Application Of Cohesion And Coherence Theory To Teaching Cloze Test In College English

Cohesion and coherence are the core of the textual analysis, and the composition of atext must rely on the mutual function of them. Cohesion can be defined as the grammaticaland lexical relationship between different factors of a text. Embodied with the feature ofexplicitness, it pays attention to the external organization of a text. Cohesive devices can beclassified into five types: reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction and lexical cohesion,with the first four devices belonging to the grammatical cohesion. Coherence focuses on thecognitive continuity of a text. Owning to the character of implicitness, it mainly deals with theinternal logic of a text.After implementing a thorough study of the papers on the application of cohesion andcoherence theory to teaching cloze test in college English, the author finds that although thecloze test has been regarded as a kind of test which can test the comprehensive ability oftest-takers, there has been little investigation on the application of cohesion and coherencetheory to teaching cloze test in college. So the author thinks this study is very necessary.Besides, when questioned about the cloze test, almost all the freshmen consider it the mostdifficult one. When it comes to how to deal with this part, they merely concentrate on thesentences including the blanks and analyze them according to the traditional grammar insteadof giving great insights into the integrative relationship between different sentences in a text.Therefore, the author decides to do this thesis through qualitative and quantitative methods.This thesis is conducted on Halliday and Hasan’s cohesion and coherence theory, whichwas first put forward in Cohesion in English (1976). Through many careful sample analyses, the author analyzes and elaborates the function of the five cohesive devices in organizing andfinishing a cloze text in the expectation of improving students’ comprehensive ability. All thesamples are excerpted from New Horizon College English I.90non-English first-year students who come from Physics Department in ShanxiNormal University were chosen as subjects. Questionnaires, experimental teaching，tests, andcomparison between the CG and EG are involved to investigate the effects of cohesion andcohesive devices in the cloze test to guarantee the reliability of this thesis.This result shows that applying cohesive devices to the teaching cloze test is practicaland feasible. In addition, the application of it can not only improve students’ ability of dealingwith the whole text but also enhance their integrative ability. At the same time, it presents thatEnglish teachers should stress the importance of cohesive devices when teaching the text andemphasize the nourishment of students’ cohesive consciousness.