A Study Of The Application Of Discourse Cohesion Theory To Continuation Task Teaching In Senior High School

In recent years,the continuation task has been added to the writing section in the National Matriculation English Test papers in an increasing number of provinces.The English Curriculum Standards for General Senior High School(2020 Revision)has explicitly required that students should learn to apply discourse cohesion knowledge to their writings in order to make them more cohesive and coherent.However,in the current continuation task teaching class,most of the teachers and students in the senior high school have attached little importance to discourse cohesion.Therefore,the students lacked awareness of discourse cohesion and were incapable of effectively utilizing various discourse cohesive devices to complete the continuation task.In order to remedy the above-mentioned deficiencies,the present study attempted to apply the discourse cohesion theory developed by Halliday and Hasan to the continuation task teaching in senior high school.The following questions have been answered in the thesis:(1)What is the current situation of senior high school students’ use of discourse cohesive devices in continuation task?(2)What are the effects of discourse-cohesion-theory-based teaching on senior high school students’ discourse cohesion awareness in continuation task?(3)What are the effects of discourse-cohesion-theory-based teaching on senior high school students’ writing performance in continuation task?A 14-week teaching experiment on continuation task has been carried out in two parallel classes with a total of 91 students in Grade Two in a senior high school in Zhaoqing City.During the experiment,the experimental class has adopted discourse-cohesion-theory-based teaching while the control class has insisted the traditional teaching.Questionnaires,tests and interview have been utilized to collect related data,which have been processed and analyzed through the software SPSS 27.0 and Excel.The results show that after the experiment,compared with the students in the control class,the students in the experimental class are more likely to put greater emphasis on the achievement of discourse cohesion and become more conscious of using varieties of cohesive devices to make their continuation task compositions cohesive and coherent.Moreover,the students’ attitudes to discourse cohesion have become more positive and their writing performance in the continuation task has been improved significantly.This study provides some teaching implications for the continuation task teaching in senior high school.Firstly,teachers ought to raise students’ discourse cohesion awareness by involving students in English learning activities that conform to real situations.Secondly,teachers should strengthen the teaching of cohesive devices through explicit instruction,thus enhancing students’ discourse cohesion abilities and their English writing abilities.