英语写作手段运文Use of Cohesive Devices on English Compositions
By College Students
Zhao Jing
Abstract：To EFL learners writing is the most difficult among the four basic skills In all levels of English proficiency tests writing is an important part However EFL learners are weak in this aspect which causes great concern among researchers and teachers Some researchers have found that Chinese students are relatively poor in organizing the text and seldom use cohesive devices in their compositions Students are inclined to omit necessary conjuncts improperly use conjuncts or incorrectly use conjuncts This study starts with a relatively systematic and complete account of the development of theories of cohesion Then focusing on how cohesive devices are correctly used and whether cohesive devices are used correctly according to cohesion principles It draws 20 sample compositions from 40 compositions by first –year nonEnglish major students at Jianhan University Shiyan Normal College as the corpus and adopts theories of cohesion to analyze the use of cohesive devices In addition it tries to locate the underlying reasons for the errors Finally it gives some pedagogical suggestions
Key words **
容提：英语学者说写作直听说读写四种基技中难度项种英语水考试中写作非常重部分然英语学者写作力十分欠缺现象引起广**语教师研究者关注前研究发现衔接手段总体情况中国学生语篇布局力弱学生写作中较少语篇衔接手段文章跳跃性文中题间缺乏机联系没明显应等意义难连贯文首先语篇衔接理进行较完整概述然
40名**学实验师范学院2006级非英语专业学生英语作文中抽取20篇作语料运语篇衔接理统计出种衔接手段情况发现错误解释衔接错语原时总结出正确衔接手段体现出特点文提出教学建议
关键词：衔接衔接手段英语写作
Introduction
Writing the expression of ideas in written words is one of the most important means of communication and it has been playing a significant role in conveying people's ideas and feelings Although research reveals that a greater amount of information is conveyed in spoken form in our daily life through writing ideas and feelings can be expressed in a clearer and more systematic way Nowadays as English is so widely used in the world taken as a lingua franca an increasing number of people have come to realize that it is necessary to develop and improve their writing skill in English
However writing is in fact a challenging task for both English native speakers and learners of English as a second language or of English as a foreign language As Walters (1983 17) puts it writing is the last and perhaps the most difficult skill students learn if they ever do For decades teachers of writing have dedicated a lot of efforts to work with their students to help them improve writing proficiency according to student needs and course goals advancing beyond their current writing skill level In
China all of the standard English proficiency tests such as CET4 CET6 TEM4 and TEM8 include a writing section which is designed to test the writing ability of students at different levels Yet statistics show that students are generally still poor at writing and they feel it quite difficult to write a composition in English which is satisfactory in organization content and language It is not unusual that a student of English who has learned English for more than eight years produces an essay that is not easy to understand even if there are few grammatical mistakes involved The reason lies to a great extent in the way English writing is traditionally taught It has been noted that it is the sentence rather than the text as a whole that has received the primary focus of study (Johns 1984) The development of students' discourse competence is neglected by many teachers of writing Grammar and structures are overemphasized the accuracy of which is the major criterion for evaluating essays while the coherent written text in English has received far less attention Partly because of this the English compositions of Chinese college students are by no means logically organized texts even if all the grammatical mistakes have been corrected So how to help students make their composition coherent is a hot topic that has attracted attention of both language researchers and teachers It is widely agreed that the proper use of cohesive devices will be an effective way to achieve that goal As Halliday and Hasan point out cohesion is the foundation of coherence and what makes a text a text This study focusing on the use of cohesive devices by firstyear nonEnglish major college students in their English composition will try to find out the general problem of students’ use of them and put forward some pedagogical suggestions on this aspect
My selection of the research topic and the upcoming analysis will serve the following purposes
The first and foremost purpose for carrying out this study is to find out the students’ true competence in using cohesive links and the reasons underlying their performance This analysis is an important step and will certainly be of great help in the change from the grammaroriented teaching method of writing to discourseoriented one which will help to increase the students’ discourse awareness and competence in writing
The second and more important purpose is to shed some light on some better and more efficient ways to teach English
However the identification of the common features and problems is not an end of the present study The second and more important purpose is to provide some significant implications for the teaching and learning of these items
Chapter 1 Literature Review
Among the four basic skills in foreign language competence writing is one of the most complicated processes of production for learners of English Though teachers and students put in large quantities of time and energy the results are far from satisfactory This phenomenon has caused great concern among language teachers and researchers who both have made significant contributions to a relatively comprehensive theory of writing Wang Wenyu and Wang Lifei have reviewed the results of empirical studies on ESL compositions which include the effects of thinking in first language (FL) the textual characteristics language characteristics teaching and testing of second language (SL) writing Also they point out directions for future researches Similarly Li Zhixue and Li Shaoshan(2003) have summarized three general features of researches on learners’ compositions published in eight key academic journals from 1993 to 2002 which are a tendency of the increasing number an expanding research scope and various research methods These researches have been conducted from different perspectives From the perspective of teaching some have discussed how to cultivate students’ textual and stylistic awareness in writing the influence of teacher’s correction on writing the influence of rating criteria for writing in college English tests on teachers’ teaching others have investigated in detail the various factors which play their different roles in developing students’ writing abilities or explored new ways in how to teach writing effectively From the perspective of learning some have analyzed the cohesion errors in students’ compositions From the perspective of comparison and contrast between English and Chinese some have compared the characteristics of English compositions on the same topic by English and Chinese students some have discussed the differences of thinking modes between English and Chinese students and their corresponding effects on writing This thesis intends to explore the issue of writing from a different perspective by discussing the textual coherence cohesive devices and their roles in producing good composition
In recent years how to improve students’ writing abilities by effectively using cohesive devices has become a hot topic in foreign language teaching both abroad and home BiesenbachLucas et al have compared the influences of different writing media (word processing software and email) on use of 12 cohesive devices and general length in writing by Arabian and Asian students At home the relevant studies and researches have grown in both quality and quantity and achieved some insightful findings Some researchers consider all cohesive devices as a whole Du Jinbang (2001) has found that Chinese students are relatively poor in organizing the text and seldom use cohesive devices in their compositions Xu Weicheng(2000) after grading and comparing composition on the same topic by 28 fourthyear English major students and 9 Englishspeaking foreign teachers has found that good compositions use more cohesive devices than poor ones which is reflected in the use of lexical cohesion On the other hand obvious distinctions of use of cohesive devices were discovered among compositions by Chinese students and foreign teachers What’s more Xu has also found positive relationship between the total number of cohesive devices and the quality of the writing They have come to the conclusion that in good compositions grammatical cohesion and lexical cohesion have higher frequency distributions than those in compositions of poor quality
Some other researchers have conducted analysis of specific types of cohesive devices in students’ compositions Yu Lianjiang and Zhang Zuogong through statistical analysis of students’ sample composition have discovered a frequency distribution rank of five categories of cohesive devices and classified the errors in using conjunctions Students are inclined to omit necessary conjuncts improperly use conjuncts or incorrectly use conjuncts Zhou Mei(2002) starting from describing and analyzing the errors of using cohesive devices in nonEnglish major students’ compositions and taking into consideration college English teaching has put forward some constructive suggestions as to how to develop students’ abilities to correctly use cohesive devices which include systematical training on textual cohesive devices and correction by students themselves Pan Fan and Feng Yuejin(2004) have adopted both qualitative and quantitative methods to compare the different use of conjunctions between the compositions of nonEnglish major postgraduate students and those of native speakers Their study has produced three major findings Firstly conjunctions are much underused by Chinese students Secondly the choices for conjunctions by the two groups of users are similar Thirdly the two groups of users show considerable variation on use of the same conjunction to express different semantic relations thus indicating that overuse and underuse of conjunctions also exist at the semantic level
