A Study On The Application Of Lexical Cohesion To English Writing Teaching In Senior High School

Writing teaching is not only an important part of senior high school English teaching in our country,but also a weak part.Therefore,how to improve senior high school students' English writing achievements quickly and effectively has become an urgent problem at this stage.Cohesion is an key factor in the composition of discourse,and it also occupies an important position in the coherent construction of discourse.Lexical cohesion is one of the key methods to achieve discourse coherence,which has become a key part of English writing teaching.Based on the lexical cohesion theory of Halliday,Hasan and Hoey,this study mainly chooses simple repetition,complex repetition,synonym,antonym,hyponymy,general words and collocation as lexical cohesive devices,aiming to explore whether lexical cohesion can improve senior high school students' English writing achievements or not.Two research questions are proposed as follows:(1)What are the lexical cohesive problems in senior high school students' English writing?(2)Can the English writing teaching based on lexical cohesion theory improve students' writing achievements?To answer these two research questions,two parallel classes with 120 students from Qin'an No.2 Middle School participate in the experiment.One of them is randomly assigned to experimental class(EC),and the other one is assigned to control class(CC).The experimental class adopts the writing teaching method based on the lexical cohesion theory,and the control class adopts the traditional product writing teaching approach.Two research instruments are employed,including writing tests and an interview.Writing tests are used to study whether the English writing teaching based on lexical cohesion theory can improve the writing achievements of senior high school students.An interview with 6 students in experimental class is employed to further understand the influence of English writing teaching based on lexical cohesion theory on high school students' English writing and provide qualitative data for this research.Results of the study are as follows:(1)Simple repetition and collocation are used most frequently,followed by complex competition,synonym and antonym,which are mostly used in basic and simple words.Students seldom use hyponymy and general word.This shows that thevocabulary of students is relatively insufficient,and it is greatly affected by the negative transfer of mother tongue,and lacks the study of cohesion theory.(2)The lexical cohesion makes students' compositions more coherent,natural and readable,and students' writing achievements are significantly improved.Based on the results of this study,writing teaching based on lexical cohesion theory can improve the English writing achievements of senior high school students.Therefore,Chinese English teachers should add the cohesion theory to English teaching,cultivate students' awareness of cohesion,and guide students to enlarge vocabulary and strengthen the training of students' writing.However,due to the limitations of the conditions,the number of samples in this study is insufficient,and the experimental time is short,so the conclusion of this study needs further discussion.How to improve students' English writing research in teaching practice is still to be explored.