A Study Of The Use Of Conjunctions In Junior Middle School Students' English Writing

Junior middle school students do use conjunctions in their writings,but they attach little importance to or even overlook the function of cohesion and coherence as a factor in judging writing quality.Conjunctions,as explicit cohesive devices,contribute to the fluency and coherence of essays.Based on Halliday and Hasan's Cohesion Theory,the author adopted the mixed methods approach to investigating junior middle school students' use of conjunctions in English writing through an analysis of different types of erroneous conjunctions.The research questions are as follows: 1)How do those junior middle school students use conjunctions in their compositions? 2)Is there any relationship between the use of conjunctions and junior middle school students' performance in writing? Why? 3)Is there any difference between high-,average-and low-achievers in terms of the use of conjunctions? If so,what is the difference?This study collected 142 compositions and questionnaires from six classes in grade eight in Jiading Qiliang Middle School.These compositions were written in a mid-term examination.The questionnaire aims to know the reasons,students' and teachers' attitudes towards using conjunctions in English writing in order to give some useful suggestions to improve teaching of English writing.With the help of SPSS and Excel,the quantity of conjunctions and the relationship between conjunction and writing quality were measured.The research subjects were divided into three groups(high-,average-and low-achievers)on the basis of their mid-term examination scores of English.The results of quantitative and qualitative analysis are presented as follows: 1)Junior middle school students did use conjunctions in their writings,but the distribution shows deviance.The five most frequently-used conjunctions are: and,but,then,first,finally.However,students rarely used conditional and summative conjunctions.2)Through Pearson Chi-Square test,there is a positive correlation between the use of conjunctions and the writing quality in terms of frequency and type.3)The differences between high-,average-and low-achievers are mainly manifested in the use of additive conjunctions,adversative conjunctions,listing conjunctions,and temporal conjunctions by means of Chi-Square test.4)Students' misuse of conjunctions can be attributed to the lack of systematical andcomprehensive knowledge on conjunctions,the negative transfer of Chinese language,improper methods of teaching writing,students' negative attitude towards writing and teachers' improper feedback on student writing.In view of the above findings,the study puts forward the following suggestions for teachers: extending English teaching to the level of discourse,adjusting the way of teaching writing,imparting systematic knowledge on conjunctions,and paying attention to differences between Chinese and English.