Chapter 2 Theoretical Framework
In this chapter a thorough classification of cohesive devices in the English language will be discussed Then in order to find out error in the use cohesive devices we will introduce the principles for use of cohesive devices
21 Theories of Cohesive Devices
The concept of cohesion was firstly proposed by Halliday and Hasan in 1976 In their book Cohesion in English they argue that a text has texture which makes a text a unity with respect to its context and distinguishes the text from a disconnected sequence of sentences Cohesion refers to the relations of meaning that exist within a text [1] Cohesion occurs where the interpretation of one element in the text is dependent on that of another in a previous or later sentence The two elements together make a cohesive tie According to Halliday and Hasan the concept of a tie is of great practical use making it possible to analyze a text in terms of its cohesive properties and give systematic account of its patterns of texture [2] To realize cohesion lexical and grammatical mechanisms have to be employed which are termed as cohesive devices According to Halliday & Hasan cohesion is divided into two groups structural cohesion and nonstructural cohesion Structure cohesion includes parallelism themerheme structure and givennew information structure Nonstructural cohesion can be further divided into grammatical and lexical cohesive devices The former includes reference ellipsis substitution and conjunction while the latter includes reiteration synonymyantonym hyponymy and collocation
Parallelism
Structural Cohesion Thematic structure
Information structure
Reference
Cohesion Grammatical Ellipsis
Substitution
Nonstructural Cohesion Conjunction
Reiteration
Lexical SynonymyAntonym
Hyponymy
Collocation
As this study focuses on the problems of students’ use of nonstructural cohesion in their composition we need to explain the specific cohesive devices concerned in detail
211 Reference
Reference is the most obvious among all the types of cohesive devices It occurs where the identity of an item can be retrieved from elsewhere In fact in every language there are certain items which have the property of reference Altogether there are three types of reference personal demonstrative and comparative Generally speaking comparative reference is the area where the students perform the best as misuse or overuse in this aspect is seldom found in their essays and problems occur mainly in the use of personal and demonstrative reference
212 Ellipsis
Ellipsis refers to the situation in which some item is left unsaid but understood nevertheless It is a quite common linguistic phenomenon and it conforms to the Economy Principle proposed by French linguist Martinet When people communicate they are inclined to use units of fewer linguistic items and consume less labor to make communication go smoothly It can both alleviate the burdens of information coders and decoders in the communication process According to Halliday & Hasan ellipsis can be grouped in nominal ellipsis verbal ellipsis and clausal ellipsis
213 Substitution
Substitution can be thought of in the simplest term as processes within the text which refers to the proform with which to replace the word or expression in the context as the replacement of one item by another It can be used to help to link up the original words or phrases with their substitutes to avoid repetition and to achieve a cohesive text as well Halliday and Hasan suggest three types of substitution according to grammatical function nominal substitution (the proforms are one ones the same etc) verbal substitution (the various forms of do as proforms) clausal substitution (main proforms are so and not)
214 Conjunction
Conjunction is a type of cohesive relation which shows how the subsequent sentence or clause should be linked to the preceding (parts of the) sentence Different from reference substitution and ellipsis it is not simply an anaphoric relation According to Halliday and Hasan conjunctive elements are cohesive not in themselves but indirectly by virtue of their specific meanings they are not primarily devices for reaching out into the preceding (or following) text but they express certain meanings which presuppose the presence of other components in the discourse[3] This type of cohesive relation is realized by the use of conjunctions which are divided by Halliday and Hasan into four main categories additive adversative causal and temporal
215 Reiteration
Reiteration is the repetition of a lexical item or the occurrence of a synonym of some kind in the context of reference that is where two occurrences have he same referent[4] Quite often a reiterated item is used with a demonstrative of the definite article the
216 Synonymy & Antonym
Synonymy and antonym are semantic relations between words There is no consensus on definition of synonyms In MerrianWebster’s Collegiate Dictionary it is held that synonyms are two or more words or expressions of the same language that have same or nearly the same meaning in some or all senses[5]As for antonyms they are even more difficult to define Kempson once elaborated that
The term which is in general use for the relation between lexica items whose meanings conflict is antonym oppositeness of meaning But this is not a very helpful term since there are many ways in which lexical items can stand in opposition to each other[6]
217 Hyponymy
Hyponymy refers to the relation between two lexical units in which the meaning of the first is included in that of the second[7]
218 Collocation
Many linguists have discussed collocation as a kind of semantic relationship between words The term was first used by Firth in 1950s which then referred to the language environment in which an item appears In Halliday & Hasan it was considered as an important lexical cohesion which is simply a cover term for the cohesion that results from the cooccurrence of lexical items that are in some way or other typically associated with one another because they tend to occur in similar environment[8]
22 Principles for Use of Cohesive Devices
On the basis of studies in Halliday & Hasan (1976) Zhang Delu & Liu Rushan (2003) summarizes ten principles of internal textual cohesion as shown below which are powerful tools for data analysis in empirical studies
Chart21 Principles for Use of Cohesive Devices
Principle 1 The Reference Principle
If an item occurs continuously we will use the same pronoun not the noun form to refer to it
Principle 2 The Blockage Principle
If an item reoccurs after being blocked by other items we should use the noun form to refer to it again
Principle 3 The Narrative Focus Principle
The narrative focus is generally referred to with pronouns and nonnarrative focus is referred to with either pronouns or nouns
Principle 4 The Differentiability Principle
The referring form used shall help the reader or listener easily locate the right referent out of other referents
Principle 5 The Mental Distance principle
The distance between cohesive ties is a mental distance Nouns will be used to continue the cohesive link if mental distance is interrupted
Principle 6 The Consistency Principle
In order to emphasize or avoid misunderstanding sometimes we use the same item to refer to the same thing when it occurs more than once This is often seen in texts with strong logical reasoning
Principle 7 The Variation Principle
When an item appears more than once we use different items to express it which are synonyms This is often seen in literary works
Principle 8 The Redundancy Principle
If the substitutions of one item by another cause a sentence to be redundant this item should be omitted
Principle 9 The Slot Occupation Substitution Principle
If a substitute is omitted the original information cannot be recovered or the cohesion cannot be formed so this substitute cannot be omitted
Principle 10 The Natural Sequence Principle
If we can organize sentences we needn’t use any conjunction
Chapter 3 Analysis of Cohesive Devices in College Students’ Essays
In this section we will investigate each kind of cohesive devices according to the classification in chapter 2 For each type of cohesive devices the frequency number of error and the rate of error will be computed as the basic statistical date for analysis
31 Data Collection
The writer draws 20 sample compositions from 40 compositions by first –year nonEnglish major students at Jianhan University Shiyan Normal College The students were asked to write on a given topic an argumentative essay of about two hundred words For this type of text a prompt was employed the topic of the essay is Is computer good for human beings All the subjects were required to complete the whole writing task within a 45 minute time limit with no previous preparation and no dictionary could be used
32 Overall Use of Cohesive Devices
In order to have a comprehensive understanding of how cohesive devices are used in subjects’ compositions we will analyze the following items the total number of cohesive devices the number of each kind of cohesive devices the kind of cohesive device which is of highest rate of error and the kind of cohesive device which is of lowest rate of error Statistical results will be shown in corresponding tables As there is no significant number of some cohesive devices in subjects’ compositions we will focus most of our attention on reference substitution ellipsis conjunction and lexical reiteration
Chart 31 Use of Cohesive Devices
Type
Total number
