Chapter One Introduction
1.1Background of the Study
一般来说，各种英语教学课程的主要目的是培养学生的四种基本语言技能，即，讲，听，阅读和写作。许多英语学习者认为，在这四项基本技能，写作是最困难的学生掌握。写作是一种通过可见的话，以及重新编码的想法，让其他人可以分享想法的方式再现语言。它需要更强的控制能力，语言和平衡多个问题，如拼写，词汇，标点符号，目的，内容，组织和读者。它需要更准确，更恰当，更明确性，更有效，更多的照顾f规划和修订比口头话语。许多语言学家和教育工作者和英语学习者的一大挑战，它已成为一个主要问题，因为他们有望创造书面产品展示掌握上述所有新的语言元素（RASS，2001）。许多研究人员的头脑，才能有效地写套的装机量为学术为导向的语言学习者最重要的能力需要培养，因为写作能力的学术成绩，并要求许多行业的必需品。实现几乎所有的中国英语专业主管英语写作的重要性，所以他们要花大力气，花太多的时间，在提高英语写作。但这么长的时间，它具有极其困难的教师和学生传授易学英语写作。因此，它成为教师和学生都面临的重大挑战。对于英语专业的学生，写作仍然是最薄弱的环节在四个基本英语提供技能。Generally speaking, the main purposes of various English teaching courses are todevelop students' four basic language skills, namely, speaking, listening，reading andwriting. Many English learners think that among these four basic skills writing is the mostdifficult for students to master. Writing is a way of reproducing language by means ofvisible words as well as a way of recoding thoughts so that others can share the thoughts. Itrequires stronger ability to control language and balance multiple issues such as spelling，vocabulary, punctuation, purpose, content, organization and readers. It requires moreaccuracy, more appropriateness，more explicitness, more effectiveness, more careflilplanning and revision than spoken discourse. It has become a major concern of manylinguists and educators as well as a great challenge for English learners because they areexpected to create written products that demonstrate mastery of all the above elements in anew language (Rass, 2001). In many researchers' minds, ability to write efficiently is oneof the most important abilities for academic-oriented language learners need to developbecause of writing ability as a necessity to academic achievement and a requirement tomany professions.Almost all English majors in China realize the importance of competent Englishwriting, so they take great efforts and spend much time in improving English writing. Butfor such a long time，it has extremely difficult for both teachers and students to teach andleam English writing. Hence it becomes the major challenge for both teachers and learners.For English majors，writing remains as the weakest link among the four basic Englishlanguage skills.
Though English majors are required to acquire competent English writing ability，theyusually focus attention on how to choose correct words，structures and patterns to writegrammatically and lexically correct inpidual sentence. Most of them could write withlittle even no grammar errors, even could produce grammatically and lexically perfectsentences. What they write could be complete in content and clear in main idea. In a sense,they are successful in writing. However, what they write would still seem very strange andunnatural to read, especially for native speakers. What they write are just a bunch of loosely connected sentences, which could hardly be regarded as an organic whole.To most of English majors, writing is always the last one to be acquired among thefour basic English skills. In primary schools, what they learn English are isolated words，phrases and sentence patterns; in junior high school，they still have little chance to practicetheir English writing skills; even in senior high school，more attention is paid to practicespeaking, listening and reading skills, and less emphasis is put on writing; in college, theystill pay more attention to practice listening and reading skills in order to pass kindsEnglish tests and gain various English certificates.
这种在英语写作教学效率低下，导致部分从中国的应试教育体制。和传统的语言概念，那句话是最大的单位语言生活在语言研究和在句子的内在关系得到很好的描述，也是很多英语老师，更多的注意力放在个别句子部分负责。在很多英语老师的眼里，被简单地定义好写的东西不正确的拼写和语法或词汇错误。即使是一些英语教师认为在测试更长，更复杂的句子可能会产生更多的错误和降低的标志，并要求学生写的比较简单的句子通过测试。在中国大多数学校，大多数学生的写作任务分配由英语教师和英语教师，学生写作是唯一的读者。因此，英语教师的建议和指导写作都是学生。许多教师只专注于写正确的句子，语法和词汇。但它是远远不够的，产生有效的英语写作语法正确的句子。Such inefficient teaching in English writing results partly from Chinese test-orientededucational system. And traditional linguistic concept that sentence is the largest unit oflanguage in linguistic studies and the inner relations within sentences have been welldescribed is also partly responsible for many English teachers，more attention on inpidualsentences. In many English teachers' eyes, good writing is simply defined as somethingwith correct spelling and without grammatical or lexical mistakes. Even some Englishteachers think that in tests the longer and more complicated sentences may produce moremistakes and lower the marks, and ask students to write relatively simpler sentences topass the tests. And in most schools of China, most of students' writing tasks are assignedby English teachers and English teachers are the only readers of students' writing. SoEnglish teachers' suggestions and guidance on writing are all for students to follow. Manyteachers just focus on writing grammatically and lexically correct sentences. But it is farfrom enough to produce effective English writing only with grammatically correctsentences.
