Higher Vocational College Students' Problems Of Lexical Cohesion In English Textual Learning And Their Solutions

Lexis is the only type of cohesion that regularly forms multiple relationships. Lexical cohesion, as one of the most important components of a text, is the most important one of the various cohesive devices. Therefore, in most cases the study of textual cohesion is that of lexical cohesion. How to learn a text through lexical cohesive devices has become one of the problems that language experts and scholars want to solve, but we can find few researches made on this subject in higher vocational colleges. Most of the newly-built higher vocational colleges in recent years are based on the previous secondary and technical schools, in which the students consist of those performing poorly in the entrance examinations and grown-ups receiving adult education, whose quality is relatively poor compared with that of students in universities, and even worse higher vocational college students have a poor English foundation. Since there exist special features in higher vocational colleges, the students only achieved low efficiency in English textual learning such as lacking of cohesion and coherence in their writing, low reading efficiency and learning vocabularies in isolation irrespective of context. It is a hard nut for English teachers in higher vocational colleges to crack. Therefore, the writer of this thesis is one of the researchers who try their hard to research on higher vocational college students' problems of lexical cohesion in English textual learning and their solutions.This thesis consists of four major parts. Chapter One is the literature review that presents the researches done at home and abroad in the field of textual analysis. It defines lexis and lexical cohesion, and introduces the lexical cohesion theory. Chapter Two mainly introduces the theoretical basis for this study. After comparing Halliday & Hasan's Cohesion in English with Hoey's Patterns of Lexis in Text, we find the former one can be applied more widely and it is also easier for students to understand. It can be used to guide English textual learning more successfully. Therefore, mainly based on the result of Halliday's research, together with some of Hoey's views, the current thesis offers a lexical cohesion pattern including lexical repetition and lexical collocation. Chapter Three is a survey by this author on higher vocational college students' problems of lexical cohesion in English textual learning. On the basis of researches on the present situation of higher vocational college students' English textual learning and by analyzing the result of tests consisting of an argumentative writing, a cloze test and a word-guessing test by context clues, we find out that there exist some problems as below: 1. Students' English textual learning efficiency is low; 2. Different problems of lexical cohesion lie in writing, reading and vocabulary learning at textual level. It is illustrated as below: Students' writing quality is fairly low; in writing students pay little attention to applying appropriately and efficiently lexical cohesive devices such as complex repetition, synonym, antonym, superordinate/hyponym, general word, collocation, which are important to raise writing quality, especially synonym and antonym, the most important ones. But simple repetition, which has a negative effect on writing quality, is overused. Their reading level is quite low; they do not apply various lexical cohesive devices to reading texts of different kinds properly. When they learn vocabulary, they also lack the appropriate application of lexical cohesive devices except for simple repetition and general word, thus leading to low efficiency. Through a questionnaire we find the causes of the problems, that is, students have poor knowledge of lexical cohesion and their functions in a text and they have not learned to apply different lexical cohesive devices to English textual learning including writing, reading and vocabulary learning appropriately and efficiently. According to the causes, Chapter Four discusses systematically the solutions to higher vocational college students' problems of lexical cohesion in English textual learning. The countermeasures are illustrated as below: Firstly, students must learn knowledge of lexical cohesion and their functions systematically. It is obviously useful to learners, so in English learning we should make it part of the program. To testify their efficiency and practice, a passage is analyzed by using lexical cohesive patterns offered in the thesis. Secondly, the students should learn to apply appropriate lexical cohesive devices to writing, reading and vocabulary learning to improve their textual learning efficiency. In writing students should learn to apply complex repetition, synonym, antonym, superordinate/hyponym, general word and collocation, which have an important effect on writing quality, especially synonym and antonym, the most important ones, are necessary to be used most often but simple repetition should be avoided. Students also should learn to apply different lexical cohesive devices to reading texts of various kinds appropriately and accurately. When learning vocabulary, students should learn to apply lexical cohesive devices such as complex repetition, synonym, antonym, superordinate/hyponym and lexical collocation properly. Finally a conclusion is drawn: The appropriate and accurate application of lexical cohesion in English textual learning is obviously quite useful to students' English textual learning, which is one of the practicable and efficient learning means. It can help students improve their ability and efficiency of writing, reading and vocabulary learning at textual level.