Number of errors
Rate of errors
Reference
502
61
1215
Substitution
2
1
50
Ellipsis
1
0
0
Conjunction
228
31
1359
Lexical reiteration
268
74
2764
Total
1001
167
1668
33 Detailed Analysis of Cohesive Devices
In this section we will investigate each kind of cohesive devices according to the classification in chapter 3 For each type of cohesive devices the frequency number of errors and rate of error will be computed Also reasons for some errors will be explored
331 Reference
As discussed in the theoretical framework in chapter 2 reference is divided into three types personal reference demonstrative reference and comparative reference We will discuss the use of them in the sample compositions one by one
Chart 32 Personal reference
Type
Personal reference
Frequency
272
Number of errors
30
Rate of error
1103
Through a thorough study of the sample compositions some prominent features of subjects’ use of personal reference can be identified
First the student writers are inclined to use the plural form of first personal reference as a generalized reference term It gives the readers an impression that the writer comes from the same group with them who share common interests opinions and experiences It can also create an intimate tone and enhance the acceptability of the writer’s opinions In almost every subject’s writing we can find more than one case of this feature For example
(Sample 2) Computer can help our friends closer to each other because no matter where we are if we have computer we can chat with each other
The use of we in this example helps achieve the resonance between the writer and the reader as if they both have similar experience More examples can be found in Sample17
(Sample 17) First we can get much important information from the computer immediately Second we can watch movies and listen to music from the computer Third we can do shopping on the internet
Second the singular form of first personal reference I is also used at a high frequency The usage of I in this argumentative writing task is mainly to express personal ideas and opinions which is commonly seen in phrases like I think… I don’t think… I believe… and in my opinion… For instance
(Sample 1) In my opinion everything in the world has two sides
(Sample 9) I think if we use computer in the right way the computer can make our life more and more convenient
By using these phrases the writer clearly states his own opinions so it is easy for readers to grasp his point of view However in some subjects’ compositions we do find errors such as improper use of colloquialism or phrases with too heavy Chinese flavor For example
(Sample 12) I personally think the computer is good for human beings
It is needless to say that I think will be followed by someone’s own point of view so personally here is a tautological word and should be omitted This error is in nature of first language interference since in Chinese we often use the expression 认
In addition to the above error one or two students use a similar or the same expression in the same sentence or adjacent sentence It causes redundancy For example
(Sample 10) In my opinion I think computer’s advantages are more than disadvantages
(Sample 20) But I think internet has advantages more than disadvantages So I think internet is a good thing
Third the plural form of third personal reference is used in many compositions as a generic term to refer to people in general In Sample 15 a typical example can be found
(Sample 15) Many students wallow in computer games and they waste a lot of money and don’t go to school to study
Also a similar example is seen in Sample 16
(Sample 16) It helps people to keep in touch with their friends
The above is a discussion on the features of students’ using personal reference correctly however some common errors are also identified which can be roughly grouped into four categories
First the referring term and referent do not conform to each other in number or gender Grammatical ignorance is the most important underlying reason for this kind of errors For example
(Sample 2) For example internet provides us a lot of information When we need these we can gain from it quickly
Apparently this writer doesn’t realize that information is an uncountable noun so we should change these into this
More examples can be located in Sample 13 and Sample 14
(Sample 13) If we surf on the internet for a long time they are bad for our eyes and health
(Sample 14) We can talk with our friends who we haven’t seen for a long time wherever shehe is
In the former example they are should be corrected as it is and in the later one shehe is should be corrected as they are It is really of great need for teachers to remind their students of the importance of avoiding minor grammatical mistakes if they want to achieve good scores in writing
Second there are some cases of grammaticallyincorrect use of personal reference For example
(Sample 10) And I believe it will show our more wonderful world of internet in the future
(Sample 16) In fact everything has it’s better and bad sides…
Apparently our and it’s should be corrected into us and its If the writers were a little more careful these two errors should be easily avoided
Third many referring terms used by student writers don’t have clear and specific referents so that readers will experience great difficulty in understanding For example
(Sample 2) Internet can help you to keep good relation You can not only send email to them but also can chat with them on QQ although how far they are away from you Internet will connect you together
In this segment the student writer tells the readers one of the benefits we can get from the internet which is keeping a good relationship But the readers have no clue of knowing with whom the writer wants to keep a good relationship thus unable to find out whom they and them refer to The other problem is the use of you The four you s are the same in form but quite different in referents The first three refer to the general reading public while the last one designates the reader and the people with whom the reader wants to keep a good relationship According to the Differentiability Principle (Principle 4) it is advisable for us to change them as follows
Internet can help you to keep good relationship with good friends You can not only send email to them but also can chat with them on QQ although how far they are away from you Internet will connect you and your friends together
More errors of this sort are found
(Sample16)We can also play games on it and do my businesses
The abrupt shift from we to my causes difficulty in readers’ comprehension so these two referring forms should be consistent with each other We should change my into our
Fourth a small number of student writer overused personal reference which causes redundancy or difficulty in comprehension For example
(Sample 18) Now let’s me tell you something about which is I think
Apparently s (us) is redundant It is not as simple as a slip of the pen At our early stages of learning English let’s (let us) is taught to us as a whole by our teachers which consists of one of the common formulaic speeches in SLA In Rod Ellis formulaic speeches are seen as the readymade phrase acquired by many learners in the early stage L2 acquisition
[9]
Finally a few student writers still use personal reference a long distance away from the place where the referent first appears in a noun form According to The Mental Distance Principle (Principle 5) noun forms should be used in this situation For example
(Sample 2) …It is very useful for us
For readers’ convenience it should be changed into computer because it is the first time of this paragraph to mention computer so it must appear in a noun form
Chart 33 Demonstratives
Type
Thisthese
Thatthose
Frequency
12
4
Number of errors
4
1
Rate of error
3333
25
As shown in chart33 student writers used a very small number of demonstrative pronouns In most cases the demonstrative pronouns are used correctly (6667and 75) but we do find some problems worth our attention
(Sample 18) Those years with the development of internet our life has changed a lot and it becomes better and better
This is an opening sentence of the writing Without any information from the writer what this those refers to may puzzle the readers Commonly phrase like those days and those years when used with no other modifiers mean the days or years before liberation Apparently it is not the writer’s intention here so we can change Those into In recent
Chart 34 Definite article
Type
The
Frequency
142
Number of error
16
Rate of error
1126
It can be seen from chart 34 that the frequency of the is very high however the rate of error is correspondingly high Many errors may be attributed to a prominent difference between English and Chinese In Chinese there is no equivalent form to the definite article the in English which undoubtedly increases the difficulty of mastering it for Chinese learners In English the definite article has no meaning in itself When it is used with a noun phrase it specifies that the referent of the noun phrase should be known to both the addresser In a written text whenever the information is recoverable either in the situation or in the text the presence of the creates a link between the sentence in which it occurs and that containing the referential information (Halliday & Hasan 197666)
In students’ compositions the use of the is quite arbitrary For example
(Sample 3) [ ] beautiful world is becoming worse
(Sample 9) In all the computer has disadvantages and advantages
Since we don’t have onetoone correspondence of the definite article the in Chinese student writers tend to omit the use of the (Sample 3) or use the when it is not necessary (Sample 9) These errors are errors of negative transfer
Chart 35 Comparatives
Type
Simple
Complex
Total
Frequency
32
21
53
Number of errors
6
4
10
Rate of error
1875
1914
1886
