An Empirical Research On College English Writing Discourse Coherence Ability Teaching Based On ECM~+ Chain

Writing is one of the five basic skills that English learners must master,and it is also the research focus of domestic and foreign scholars.The factors that affect learners’writing ability include not only grammar and vocabulary,but also discourse coherence.Scholars at home and abroad study discourse coherence from systemic functional linguistics,leaving behind many achievements and putting forward many related theories,such as cohesion theory,thematic progression theory and so on.Some scholars also apply theories of cognitive linguistics,such as cognitive reference point theory and conceptual metaphor theory to discourse coherence researches.With the development of teaching methods,some scholars begin to apply linguistic theories to the study of discourse coherence teaching in college English writing.Although these theories can explain the mechanism of discourse coherence,they can not provide the teaching method which is suitable for the current English level of college students in the teaching of English writing discourse coherence.Therefore,the teaching of English writing discourse coherence needs to be further improved.In view of this,this thesis attempts to combine the Event-domain Cognitive Model(ECM)theory with the Cognitive Reference Point(CRP)theory to construct ECM~+chain model(+stands for cognitive reference point)which can explain the operation mechanism of discourse coherence,and also apply it to the English writing teaching,so as to put forward English writing teaching method based on ECM~+chain in order to improve students’discourse coherence ability.In order to prove its feasibility,this thesis selects 60 English-major sophomores of Sichuan International Studies University as the research subjects to conduct an empirical study.60 English majors of the same English level are divided into experimental class(EC)and control class(CC).EC adopts the new teaching method based on ECM~+chain to teach English writing,and CC adopts the traditional teaching method which is mainly based on the cohesion theory.After 16 weeks of writing teaching,this thesis uses qualitative and quantitative research methods to verify the impact of the new teaching method on college students’English writing coherence ability.In addition,this thesis will also verify the impact of the new teaching method on students’writing performance.At the same time,this thesis attempts to answer the following three questions:(1)Can ECM~+chain based English writing teaching method improve students’writing discourse coherence ability?(2)How does ECM~+chain based English writing teaching method improve students’writing discourse coherence ability?(3)What is the impact of ECM~+chain based English writing teaching method on students’writing scores?Through the analysis of experimental data,we find that the writing teaching method based on ECM~+chain can not only improve students’discourse coherence ability,but also improve students’writing scores.In addition,the teaching method of writing based on ECM~+chain can make students think smoothly,write layout reasonably and express language fluently from the cognitive perspective.Therefore,the author suggests that the teaching method of discourse coherence in English writing should guide students to acquire discourse coherence cognitively,and pay attention to the global and local coherence of writing at the same time,so as to effectively cultivate students’discourse coherence ability in English writing and improve the quality of college students’English writing.