A Study Of The Application Of Lexical Cohesion In Senior High School Students' English Writing

English writing,as the main output for students in senior high school,is a relatively difficult part among four English skills.It requires students not only to have a good grasp of what they have learned but also to take advantage of all the knowledge in a coherent way,which deepens the difficulty of English writing for students.Lexical cohesion is of great importance in the writing quality.Aiming at improving students'writing quality,this study chooses English compositions written by students from Grade Two in a senior high school in Beijing as an example.This study researches the frequency of lexical cohesion,the correlation of lexical cohesion and writing quality,and the frequency of lexical errors by text analysis and statistic analysis.And in this study,a questionnaire is used to research the reasons of lexical errors.The results are concluded as follows.Firstly,among seven lexical devices,simple repetition is used most frequently,followed by collocation,general words,complex repetition,synonym,antonym and hyponymy.Secondly,there is a significant correlation between complex repetition,antonym,synonym,collocation and writing quality.And there is no significant correlation between simple repetition,hynonymy,general words and writing quality.Among all the lexical devices,collocation is most significant correlated with writing quality,followed by synonym,antonym and complex repetition.Thirdly,lexical errors in simple repetition and collocation occur frequently.And it is less likely to make mistakes in synonym,complex repetition,antonym,hyponymy and general words.At last,the reasons for lexical errors are the lack of learning and teaching for lexical cohesion and the negative attitude toward English writing.Based on the analysis,some suggestions are put forward.Teachers should pay more attention to lexical cohesion to improve students' ability in using different lexical devices.Besides,teachers should focus on the use of complex repetition,antonym,synonym and collocation because these lexical devices have a significant correlation with writing quality.In addition,teachers should emphasize the negative effect of overusing simple repetition in English writing because overusing simple repetition makes the writing low in quality.Based on the study,students should improve the awareness of lexical cohesion,learn more about lexical cohesion,apply different lexical devices as much as possible,and motivate their interest in English writing.