As can be seen in chart 35 Chinese learns of English are still weak in using comparative reference with a total rate of error of 1886 The use of comparative reference can be divided into two types simple form and complex form The former refers to the comparative form of disyllabic words which should take morphological changes whereas the latter refers to the comparative form of multisyllabic words which should add more to the original word Many students often overgeneralize the rule of comparative form of multisyllabic words for disyllabic ones for example
(Sample 6) Computer as a great invention makes the world become more small
(Sample 17) …we can communicate with others through computer and it’s more cheaper and easier than other communication tools
These errors can easily be done away if the student writers were a little more careful
Another kind of errors of the use of comparative reference is influenced by the Chinese language and can be attributed to negative transfer In the Chinese language we express comparatives with the phrase 越越 which means more and more This is employed so frequently that in each of all 20 sample compositions we can find more than one instance It is correct as long as the word is a multisyllabic one however more than often this is overused For example
(Sample 14) Nowadays the development of society is more and more fast
Obviously this error should be corrected as faster and faster
332 Substitution
Student writers don’t produce a significant number of errors of substitution because of too few instances of use Only 2 instances are found which can be roughly grouped into two kinds So I won’t discuss it any more
333 Ellipsis
In all the 20 samples only one case of using ellipsis is found which shows that students are still weak in using ellipsis to achieve brevity in their composition
(Sample 6) In the library we often spend much time getting information that we want to have sometimes we fail to
Here the student writer omits get the information that we want to have which is a verbal ellipsis Due to no significant number of errors the use of ellipsis will not be further discussed
334 Conjunction
Chart 36 Conjunction
Type
Conjunction
Frequency
228
Number of errors
31
Rate of error
1359
In the students writers’ compositions the items and but however so therefore fast second or because and for example are the first ten conjunctions with the highest frequency used in these essays And however for example therefore so but and and are frequently used by English native speakers This may suggest that the college students who are all advanced English learners are aware of and tend to employ these high frequency conjunctive devices in their essays
Nevertheless it is found that in the essays conjunctions are not always employed effectively or correctly For example
(Sample15) Many students wallow in computer games and they waste a lot of money then don’t go to school to study
(Sample19) Although it makes our life more convenient but it also makes our life more terrible
Here then should be and although and but can’t be used together so we must only choose one of them
335 Lexical cohesion
As we discussed in the theoretical framework in chapter 3 we can divide lexical cohesion into four subcategories which are reiteration synonymantonym hyponym and collocation Since there are no significant instances of use of the latter three ones we shall only discuss how reiteration is used for this study
Chart 36 Reiteration
Type
Reiteration
Frequency
268
Overuse
74
Rate of error
2764
As shown in the chart 36 student writers have a strong tendency of using reiteration cohesive ties but when the same one word is used too often compositions will be dull to read This might be attributed to the fact that they have a quite limited vocabulary or they are under great influence of the difference between English and Chinese As we know English texts are characterized by linear structure while Chinese texts spiral structure In linearly constructed texts there is usually one topic sentence and the rest ones explain or comment on the topic sentence thus the things or people concerned with the topic may appear many times and they often occur in the form of a pronoun However there may be only one theme in a spirally constructed text but many topics so the necessity of lexical reiteration is greater than that in a linearly constructed text
Actually most student writers use lexical reiteration of computer throughout their compositions For example
(Sample 9) In our daily life computers are become more and more popular Many families have been brought computers We can use computer to do many things such as surfing on the internet writing notes about ourselves talking with many friends look for information in the internet We also can use computer to teach and watch I think if we use computer in the right way the computer can make our life more and more convenient
336 Summary
This chapter on the basis of statistical analysis has discussed how different cohesive devices are used by 20 subjects The writer have not only summarized the features of students’ using them but also explored the reasons underlying the errors The writer intends the study to benefit English teachers as well as learners
Conclusion
As a competent English teacher one should be clear that it is far from enough to make grammatical analysis on the sentence level We should extract useful theories from sentence to text In order to improve our teaching on textual cohesive devices and quality of students’ composition this study generates the following pedagogical implications
First of all English teachers should emphasize the influence of linguistic and cultural differences between English and Chinese on writing Writing is not only an activity which involves language but also an activity of thinking Thinking is the soul of language while language is the vehicle of thinking People from different cultures have distinct styles of written language It is the same with Chinese and English Therefore teachers should take their responsibility for introducing the English thinking mode in organizing texts and compare it with that of the Chinese language Moreover it is of great need for teachers to find out some practical methods to cultivate students’ awareness of the differences of cohesive between Chinese and English texts
Secondly teachers of English should provide students with a systematic training on how to use cohesive devices to achieve coherence The taxonomy proposed by Halliday and Hasan (1976) should be introduced to them with the help of model texts as examples Contrastive analysis of examples of correct use and misuse of a certain cohesive device would be very helpful for the students to get aware of its meaning and correct use Adequate exercises taking different forms also need to be developed For instance students can be asked to exchange the essays they write and try to find out the cohesive items that are used inappropriately or wrongly giving reasons from the discourse perspective Enough practice would surely improve the undergraduates' discourse competence As for the positioning of conjunctions it is necessary for teachers to introduce to students the various positions where a conjunction can be placed by English native speakers and some common practice in this regard so that students could write more like a native What is worth noting is that compared with reference and conjunction greater efforts should be devoted to the improvement in the use of lexical cohesion in students' writing as it takes a longer time to develop lexical competence Students need to be made aware that too much repetition of the same word would leave the text dull and tedious Moreover they should be encouraged to express the same ideas with synonyms super ordinates and general words Misuse of collocations could be improved if new words are taught in their contexts of use
Thirdly writing and reading are similar but reverse processes Students’ discourse competence can be developed and improved with the help of teachers of reading as well as those of writing Thus in reading class teachers should put more emphasis on the analysis of the organization and different cohesive devices employed to see how they contribute to textual coherence than the summary of main ideas of each part and the explanation of new words and phrases isolated from the contexts of use
To conclude writing as a complex thinking process is under the influence of various factors such as students’ logical thinking abilities language competence and writing skills However writing abilities are the most closely related to learners’ grammatical competence and textual competence Without grammatical competence learners lose their basis for writing without textual competence their writing is in a state of disunity As can be seen in this study textual competence should receive prime attention in our college English teaching Teachers should introduce the overall differences of textual organization and use of specific cohesive devices with the help of model texts from intensive reading course Also relevant exercises should be provided to intensity students’ comprehension Only by doing these can quality of students’ compositions be improved
Notes
[1] MAK Halliday & R Hasan Cohesion in English [M] London Longman 1976 4
[2] Ibid 4
[3] Ibid 226
[4] Ibid 318319
[5] Matthews PH Oxford Concise Dictionary of Linguistics [M] Shanghai
Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press 2000 56
[6] Kempson R M Semantic Theory[M] Cambridge Cambridge University Press1997 84
[7] Matthews PH Oxford Concise Dictionary of Linguistics[M] ShanghaiShanghai Foreign Language Education Press 2000 167
[8] MAK Halliday & R Hasan Cohesion in English[M] London Longman 1976 68
[9]Ellis R Understanding Second Language Acquisition[M] ShanghaiShanghai Foreign Language Education Press 1999 703
