The Application Of Length Approach In Cohesion Devices In Senior High School English Writing

English writing teaching is an essential aspect in language teaching. However, it has always been considered as the weakest part in foreign language teaching. Up to now, domestic scholars have conducted many studies on English writing. They find that the biggest problem is that their writing practices are not enough. Students can write compositions with correct grammars and sentences, but their expressions lack of cohesion devices, which leads to incoherent in semantic meaning. Wang(2000)innovated concept of foreign language teaching and initiated the length approach. The length approach is a brand-new approach of writing teaching, and a method of “Write-to-Learn”. It is supposed that the length approach can widen the students’ thoughts and enhance their confidence so that it can improve students’ writing ability.This study, with the support of cohesion theory and with the guidance of the length approach aims to take the length approach in English writing teaching for senior high students to increase the use of cohesion devices with and improve cohesion consciousness in order to improve students’ writing competence.The thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter One is the introduction, which includes the background information, the significance and the organization of the present study. Chapter Two is the literature review, which first gives definitions to the cohesion, cohesion devices and the length approach, etc. Then it displays cohesion theory and the major theory applied by the length approach. Last, previous studies in terms of cohesion and the length approach are reviewed. Chapter Three is the research methodology, which includes the research questions, research participants, instrument and procedure. Chapter Four is the results and data analysis, which reports the results and analyzes and experiment, including both questionnaires and tests. Chapter Five draws a conclusion to the whole thesis and puts forward major findings of the experiment.This study starts from the questions as follows: 1)What are the frequencies of cohesion devices used by senior high school students in their writings before the experiment? 2)What are the changes of cohesion devices usage in students’ writings after the experiment? 3)What are the causes that the length approach promotes the changes of cohesive devices used by students? The thesis conducts an empirical study on the students from two classes in Senior Two of Shenyang No.40 Senior High School as the research subjects. One class is the experimental class(EC) and the other is the control class(CC). The EC is taught by the length approach, and the CC is taught by the traditional teaching method. Adopt questionnaire, tests etc.By contrasting data from the experiment, this thesis draws the conclusion: 1) Before the experiment, students overuse repetition ties and reference while lack of collocation. Besides, the students use lexical cohesion most, followed by reference and conjunction; 2) After the experiment, they begin to use various types of lexical cohesion means, and they pay attention to use collocation as well as enhancement conjunction and extension conjunction, while the use of demonstrative reference by them decrease greatly. It can be seen that students’ cohesion ability has been improved greatly. 3) The length approach encourages students to write long compositions, the longer the better. Which sets up a platform for students to practice the use of cohesion devices, and its appreciation assessment method boosts their writing confidence.