A Study On The Effect Of Connectives On Senior High Students' English Writing Performance

Writing is regarded as one of the effective ways to exchange information and convey feelings,which reflects whether students could comprehensively apply knowledge and skills.Meanwhile,it has been considered as the most difficult part in the process of English learning.In the actual English writing of senior high students,the integrity and coherence of writing are usually ignored.Connectives,as an explicit cohesive device,do play a significant role in the cohesion and coherence of discourse.Based on Halliday's Cohesion Theory and previous studies on connectives,this study aimed to explore the use of connectives in senior high students' English writings.Furthermore,the different types of error connectives were elaborated by providing specific writing samples.The classification of connectives in the present study combined the Halliday and Hason(1976)and Quirk et al.(1985),which can be divided into seven categories for quantitative study.The study intended to find out:(1)the frequency and distribution of connectives in senior high student' composition;(2)the relationship between the use of connectives and the writing score;(3)the differences between the high-level group and low-level group.One hundred and twelve Grade three students participated in the study from a senior high school in Shangrao County whose compositions were written in one joint examination.The study combined quantitative and qualitative research methods in drawing the following findings.Firstly,the majority of senior high students applied connectives in their writings,but the seven categories were distributed unevenly.The most frequently used connectives were additive,enumerative and causal ones,followed by contrastive and conditional ones,and rarely did students employ appositive and summative ones.The limited knowledge on connectives may result in the simplest words used by students commonly.In addition,the results indicated that there was a positive correlation between both frequency and type of connectives used and the writing score.The differences between the high-level and low-level group were mainly reflected in the use of addition,enumerative and contrastive connectives.Last but not least,it was found that the misuse,underuse and overuse of connectives were mainly caused by the following reasons: inappropriate writing teaching methods;the lack of systematic connectives knowledge;the teachers' and students' casual attitude toward writing and negative transfer of mother tongue.This study put forward some pedagogical inspiration to senior high English teachers and students on English writing teaching and learning based on the research findings.During the writing teaching process,the teacher should focus on the consistency and the coherence of whole text rather than just grammar and the vocabulary.Teachers should instruct the students how to use the various kinds of connectives correctly,especially those who are with poor writing skills.As for students,they should pay attention to the role of connectives in writing,and strengthen the practice as much as possible.At the same time,the limitation of the present study and suggestions for further research were given as well.