The Investigative Study Of The Application Of Cohesion Devices In The English Writing To High School Students

High school years are an important stage in people’s academic life.Senior high school students have active mind and strong learning ability,which can enhance their comprehensive ability of English.This stage is also a watershed in learning,so English learning makes a great difference to senior high school students.In high school,we should cultivate not only students’ communicative capability of English listening and speaking,but also their practical ability to read and write English.Writing teaching has always been one of the most important parts of English teaching in senior high school,accounting for a large proportion of the score of entrance examination to college.High school English composition are required to be short and concise,and the number of words ranges generally between one and two hundred.The main genres are argumentative,narrative,expository,and practical writing(letters,notices,speeches,diaries,and suggestions),and the topics cover a wide range of topics.Students are required to create fluent,coherent,natural,concise,but not verbose articles in order to examine their English writing performance.After making an analysis of document literature on textual cohesive devices on CNKI and other academic websites,this paper finds that the relevant research at home mainly focuses on the relationship between cohesive devices and college English writing teaching,while less priority has been given to senior high school English writing,which mainly focuses on empirical research and applied research,let alone the survey research.Previous studies have shown that there is a certain correlation between the use of cohesive devices and the quality of writing.Therefore,this paper attempts to further investigate and study the following three issues on the basis of the existing research in combination with discourse cohesion theory,taking 110 senior high school students in Harbin as the research object:(1)How well do senior high school students understand textual cohesive devices?(2)How do senior high school students use textual cohesion in their English compositions?(3)What is the correlation between the cohesive devices and the quality of compositions in senior high school?After collecting,analyzing and studying 90 valid questionnaires and 110 composition samples,it is found that the frequency and types of cohesive devices used in senior high school English writing are different.But generally speaking,referential cohesion,lexical cohesion and connecting devices are more frequently used,rather than ellipsis and substitution devices.The research results show that there is a positive correlation between the number of discourse cohesive devices used in senior high school students’ English compositions and the quality of their compositions to a certain extent: students who use more discourse cohesive devices correctly in English compositions have achieved higher quality and score in their compositions,vice versa.The aforementioned research results show that the effective use of textual cohesive devices makes a significant contribution to senior high school students’ English writing,and it is necessary to teach students how to use textual cohesive devices in senior high school.Although senior high school students can use certain cohesive devices in their English writing,they misuse,abuse and are unable to use the devices in some cases.Therefore,this paper maintains that English teachers in senior high school should systematically teach the relevant knowledge of textual cohesive devices,so that students can have a clear understanding of textual cohesive devices and apply them to writing practice,so as to create coherent and high-quality articles.