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By College Students
Zhao Jing
Abstract：To EFL learners writing is the most difficult among the four basic skills In all levels of English proficiency tests writing is an important part However EFL learners are weak in this aspect which causes great concern among researchers and teachers Some researchers have found that Chinese students are relatively poor in organizing the text and seldom use cohesive devices in their compositions Students are inclined to omit necessary conjuncts improperly use conjuncts or incorrectly use conjuncts This study starts with a relatively systematic and complete account of the development of theories of cohesion Then focusing on how cohesive devices are correctly used and whether cohesive devices are used correctly according to cohesion principles It draws 20 sample compositions from 40 compositions by first –year nonEnglish major students at Jianhan University Shiyan Normal College as the corpus and adopts theories of cohesion to analyze the use of cohesive devices In addition it tries to locate the underlying reasons for the errors Finally it gives some pedagogical suggestions
Key words **
容提：英语学者说写作直听说读写四种基技中难度项种英语水考试中写作非常重部分然英语学者写作力十分欠缺现象引起广**语教师研究者关注前研究发现衔接手段总体情况中国学生语篇布局力弱学生写作中较少语篇衔接手段文章跳跃性文中题间缺乏机联系没明显应等意义难连贯文首先语篇衔接理进行较完整概述然
40名**学实验师范学院2006级非英语专业学生英语作文中抽取20篇作语料运语篇衔接理统计出种衔接手段情况发现错误解释衔接错语原时总结出正确衔接手段体现出特点文提出教学建议
关键词：衔接衔接手段英语写作
Introduction
Writing the expression of ideas in written words is one of the most important means of communication and it has been playing a significant role in conveying people's ideas and feelings Although research reveals that a greater amount of information is conveyed in spoken form in our daily life through writing ideas and feelings can be expressed in a clearer and more systematic way Nowadays as English is so widely used in the world taken as a lingua franca an increasing number of people have come to realize that it is necessary to develop and improve their writing skill in English
However writing is in fact a challenging task for both English native speakers and learners of English as a second language or of English as a foreign language As Walters (1983 17) puts it writing is the last and perhaps the most difficult skill students learn if they ever do For decades teachers of writing have dedicated a lot of efforts to work with their students to help them improve writing proficiency according to student needs and course goals advancing beyond their current writing skill level In
China all of the standard English proficiency tests such as CET4 CET6 TEM4 and TEM8 include a writing section which is designed to test the writing ability of students at different levels Yet statistics show that students are generally still poor at writing and they feel it quite difficult to write a composition in English which is satisfactory in organization content and language It is not unusual that a student of English who has learned English for more than eight years produces an essay that is not easy to understand even if there are few grammatical mistakes involved The reason lies to a great extent in the way English writing is traditionally taught It has been noted that it is the sentence rather than the text as a whole that has received the primary focus of study (Johns 1984) The development of students' discourse competence is neglected by many teachers of writing Grammar and structures are overemphasized the accuracy of which is the major criterion for evaluating essays while the coherent written text in English has received far less attention Partly because of this the English compositions of Chinese college students are by no means logically organized texts even if all the grammatical mistakes have been corrected So how to help students make their composition coherent is a hot topic that has attracted attention of both language researchers and teachers It is widely agreed that the proper use of cohesive devices will be an effective way to achieve that goal As Halliday and Hasan point out cohesion is the foundation of coherence and what makes a text a text This study focusing on the use of cohesive devices by firstyear nonEnglish major college students in their English composition will try to find out the general problem of students’ use of them and put forward some pedagogical suggestions on this aspect
My selection of the research topic and the upcoming analysis will serve the following purposes
The first and foremost purpose for carrying out this study is to find out the students’ true competence in using cohesive links and the reasons underlying their performance This analysis is an important step and will certainly be of great help in the change from the grammaroriented teaching method of writing to discourseoriented one which will help to increase the students’ discourse awareness and competence in writing
The second and more important purpose is to shed some light on some better and more efficient ways to teach English
However the identification of the common features and problems is not an end of the present study The second and more important purpose is to provide some significant implications for the teaching and learning of these items
Chapter 1 Literature Review
Among the four basic skills in foreign language competence writing is one of the most complicated processes of production for learners of English Though teachers and students put in large quantities of time and energy the results are far from satisfactory This phenomenon has caused great concern among language teachers and researchers who both have made significant contributions to a relatively comprehensive theory of writing Wang Wenyu and Wang Lifei have reviewed the results of empirical studies on ESL compositions which include the effects of thinking in first language (FL) the textual characteristics language characteristics teaching and testing of second language (SL) writing Also they point out directions for future researches Similarly Li Zhixue and Li Shaoshan(2003) have summarized three general features of researches on learners’ compositions published in eight key academic journals from 1993 to 2002 which are a tendency of the increasing number an expanding research scope and various research methods These researches have been conducted from different perspectives From the perspective of teaching some have discussed how to cultivate students’ textual and stylistic awareness in writing the influence of teacher’s correction on writing the influence of rating criteria for writing in college English tests on teachers’ teaching others have investigated in detail the various factors which play their different roles in developing students’ writing abilities or explored new ways in how to teach writing effectively From the perspective of learning some have analyzed the cohesion errors in students’ compositions From the perspective of comparison and contrast between English and Chinese some have compared the characteristics of English compositions on the same topic by English and Chinese students some have discussed the differences of thinking modes between English and Chinese students and their corresponding effects on writing This thesis intends to explore the issue of writing from a different perspective by discussing the textual coherence cohesive devices and their roles in producing good composition
In recent years how to improve students’ writing abilities by effectively using cohesive devices has become a hot topic in foreign language teaching both abroad and home BiesenbachLucas et al have compared the influences of different writing media (word processing software and email) on use of 12 cohesive devices and general length in writing by Arabian and Asian students At home the relevant studies and researches have grown in both quality and quantity and achieved some insightful findings Some researchers consider all cohesive devices as a whole Du Jinbang (2001) has found that Chinese students are relatively poor in organizing the text and seldom use cohesive devices in their compositions Xu Weicheng(2000) after grading and comparing composition on the same topic by 28 fourthyear English major students and 9 Englishspeaking foreign teachers has found that good compositions use more cohesive devices than poor ones which is reflected in the use of lexical cohesion On the other hand obvious distinctions of use of cohesive devices were discovered among compositions by Chinese students and foreign teachers What’s more Xu has also found positive relationship between the total number of cohesive devices and the quality of the writing They have come to the conclusion that in good compositions grammatical cohesion and lexical cohesion have higher frequency distributions than those in compositions of poor quality
Some other researchers have conducted analysis of specific types of cohesive devices in students’ compositions Yu Lianjiang and Zhang Zuogong through statistical analysis of students’ sample composition have discovered a frequency distribution rank of five categories of cohesive devices and classified the errors in using conjunctions Students are inclined to omit necessary conjuncts improperly use conjuncts or incorrectly use conjuncts Zhou Mei(2002) starting from describing and analyzing the errors of using cohesive devices in nonEnglish major students’ compositions and taking into consideration college English teaching has put forward some constructive suggestions as to how to develop students’ abilities to correctly use cohesive devices which include systematical training on textual cohesive devices and correction by students themselves Pan Fan and Feng Yuejin(2004) have adopted both qualitative and quantitative methods to compare the different use of conjunctions between the compositions of nonEnglish major postgraduate students and those of native speakers Their study has produced three major findings Firstly conjunctions are much underused by Chinese students Secondly the choices for conjunctions by the two groups of users are similar Thirdly the two groups of users show considerable variation on use of the same conjunction to express different semantic relations thus indicating that overuse and underuse of conjunctions also exist at the semantic level
