Cohesive Devices And Their Applications In College English Reading Teaching

Reading teaching is one of the most important parts of foreign language teaching. How to improve students'reading ability is an urgent problem to be solved in college English teaching. According to the author's investigation of students'reading, interview of teachers'teaching methods and attendance of English classes, it is found that college English reading teaching is conducted mainly by focusing on vocabulary, grammar and sentences. Few teachers use"cohesive devices"to guide the students for the comprehension of a text. Many students have difficulty in text understanding. Some teachers even do not know how to apply cohesion to the reading teaching practice, although they have had the systematic knowledge about this theory.Language is not based on separated words or sentences, but on the continuity of a text. Cohesion is one of the most distinct features of a text. The cohesive devices between different elements or sentences are the key points of constructing a text. Cohesive devices are classified into five: reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction and lexical cohesion. And the construction of a text depends on the application of one or more cohesive devices.Due to the current situation of reading teaching, this research is conducted on Halliday and Hasan's cohesion theory. By sample analysis, the author elaborates the function of the five cohesive devices in organizing a text, which intends to give teachers guidance about how to apply cohesive devices to reading teaching and help students enhance their reading ability. At the same time, teachers'cohesive awareness is expected to increase in order to avoid the separation of theory and practice in the process of teaching. To guarantee the reliability and persuasion, all the samples are excerpted from New Horizon College English III.The empirical study aims to investigate the efficiency of cohesive devices in reading teaching. The subjects are composed of 80 non-English second-year students and 6 college English teachers. Both the students and teachers come from Qingdao University of Science and Technology. Questionnaire, reading tests, experimental teaching and teachers'interview are involved to investigate the effect of cohesive devices on reading teaching.This research demonstrates that it is practical and feasible to apply cohesive devices to English reading teaching. This application can improve students'ability of controlling the whole text and enhance their reading ability. English teachers should emphasize the function of cohesive devices in constructing a text and strengthen the cultivation of students'cohesive awareness.