A Study On The Application Of Textual Cohesion Theory In Junior Middle School English Writing Teaching

Writing plays a vital role in junior middle school English learning.It is the main part of language learning and shows the competence of students' expressing and delivering information.The major objective of writing teaching is to cultivate students' capabilities of expressing their opinions,feelings and attitudes,and writing well-arranged and integrated compositions.However,there are still some problems in English writing teaching in junior middle school.Teachers pay more attention to the accuracy and appropriateness of words and grammar,and ignore the cohesion and coherence of the discourse,which has a damaging effect on the fluency of students' compositions.Textual cohesion theory plays an important role in promoting coherence in the text.It covers systematic cohesive devices,including transitivity,mood structure,information structure,thematic structure,reference,substitution,ellipsis,conjunction and lexical cohesion.It is important to improve students' awareness of textual cohesion and to enhance their ability of using cohesive devices and writing performance.This theory has been applied in English writing teaching,but mainly in senior high schools and colleges,rarely in junior middle schools.Therefore,based on the textual cohesion theory,this study adopts quantitative and qualitative mixed design(questionnaire method,interview method and educational experiment method)to explore the effectiveness of the application of textual cohesion theory in junior middle school English writing teaching.The participants are students in two parallel classes of junior two and four teachers from Binshui School affiliated to Jimei Middle School in Xiamen.It mainly answers the following four questions: Firstly,what is the current situation of students' learning and teachers' teaching methods in English writing in junior middle school? Secondly,how does the application of textual cohesion theory in English writing teaching affect the construction of macro-organizational and micro-organizational structures in students' compositions? Thirdly,can textual cohesion theory significantly improve students' writing performance? Lastly,what are the specific strategies of textual cohesion theory used in junior middle school English writing teaching?The findings of this study are as follows: at present,most of the teachers and students pay more attention to the accuracy of grammar and vocabulary and ignore the textual cohesion devices.Students' compositions have such problems as confusing expressions and poorcoherence,and the overall level of writing is not high.Then,after the educational experiment,in the macro-organizational structure of the experimental class students' writings,the information flow of topics in each paragraph and all sentences in the text is reasonable.Most grades of relevant variables are significantly different from the control class.In the micro-organization structure,students in experimental class can use more formal cohesive devices and correctly,and the semantic relevance between adjacent sentences has also improved.Most grades of relevant variables are also significantly different from the control class.Moreover,the findings of the study have proved that the method of textual cohesion theory which has applied in writing teaching can effectively improve cohesion and coherence in students' compositions and their writing performance.Finally,with a view to giving some reference to the junior middle school English writing teaching,this study puts forward some teaching suggestions from the following aspects: integrating reading and writing,conducting targeted writing training,giving play to the role of evaluation to promote learning,using feedback from modern information technology such as the correction network,etc.