Chapter 2 Theoretical Framework
In this chapter a thorough classification of cohesive devices in the English language will be discussed Then in order to find out error in the use cohesive devices we will introduce the principles for use of cohesive devices
21 Theories of Cohesive Devices
The concept of cohesion was firstly proposed by Halliday and Hasan in 1976 In their book Cohesion in English they argue that a text has texture which makes a text a unity with respect to its context and distinguishes the text from a disconnected sequence of sentences Cohesion refers to the relations of meaning that exist within a text [1] Cohesion occurs where the interpretation of one element in the text is dependent on that of another in a previous or later sentence The two elements together make a cohesive tie According to Halliday and Hasan the concept of a tie is of great practical use making it possible to analyze a text in terms of its cohesive properties and give systematic account of its patterns of texture [2] To realize cohesion lexical and grammatical mechanisms have to be employed which are termed as cohesive devices According to Halliday & Hasan cohesion is divided into two groups structural cohesion and nonstructural cohesion Structure cohesion includes parallelism themerheme structure and givennew information structure Nonstructural cohesion can be further divided into grammatical and lexical cohesive devices The former includes reference ellipsis substitution and conjunction while the latter includes reiteration synonymyantonym hyponymy and collocation
Parallelism
Structural Cohesion Thematic structure
Information structure
Reference
Cohesion Grammatical Ellipsis
Substitution
Nonstructural Cohesion Conjunction
Reiteration
Lexical SynonymyAntonym
Hyponymy
Collocation
As this study focuses on the problems of students’ use of nonstructural cohesion in their composition we need to explain the specific cohesive devices concerned in detail
211 Reference
Reference is the most obvious among all the types of cohesive devices It occurs where the identity of an item can be retrieved from elsewhere In fact in every language there are certain items which have the property of reference Altogether there are three types of reference personal demonstrative and comparative Generally speaking comparative reference is the area where the students perform the best as misuse or overuse in this aspect is seldom found in their essays and problems occur mainly in the use of personal and demonstrative reference
212 Ellipsis
Ellipsis refers to the situation in which some item is left unsaid but understood nevertheless It is a quite common linguistic phenomenon and it conforms to the Economy Principle proposed by French linguist Martinet When people communicate they are inclined to use units of fewer linguistic items and consume less labor to make communication go smoothly It can both alleviate the burdens of information coders and decoders in the communication process According to Halliday & Hasan ellipsis can be grouped in nominal ellipsis verbal ellipsis and clausal ellipsis
213 Substitution
Substitution can be thought of in the simplest term as processes within the text which refers to the proform with which to replace the word or expression in the context as the replacement of one item by another It can be used to help to link up the original words or phrases with their substitutes to avoid repetition and to achieve a cohesive text as well Halliday and Hasan suggest three types of substitution according to grammatical function nominal substitution (the proforms are one ones the same etc) verbal substitution (the various forms of do as proforms) clausal substitution (main proforms are so and not)
214 Conjunction
Conjunction is a type of cohesive relation which shows how the subsequent sentence or clause should be linked to the preceding (parts of the) sentence Different from reference substitution and ellipsis it is not simply an anaphoric relation According to Halliday and Hasan conjunctive elements are cohesive not in themselves but indirectly by virtue of their specific meanings they are not primarily devices for reaching out into the preceding (or following) text but they express certain meanings which presuppose the presence of other components in the discourse[3] This type of cohesive relation is realized by the use of conjunctions which are divided by Halliday and Hasan into four main categories additive adversative causal and temporal
215 Reiteration
Reiteration is the repetition of a lexical item or the occurrence of a synonym of some kind in the context of reference that is where two occurrences have he same referent[4] Quite often a reiterated item is used with a demonstrative of the definite article the
216 Synonymy & Antonym
Synonymy and antonym are semantic relations between words There is no consensus on definition of synonyms In MerrianWebster’s Collegiate Dictionary it is held that synonyms are two or more words or expressions of the same language that have same or nearly the same meaning in some or all senses[5]As for antonyms they are even more difficult to define Kempson once elaborated that
The term which is in general use for the relation between lexica items whose meanings conflict is antonym oppositeness of meaning But this is not a very helpful term since there are many ways in which lexical items can stand in opposition to each other[6]
217 Hyponymy
Hyponymy refers to the relation between two lexical units in which the meaning of the first is included in that of the second[7]
218 Collocation
Many linguists have discussed collocation as a kind of semantic relationship between words The term was first used by Firth in 1950s which then referred to the language environment in which an item appears In Halliday & Hasan it was considered as an important lexical cohesion which is simply a cover term for the cohesion that results from the cooccurrence of lexical items that are in some way or other typically associated with one another because they tend to occur in similar environment[8]
22 Principles for Use of Cohesive Devices
On the basis of studies in Halliday & Hasan (1976) Zhang Delu & Liu Rushan (2003) summarizes ten principles of internal textual cohesion as shown below which are powerful tools for data analysis in empirical studies
Chart21 Principles for Use of Cohesive Devices
Principle 1 The Reference Principle
If an item occurs continuously we will use the same pronoun not the noun form to refer to it
Principle 2 The Blockage Principle
If an item reoccurs after being blocked by other items we should use the noun form to refer to it again
Principle 3 The Narrative Focus Principle
The narrative focus is generally referred to with pronouns and nonnarrative focus is referred to with either pronouns or nouns
Principle 4 The Differentiability Principle
The referring form used shall help the reader or listener easily locate the right referent out of other referents
Principle 5 The Mental Distance principle
The distance between cohesive ties is a mental distance Nouns will be used to continue the cohesive link if mental distance is interrupted
Principle 6 The Consistency Principle
In order to emphasize or avoid misunderstanding sometimes we use the same item to refer to the same thing when it occurs more than once This is often seen in texts with strong logical reasoning
Principle 7 The Variation Principle
When an item appears more than once we use different items to express it which are synonyms This is often seen in literary works
Principle 8 The Redundancy Principle
If the substitutions of one item by another cause a sentence to be redundant this item should be omitted
Principle 9 The Slot Occupation Substitution Principle
If a substitute is omitted the original information cannot be recovered or the cohesion cannot be formed so this substitute cannot be omitted
Principle 10 The Natural Sequence Principle
If we can organize sentences we needn’t use any conjunction
Chapter 3 Analysis of Cohesive Devices in College Students’ Essays
In this section we will investigate each kind of cohesive devices according to the classification in chapter 2 For each type of cohesive devices the frequency number of error and the rate of error will be computed as the basic statistical date for analysis
31 Data Collection
The writer draws 20 sample compositions from 40 compositions by first –year nonEnglish major students at Jianhan University Shiyan Normal College The students were asked to write on a given topic an argumentative essay of about two hundred words For this type of text a prompt was employed the topic of the essay is Is computer good for human beings All the subjects were required to complete the whole writing task within a 45 minute time limit with no previous preparation and no dictionary could be used
32 Overall Use of Cohesive Devices
In order to have a comprehensive understanding of how cohesive devices are used in subjects’ compositions we will analyze the following items the total number of cohesive devices the number of each kind of cohesive devices the kind of cohesive device which is of highest rate of error and the kind of cohesive device which is of lowest rate of error Statistical results will be shown in corresponding tables As there is no significant number of some cohesive devices in subjects’ compositions we will focus most of our attention on reference substitution ellipsis conjunction and lexical reiteration
Chart 31 Use of Cohesive Devices
Type
Total number
Number of errors
Rate of errors
