A Tentative Survey On The Use Of Cohesive Devices In English Compositions By Senior High School Students

Composition writing enters into the most concentrated period in English learning in high schools.Teachers have made great efforts to improve the writing competence of students,but the students' actual performance is far from satisfactory.This has attracted the attention of researchers in Education,and experts have done a lot of researches on it.They believe that there is a certain correlation between the quality of English composition and the use of cohesive devices.Based on the cohesion theory by Halliday and Hasan,the author collects 195 compositions from 39 senior high school students for analysis.The students are divided into high and low proficiency groups,and then their compositions are analyzed in the hope of finding some possible correlation between the use of cohesive devices and the quality of their compositions.The results of analysis show that reference is the most frequently used cohesive device in the compositions,followed by conjunction,lexical cohesion and substitution.Ellipsis is the least used.Between use of cohesive devices and composition scores,there is some positive correlation.More specifically,the high-scoring group tends to use cohesive devices more frequently and appropriately.Reference,lexical cohesion and conjunction are the cohesive devices that influence the scoring most.Moreover,Most commonly found problem in the use of cohesive devices is the lack and improper use,which affect the coherence of the text and therefore lead to the low quality of writing.The students in question do not seem to know the proper use of cohesive devices in their compositions.This might be due to lack of knowledge and teaching in this area.It is hoped that this study will help teachers improve their teaching approaches in writing and help students build a discursive consciousness,better their use of cohesive devices and thus improve their English writing abilities.