An Error Analysis Of Rererence Cohesion In Middle School Students' English Writings

English writing plays an important part in English learning in middle schools,which has always been the focus for middle school English teaching.The requirements of Compulsory Education English Curriculum Standards(2011 Edition)for middle school students' English writing are listed as follows: middle school students should be able to collect and prepare the materials according to the writing requirements;they are able to draft the texts independently;they are able to modify the texts under the guidance of the teachers and they can use some proper devices to express logical relationship.Therefore,writing is very important for middle school students and thus cohesive devices play a vital role in English writing.Appropriate use of cohesive devices in middle school students' writings can help to reduce the problems that may occur in the writing process and to effectively improve students' writing abilities.At present,most of the studies on cohesive devices in English writing mainly focus on college students or senior high school students.However,few studies on the practical use of cohesive devices in middle school students' English writings have been conducted.Based on cohesion theory and error analysis,the thesis studies the use of reference cohesive devices in middle school students' English writings and tries to detect the cohesive errors,and then analyzes the possible reasons for these errors.There are three research questions of the study:(1)How frequently are reference cohesive devices used in middle school students' English writings?(2)What are the errors in using reference cohesive devices in their English writings?(3)What are the possible reasons for the errors in using reference cohesive devices in their English writings?In the study,150 samples are randomly chosen from the compositions written by Grade Nine students of a middle school in Changchun.The thesis analyzes the three types of reference cohesive devices in their writings samples and obtains a variety of data.The result of the study indicates that middle school students frequently use reference devices in their English writings.Among the three types of references,personal reference and demonstrative reference are more commonly used and more cohesive errors can also be found in the use of these two cohesive devices.These cohesive errors are probably caused by the interference of their mother tongue,the lack of knowledge of cohesion and coherence,together with the lack of writing practice.The implication of this study is that the teachers are expected to make full use of teaching materials,increase students' language input and output,help students to learn to deal with some common cohesiveerrors,and try to avoid the interference of mother tongue so as to improve English writing abilities.Students' basic knowledge about cohesion theory will have some significant influence on the improvement of middle school students' English writing.Since some weaknesses inevitably exist for the sake of limited area of the research,further studies are still to be expected.