Cohesive Devices In The English Writing Of Senior Middle School Students

English writing, a major form of language communication, plays an important role in English study. English writing ability has been regarded as a significant skill in English teaching. As an important branch of Second Language Acquisition, the study of English writing has drawn much of linguists'attention in this field. So far, many experts home and abroad have studied the relationship between cohesion and English writing. These studies show that there is a close relationship between cohesion and the quality of English compositions. This thesis makes an analysis of the application and function of cohesive devices in the English writing of Senior Middle School Students.On the basis of cohesive theory by Halliday & Hasan (1976) and the achievements of Chinese leading scholars in this field, this thesis analyzes the application of cohesive devices in Chinese students' writing (senior middle school students). An investigation is carried out by using linguistic statistic methods and it aims to find out the features of textual cohesion used in senior middle school students' writing and the problems on cohesive devices utility.The thesis first enumerates the importance of English writing as well as the requirements of English writing in senior middle school put forward by the New Curriculum Criterion. The thesis also points out the present problems of English writing in senior middle school. Second, the thesis describes the definitions of discourse, the definitions and classifications of cohesive ties (devices), which provides a theoretical framework of the present thesis. Then the thesis reviews the studies on cohesion by Chinese scholars and points out the inadequacy of their studies.In this thesis, an investigation is carried out by using linguistic methods to describe the features of textual cohesion and to compare the features between the good and poor compositions written by 202 Chinese senior school students. A comparison is also made between the time-limit and non-time-limit compositions.The result indicates that among the cohesive ties, lexical and reference cohesion are mainly used by senior students, followed by conjunction cohesion. Statistics shows that there is significant difference between the good and poor compositions, between the time-limit and non-time-limit compositions. Lexical cohesion contributes most to good writing. Therefore, using various cohesive devices to achieve coherent discourse can be one of the major criteria to assess students' English writing ability.Finally, the thesis suggests that it is necessary to train students on cohesive devices utility so as to cultivate their awareness of cohesive devices in writing.