Reference
502
61
1215
Substitution
2
1
50
Ellipsis
1
0
0
Conjunction
228
31
1359
Lexical reiteration
268
74
2764
Total
1001
167
1668
33 Detailed Analysis of Cohesive Devices
In this section we will investigate each kind of cohesive devices according to the classification in chapter 3 For each type of cohesive devices the frequency number of errors and rate of error will be computed Also reasons for some errors will be explored
331 Reference
As discussed in the theoretical framework in chapter 2 reference is divided into three types personal reference demonstrative reference and comparative reference We will discuss the use of them in the sample compositions one by one
Chart 32 Personal reference
Type
Personal reference
Frequency
272
Number of errors
30
Rate of error
1103
Through a thorough study of the sample compositions some prominent features of subjects’ use of personal reference can be identified
First the student writers are inclined to use the plural form of first personal reference as a generalized reference term It gives the readers an impression that the writer comes from the same group with them who share common interests opinions and experiences It can also create an intimate tone and enhance the acceptability of the writer’s opinions In almost every subject’s writing we can find more than one case of this feature For example
(Sample 2) Computer can help our friends closer to each other because no matter where we are if we have computer we can chat with each other
The use of we in this example helps achieve the resonance between the writer and the reader as if they both have similar experience More examples can be found in Sample17
(Sample 17) First we can get much important information from the computer immediately Second we can watch movies and listen to music from the computer Third we can do shopping on the internet
Second the singular form of first personal reference I is also used at a high frequency The usage of I in this argumentative writing task is mainly to express personal ideas and opinions which is commonly seen in phrases like I think… I don’t think… I believe… and in my opinion… For instance
(Sample 1) In my opinion everything in the world has two sides
(Sample 9) I think if we use computer in the right way the computer can make our life more and more convenient
By using these phrases the writer clearly states his own opinions so it is easy for readers to grasp his point of view However in some subjects’ compositions we do find errors such as improper use of colloquialism or phrases with too heavy Chinese flavor For example
(Sample 12) I personally think the computer is good for human beings
It is needless to say that I think will be followed by someone’s own point of view so personally here is a tautological word and should be omitted This error is in nature of first language interference since in Chinese we often use the expression 认
In addition to the above error one or two students use a similar or the same expression in the same sentence or adjacent sentence It causes redundancy For example
(Sample 10) In my opinion I think computer’s advantages are more than disadvantages
(Sample 20) But I think internet has advantages more than disadvantages So I think internet is a good thing
Third the plural form of third personal reference is used in many compositions as a generic term to refer to people in general In Sample 15 a typical example can be found
(Sample 15) Many students wallow in computer games and they waste a lot of money and don’t go to school to study
Also a similar example is seen in Sample 16
(Sample 16) It helps people to keep in touch with their friends
The above is a discussion on the features of students’ using personal reference correctly however some common errors are also identified which can be roughly grouped into four categories
First the referring term and referent do not conform to each other in number or gender Grammatical ignorance is the most important underlying reason for this kind of errors For example
(Sample 2) For example internet provides us a lot of information When we need these we can gain from it quickly
Apparently this writer doesn’t realize that information is an uncountable noun so we should change these into this
More examples can be located in Sample 13 and Sample 14
(Sample 13) If we surf on the internet for a long time they are bad for our eyes and health
(Sample 14) We can talk with our friends who we haven’t seen for a long time wherever shehe is
In the former example they are should be corrected as it is and in the later one shehe is should be corrected as they are It is really of great need for teachers to remind their students of the importance of avoiding minor grammatical mistakes if they want to achieve good scores in writing
Second there are some cases of grammaticallyincorrect use of personal reference For example
(Sample 10) And I believe it will show our more wonderful world of internet in the future
(Sample 16) In fact everything has it’s better and bad sides…
Apparently our and it’s should be corrected into us and its If the writers were a little more careful these two errors should be easily avoided
Third many referring terms used by student writers don’t have clear and specific referents so that readers will experience great difficulty in understanding For example
(Sample 2) Internet can help you to keep good relation You can not only send email to them but also can chat with them on QQ although how far they are away from you Internet will connect you together
In this segment the student writer tells the readers one of the benefits we can get from the internet which is keeping a good relationship But the readers have no clue of knowing with whom the writer wants to keep a good relationship thus unable to find out whom they and them refer to The other problem is the use of you The four you s are the same in form but quite different in referents The first three refer to the general reading public while the last one designates the reader and the people with whom the reader wants to keep a good relationship According to the Differentiability Principle (Principle 4) it is advisable for us to change them as follows
Internet can help you to keep good relationship with good friends You can not only send email to them but also can chat with them on QQ although how far they are away from you Internet will connect you and your friends together
More errors of this sort are found
(Sample16)We can also play games on it and do my businesses
The abrupt shift from we to my causes difficulty in readers’ comprehension so these two referring forms should be consistent with each other We should change my into our
Fourth a small number of student writer overused personal reference which causes redundancy or difficulty in comprehension For example
(Sample 18) Now let’s me tell you something about which is I think
Apparently s (us) is redundant It is not as simple as a slip of the pen At our early stages of learning English let’s (let us) is taught to us as a whole by our teachers which consists of one of the common formulaic speeches in SLA In Rod Ellis formulaic speeches are seen as the readymade phrase acquired by many learners in the early stage L2 acquisition
[9]
Finally a few student writers still use personal reference a long distance away from the place where the referent first appears in a noun form According to The Mental Distance Principle (Principle 5) noun forms should be used in this situation For example
(Sample 2) …It is very useful for us
For readers’ convenience it should be changed into computer because it is the first time of this paragraph to mention computer so it must appear in a noun form
Chart 33 Demonstratives
Type
Thisthese
Thatthose
Frequency
12
4
Number of errors
4
1
Rate of error
3333
25
As shown in chart33 student writers used a very small number of demonstrative pronouns In most cases the demonstrative pronouns are used correctly (6667and 75) but we do find some problems worth our attention
(Sample 18) Those years with the development of internet our life has changed a lot and it becomes better and better
This is an opening sentence of the writing Without any information from the writer what this those refers to may puzzle the readers Commonly phrase like those days and those years when used with no other modifiers mean the days or years before liberation Apparently it is not the writer’s intention here so we can change Those into In recent
Chart 34 Definite article
Type
The
Frequency
142
Number of error
16
Rate of error
1126
It can be seen from chart 34 that the frequency of the is very high however the rate of error is correspondingly high Many errors may be attributed to a prominent difference between English and Chinese In Chinese there is no equivalent form to the definite article the in English which undoubtedly increases the difficulty of mastering it for Chinese learners In English the definite article has no meaning in itself When it is used with a noun phrase it specifies that the referent of the noun phrase should be known to both the addresser In a written text whenever the information is recoverable either in the situation or in the text the presence of the creates a link between the sentence in which it occurs and that containing the referential information (Halliday & Hasan 197666)
In students’ compositions the use of the is quite arbitrary For example
(Sample 3) [ ] beautiful world is becoming worse
(Sample 9) In all the computer has disadvantages and advantages
Since we don’t have onetoone correspondence of the definite article the in Chinese student writers tend to omit the use of the (Sample 3) or use the when it is not necessary (Sample 9) These errors are errors of negative transfer
Chart 35 Comparatives
Type
Simple
Complex
Total
Frequency
32
21
53
Number of errors
6
4
10
Rate of error
1875
1914
1886
