An Application Of Cohesion Theory To English Writing Teaching In Senior High Schools

Since Halliday and Hasan published Cohesion in English in 1976,the cohesion theory has attracted learners’ attention at home and abroad.However,the application of cohesion theory to English teaching is far from satisfactory,especially in teaching English writing in senior high schools.Most teachers in senior high limit their teaching to words,phrases and sentences,mainly instructing grammar structures in detail and training students’ ability at grammar levels.Thus,the cultivation of textual and cohesive awareness has not been taken seriously.Lack of awareness of cohesion and coherence can be found in most students’compositions and it is a very difficult task to produce a cohesive,logical and coherent piece of writing for students.As a young teacher working in a normal senior high school,the writer feels it a duty to help students improve the cohesion level in their writing.The writer tries to apply the cohesion theory to English writing teaching and find a practical and effective approach in cohesive devices teaching.According to cohesion theory,there are five types of cohesive devices:reference,substitution,ellipsis,conjunction and lexical cohesion,among which conjunction is the main object of study in this thesis.In order to analyze the current situation of English writing teaching and learning in the senior high school,the writer interviews 14 English teachers,does questionnaire&pretest on 89 students(two classes of the writer)and collects their compositions in No.6 senior high school of Wangcheng.The results show that most teachers and students indeed ignore the cohesive relations in English writing,and the conjunctions the students use are simple and dull.So,the writer designs four stages of conjunctions teaching:additive,temporal,adversative and causal.Each stage consists of four rounds:input---instruct---check---test.In the first two rounds,the teacher uses sentences or paragraphs from the textbook the students are using as input materials and ask students to find conjunctions appearing in the context,and then expand to explain.In the last two rounds,the teacher exploits extracurricular materials to check the students and test them by items adapted from NMET(National Matriculation English Test).After the second stage and the fourth stage,the students’ compositions from the monthly test and final exam are collected for study and comparison.The writer tries to analyze the situation of students’ mastery in conjunctions by three means---small-sized text(sentences),medium-sized text(cloze)and large-sized text(compositions).After the study,the writer finds that students use more additive,temporal and causal conjunctions;the students at high levels or with active motivation improve faster in conjunctive devices than those at low levels or with negative motivation;these 89 students are superior to other students in the same grade in the number and types of conjunctions applied to the writings and the gap is increasing with the students levels.In this thesis,the writer focuses on one kind of cohesive device---conjunction,using language materials directly from the textbook as input and various ways of test suitable for different levels of students.Consequently,the writer proves the model:input---instruct---check---test useful and effective,and hopes that it can be applied to other cohesive devices teaching.