A Study Of Error In The Use Of Cohesive Devices In English Writing By Junior High School Students

Writing,as a comprehensive language skill,reflects the learner’ s comprehensive cognitive level and thinking ability.For English learners,understanding of discourse cohesion and mastery of cohesive devices are basic requirements.The use of discourse cohesive devices is conducive to enhancing the consistency of the structure of the article and the coherence of the content,thereby improving the accuracy and fluency of writing.Therefore,in the field of foreign language teaching,the application of discourse cohesion in writing has been the focus of scholars’ researches.In China,junior high school students have become more competent in English,but for most of them,writing skills are still in the elementary stage.There are still various shortcomings in writing,and there are deficiencies in employment of cohesive devices.Consequently,a systematic study of errors related to use of cohesive devices in English writing by junior high school students is particularly important.Based on the second language learning theories such as error analysis and discourse cohesion theory by Halliday & Hasan,the study is conducted for a thorough analysis on the error types and frequency as well as the causes which related to cohesive devices in English writing by junior high school students.The participants are 90 Grade Four students and 5 English teachers from a junior high school in Yantai,and the research instruments include writing samples and interviews.There are three research questions:(1)What are the major types of errors of cohesive devices that junior high school students often commit?(2)What is the error frequency of each type of cohesive devices in writing by junior high school students?(3)What are the major factors that lead to errors when junior high school students are using cohesive devices in writing?Major findings are as follows:(1)In the process of English writing by junior high school students,there are four types of common cohesion errors: lexical collocation errors in lexical cohesion;misuse of personal pronouns in reference cohesion and confusion or absence of personal pronouns,mainly second-person pronouns and three-person pronounerrors;errors caused by misuse of conjunctions and excessive use of conjunctions;confusional substitution errors.(2)The specific error frequency of each cohesive devices is from high to low: lexical cohesion> reference cohesion> conjunction> substitution.Among them,grammatical cohesive devices specifically include types of reference cohesion,conjunction,ellipsis,substitutions,etc.,which account for 51.9% of all cohesive devices errors.Lexical cohesion accounted for 48.1% of all cohesive errors.Generally speaking,in the English writing of junior high school students,the sum of the cohesive errors in the frequency of grammatical cohesion is higher than the lexical cohesion.Lexical cohesion has the largest proportion of errors in the specific cohesive devices.(3)There are four main factors that may affect the errors in junior high school students’ English writing cohesion: the effect of negative transfer of mother tongue thinking;the lack of necessary writing exercises and awareness of cohesion and coherence;the influence of language difference and language awareness;insufficient vocabulary and inadequate understanding of use of vocabulary in cohesive devices.