A Study Of The Use Of Cohesive Devices In High School Students’ English Compositions

In the process of English learning in senior high schools, students’ writing ability has been an important perspective to evaluate their English proficiency level, while the use of appropriate cohesive devices is key to high writing proficiency. A literature survey indicates that scholars both at home and abroad have studied the relationship between cohesion and English writing quality, focusing mainly on learners of undergraduate or postgraduate, who are learners of relatively higher proficiency levels. On the basis of these previous studies, this research tried to explore how learners of relatively low proficiency level—senior high school students—use cohesive devices in their writings and how their use of cohesive devices is related to the writing quality, with two specific questions:How are cohesive devices used in compositions by senior high school students?What is the relationship between the frequency of the cohesive device use and the quality of their English writings?Both quantitative and qualitative methods were adopted to analyse60compositions randomly sampled from120compositions written by senior high school students in college entrance examinations, of which two groups were identified (G for high scored compositions and P for low-scored texts).Based on the categories of cohesive devices by Halliday&Hasan, we identified and calculated the number of cohesive devices used in the sampled students’ compositions and in addition we explored the correlations between the frequency of cohesive devices and writing quality, which revealed the following major findings:Learners relied on the use of referencing, conjuctions and lexical cohesion, with the use of conjunctions being second to referencing but more than lexical cohesion. The number and the frequency of the cohesive devices used in the compositions were significantly correlated with the writing quality. Students who used more diverse cohesive devices in the compositions scored higher than those who used the devices less frequently.The findings reveal that it is quite necessary to teach explicitly how the high school students can use the cohesive devices in their English writing and enforce the awareness of the usage of cohensive devices in students, which, as a result, will promote English writing instruction and improve the writing quality.