As can be seen in chart 35 Chinese learns of English are still weak in using comparative reference with a total rate of error of 1886 The use of comparative reference can be divided into two types simple form and complex form The former refers to the comparative form of disyllabic words which should take morphological changes whereas the latter refers to the comparative form of multisyllabic words which should add more to the original word Many students often overgeneralize the rule of comparative form of multisyllabic words for disyllabic ones for example
(Sample 6) Computer as a great invention makes the world become more small
(Sample 17) …we can communicate with others through computer and it’s more cheaper and easier than other communication tools
These errors can easily be done away if the student writers were a little more careful
Another kind of errors of the use of comparative reference is influenced by the Chinese language and can be attributed to negative transfer In the Chinese language we express comparatives with the phrase 越越 which means more and more This is employed so frequently that in each of all 20 sample compositions we can find more than one instance It is correct as long as the word is a multisyllabic one however more than often this is overused For example
(Sample 14) Nowadays the development of society is more and more fast
Obviously this error should be corrected as faster and faster
332 Substitution
Student writers don’t produce a significant number of errors of substitution because of too few instances of use Only 2 instances are found which can be roughly grouped into two kinds So I won’t discuss it any more
333 Ellipsis
In all the 20 samples only one case of using ellipsis is found which shows that students are still weak in using ellipsis to achieve brevity in their composition
(Sample 6) In the library we often spend much time getting information that we want to have sometimes we fail to
Here the student writer omits get the information that we want to have which is a verbal ellipsis Due to no significant number of errors the use of ellipsis will not be further discussed
334 Conjunction
Chart 36 Conjunction
Type
Conjunction
Frequency
228
Number of errors
31
Rate of error
1359
In the students writers’ compositions the items and but however so therefore fast second or because and for example are the first ten conjunctions with the highest frequency used in these essays And however for example therefore so but and and are frequently used by English native speakers This may suggest that the college students who are all advanced English learners are aware of and tend to employ these high frequency conjunctive devices in their essays
Nevertheless it is found that in the essays conjunctions are not always employed effectively or correctly For example
(Sample15) Many students wallow in computer games and they waste a lot of money then don’t go to school to study
(Sample19) Although it makes our life more convenient but it also makes our life more terrible
Here then should be and although and but can’t be used together so we must only choose one of them
335 Lexical cohesion
As we discussed in the theoretical framework in chapter 3 we can divide lexical cohesion into four subcategories which are reiteration synonymantonym hyponym and collocation Since there are no significant instances of use of the latter three ones we shall only discuss how reiteration is used for this study
Chart 36 Reiteration
Type
Reiteration
Frequency
268
Overuse
74
Rate of error
2764
As shown in the chart 36 student writers have a strong tendency of using reiteration cohesive ties but when the same one word is used too often compositions will be dull to read This might be attributed to the fact that they have a quite limited vocabulary or they are under great influence of the difference between English and Chinese As we know English texts are characterized by linear structure while Chinese texts spiral structure In linearly constructed texts there is usually one topic sentence and the rest ones explain or comment on the topic sentence thus the things or people concerned with the topic may appear many times and they often occur in the form of a pronoun However there may be only one theme in a spirally constructed text but many topics so the necessity of lexical reiteration is greater than that in a linearly constructed text
Actually most student writers use lexical reiteration of computer throughout their compositions For example
(Sample 9) In our daily life computers are become more and more popular Many families have been brought computers We can use computer to do many things such as surfing on the internet writing notes about ourselves talking with many friends look for information in the internet We also can use computer to teach and watch I think if we use computer in the right way the computer can make our life more and more convenient
336 Summary
This chapter on the basis of statistical analysis has discussed how different cohesive devices are used by 20 subjects The writer have not only summarized the features of students’ using them but also explored the reasons underlying the errors The writer intends the study to benefit English teachers as well as learners
Conclusion
As a competent English teacher one should be clear that it is far from enough to make grammatical analysis on the sentence level We should extract useful theories from sentence to text In order to improve our teaching on textual cohesive devices and quality of students’ composition this study generates the following pedagogical implications
First of all English teachers should emphasize the influence of linguistic and cultural differences between English and Chinese on writing Writing is not only an activity which involves language but also an activity of thinking Thinking is the soul of language while language is the vehicle of thinking People from different cultures have distinct styles of written language It is the same with Chinese and English Therefore teachers should take their responsibility for introducing the English thinking mode in organizing texts and compare it with that of the Chinese language Moreover it is of great need for teachers to find out some practical methods to cultivate students’ awareness of the differences of cohesive between Chinese and English texts
Secondly teachers of English should provide students with a systematic training on how to use cohesive devices to achieve coherence The taxonomy proposed by Halliday and Hasan (1976) should be introduced to them with the help of model texts as examples Contrastive analysis of examples of correct use and misuse of a certain cohesive device would be very helpful for the students to get aware of its meaning and correct use Adequate exercises taking different forms also need to be developed For instance students can be asked to exchange the essays they write and try to find out the cohesive items that are used inappropriately or wrongly giving reasons from the discourse perspective Enough practice would surely improve the undergraduates' discourse competence As for the positioning of conjunctions it is necessary for teachers to introduce to students the various positions where a conjunction can be placed by English native speakers and some common practice in this regard so that students could write more like a native What is worth noting is that compared with reference and conjunction greater efforts should be devoted to the improvement in the use of lexical cohesion in students' writing as it takes a longer time to develop lexical competence Students need to be made aware that too much repetition of the same word would leave the text dull and tedious Moreover they should be encouraged to express the same ideas with synonyms super ordinates and general words Misuse of collocations could be improved if new words are taught in their contexts of use
Thirdly writing and reading are similar but reverse processes Students’ discourse competence can be developed and improved with the help of teachers of reading as well as those of writing Thus in reading class teachers should put more emphasis on the analysis of the organization and different cohesive devices employed to see how they contribute to textual coherence than the summary of main ideas of each part and the explanation of new words and phrases isolated from the contexts of use
To conclude writing as a complex thinking process is under the influence of various factors such as students’ logical thinking abilities language competence and writing skills However writing abilities are the most closely related to learners’ grammatical competence and textual competence Without grammatical competence learners lose their basis for writing without textual competence their writing is in a state of disunity As can be seen in this study textual competence should receive prime attention in our college English teaching Teachers should introduce the overall differences of textual organization and use of specific cohesive devices with the help of model texts from intensive reading course Also relevant exercises should be provided to intensity students’ comprehension Only by doing these can quality of students’ compositions be improved
Notes
[1] MAK Halliday & R Hasan Cohesion in English [M] London Longman 1976 4
[2] Ibid 4
[3] Ibid 226
[4] Ibid 318319
[5] Matthews PH Oxford Concise Dictionary of Linguistics [M] Shanghai
Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press 2000 56
[6] Kempson R M Semantic Theory[M] Cambridge Cambridge University Press1997 84
[7] Matthews PH Oxford Concise Dictionary of Linguistics[M] ShanghaiShanghai Foreign Language Education Press 2000 167
[8] MAK Halliday & R Hasan Cohesion in English[M] London Longman 1976 68
[9]Ellis R Understanding Second Language Acquisition[M] ShanghaiShanghai Foreign Language Education Press 1999 703
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