A Survey Of The Application Of Textual Cohesive Devices In English Writing Of Senior High School Students

In recent years,research on English textual cohesion has been highly concerned by scholars at home and abroad.The reason of it is that most learners feel it difficult to keep the cohesion between sentences and sentences,paragraphs and paragraphs in the process of writing English.In order to improve English writing level of senior high school students,this thesis attempts to investigate the problems in the application of textual cohesive devices of their English writing and then propose some relative solutions.528 second-year students and 5 English teachers in Guiyang No.2Senior High School took part in this study.Firstly,the author chooses these students' English writings from the mid-term examination in 2018 as the analysis samples.Through analyzing these samples,the author learns about the main types of textual cohesive devices used in their writings and some problems existing in their application of these devices.And then,the author investigates the potential reasons behind these problems and the solutions to avoid them through questionnaire and interview.The survey results show that the majority of senior high school students have three main problems in applying textual cohesive devices in English writings,including the discontinuity of personal pronoun,the excessive repetition of vocabulary and the overuse of simple addictive conjunction,which are respectively caused by the following factors asweak awareness of textual cohesion,inadequate knowledge of vocabulary and negative transfer of mother tongue.This thesis suggests that English teachers need to enhance senior high school students' awareness of textual cohesion and encourage senior high school students read excessively to enlarge their vocabulary.Furthermore,English teachers need to encourage senior high school students to do more English-Chinese and Chinese-English translation exercises to avoid negative transfer from mother tongue.