence of students' English writing;on the other hand,because of a long time of the traditional English writing teaching method,more attention is paid to the correct using o f grammar and the flexible using of words,resulting in many negative phenomena,such as the lack of cohesive devices in their writings,weak awareness of discourse,irrational transition of paragraphs and sentences etc.Thus,to start with paragraph writing,by increasing the training of cohesive devices in students' paragraph writing,the purpose of this study is to reach a goal of increasing the readability of students' writings,then to improve their writing ability,and to get the final goal of improving students' writing scores.The publication of the Cohesion in English which was written together by two great systemic functional linguistics,Halliday and Hasan,represents the establishment of the cohesion theory.After that,a large number of experts and scholars at home and abroad have been analyzing and studying this theory in detail.Thus the cohesion theory have been greatly developed.Cohesion theory has been developed rapidly.This study focuses on analyzing the application of textual cohesion theory of English paragraph writing.Through doing teaching experiments we can test and verify that whether we can improve students' writing ability by applying the textual cohesion theory to English paragraph writing.This study are mainly to solve the following two questions:1.Can we improve students' paragraph writing awareness by applying the textual cohesion theory to English paragraph writing teaching?2.Can we improve students' English writing performance by applying the textual cohesion theory to English paragraph writing teaching?To answer these questions,the author chose two parallel classes(the experimental class and the controlled class)of Grade 2 as the subject of this teaching experiment.There are totally 85 students from a senior high school in Harbin.And the teaching experiment lasted for 14 weeks.Firstly,pre-questionnaire was taken under these two classes in order to master the writing status of these students.Then through pre-test,I found that there was no significant difference of the students' English writing ability between these two classes.In the process of the teaching experiment,other teaching contents in the experimental class(class 5)and the controlled class(class 6)were same.The relevant teaching of paragraph awareness,textual cohesion theory and cohesive devices are added in the experimental class.When the pre-test and the post-test were finished,experienced teachers were invited to mark students' writings according to the grading standard of the college entrance examination of English writing.The result shows that,there is no significant difference between two classes in pre-test.But after the teaching experiment,the quality of composition in the experimental class is much better than that in the controlled class.At the end of this study,the author have collected the data of the experiment and analyzed relevant data by using SPSS.The discussion of the experimental result are also taken.Though analyzing the data,the author come to the following conclusions: 1)by applying the textual cohesion theory to English paragraph writing teaching in senior high school can help students improve their paragraph awareness.2)by applying the textual cohesion theory to English paragraph writing teaching in senior high school can improve their writing marks.Through the training of cohesion theory,students' writing competence is also improved.In conclusion,this study proves that the application of cohesion theory to English paragraph writing teaching in senior high school can improve students' English paragraph awareness and writing performance.