An Action Research On Cohesion In English Writing Teaching In Senior High Schools

English writing is one of the comprehensive abilities which reflects ones ability to apply languages and plays an important role in foreign language teaching According to the writing goals set by the English curriculum standard for senior high school students, the students are required to write coherent and complete compositions where the views are expressed clearly, but the traditional way of English writing teaching mainly focused on vocabulary and grammar. The effect of this teaching method on the improvement of students’English writing ability is not obvious, especially in the aspects of cohesion and coherence. English writing has always been a weak link in foreign language teaching.This paper aims to enhance the awareness of using cohesive devices and coherence in students’English writing of the second-year students in senior high schools under the guidance of cohesion theory and then improve their writing ability and increase their writing scores. This action research project provided the researcher with a precious space for the experiment and research in teaching.First of all, this paper points out its main problems of English writing by describing and analyzing the writing situations and problems, and then determines the study’s topic: that is to conduct an action research on cohesion in English writing teaching in senior high schools.Next, this thesis makes a brief review on cohesion theory, especially the five cohesive devices. The relationship between cohesion and coherence are also presented,Then, the author introduces a ten--week action plan and the implementation of the plan. The results of the interview and the two written tasks show that students’writing scores are improved and the frequency of cohesive devices they use in their writing is also increased.At last, this paper discusses the limitations of this action research, provides the suggestions for English writing teaching and summarizes the thesis.