Cohesive Devices And The Quality Of Writings By Advanced College English Majors

The aim of the research is to investigate whether any relations exist between cohesive devices and the quality of writings by advanced College English majors.The research takes the writings of two Chinese universities' advanced English majors as samples and conducted an empirical study. The samples are divided into two groups, i.e. the writings with high quality and the group with low quality. Then the two groups are compared with a group of models selected from two authoritative books of teaching English writings with statistical methods. The parameters include the five cohesive devices (reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction and lexical cohesion) and cohesive errors.It is found from the research that (1) In general, the higher the quality of the composition is, the more cohesive ties are employed; (2) the lower the quality of the composition is, the more cohesive errors exist; (3) the total of cohesive ties employed have a significant correlation with the quality of writing and of the five cohesive devices, reference, substitution and lexical cohesion have a significant correlation with the quality of the compositions, while no significant correlation exists between the other two cohesive devices and the quality of writings.Thus, the conclusion is made that the effective use of cohesive devices has a close correlation with the quality of the writings by advanced college English majors.Based on this conclusion, a further study on the cohesive misuses is conducted. Finally, suggests for the teaching of EFL writing are made.