Chapter Two Literature Review
Great attention in the linguistics field is paid to cohesion theory which is widelyacknowledged as one of the most influential theories in systemic-functional linguistics. Inspite of various criticisms about it，lots of scholars still take great efforts to develop it andoffer meaningful suggestions on its fliture development. They believe that cohesion theorymust be well-developed gradually and more helpful in understanding a text and instructingwriting.In this chapter, the author will review previous researches and studies abroad and athome on the relationship between cohesion and quality of English writing.
2.1 Studies Carried out Abroad
Foreign scholars have conducted researches and studies to explore the effect ofcohesion devices in writing process as well as correlation between cohesion and writingquality.In "Meaning and Choice in Writing about Literature: a Study On Cohesion in theExpository Texts of Nine Grades", Elier (1979) makes a complete Research on 15ninth-grade students' compositions and concludes that for students lexical cohesion seemsto be the best indicator to response to literature. He also finds that reference cohesion canbe taken as a basic factor to keep a self-sufficient text without appealing to theenvironment with no text.In "Cohesive Ties and Chains in Good and Poor Freshman Essay，，，Neuner(1987:92-104) makes comparative analysis between 20 freshmen's good compositions and20 poor ones and finds that frequency of cohesive devices has no correlation with writingquality, and is not the effective method in improving writing quality, but cohesive chainsare more effective. She concludes that a good composition should be characterized bylonger cohesive chains，greater variety of words，and greater maturity of diction.
Chapter Three Theoretical Foundation.......... 20-35
3.1 Definition of Cohesion and Coherence......... 20-22
3.2 Taxonomy of Cohesive Devices .........22-34
3.2.1 Reference .........22-25
3.2.2 Substitution.........25-28
3.2.3 Ellipsis .........28-29
3.2.4 Conjunction .........29-32
3.2.5 Lexical Cohesion......... 32-34
3.3 Summary......... 34-35
Chapter Four Research Methodology......... 35-38
4.1 Objective .........35
4.2 Participants .........35-36
4.3 Instruments......... 36
4.4 Analvtical Procedures .........36-38
Chapter Five Findings and Discussions......... 38-64
5.1 Major Findings......... 38-57
5.2 Factors for Cohesion Problems......... 57-60
5.2.1 Language Difference......... 57-58
5.2.2 Language Transfer......... 58
5.2.3 Language Proficiency......... 58-60
5.3 Solutions......... 60-64
Conclusion
Needless to say，the results of the study would be helpful to English writing teachingand studying. The present study is lack of exhaustiveness and extensivehess, and somelimitations still exist in the design of the research. Firstly, the sample size is small. Tochoose a larger number of samples would be much better. It is just confined to 30second-year English majors from one local college as subjects. So the findings may belimited and unrepresentative enough in reflecting the generalization in the application ofcohesive devices by all English majors from various levels of colleges and universities.Secondly，time limits of sample writing, different topics of writing and only expositorywriting may not secure whether such findings are statistically significant. Thirdly, theauthor with his two colleagues manually marks and analyzes all cohesive devices anderrors in students' compositions，so subjective deficiency may exist in the examination ofcohesive devices and cohesive errors
Because of the limitations mentioned above, plus the author's ability and practicaldifficulties in the study, the present study leaves room for improvement. Further researches and studies are hoped to be carried out to further find out methodologies on how toimprove the efficiency of English writing teaching. Additionally, the findings of the studyalso need further investigations and researches to test and prove. It is suggested that in thefuture studies the subject students should come from diifer^nt levels of colleges and thenumber of subject students should be larger. Relatively large-scale studies can securestatistical significance. It is suggested that more writing topics and various types of writingshould be investigated so as to show a general pattern of topical differences and seedifferences between different types of writing in the aspect of cohesive devices andcohesive errors. It is also suggested that more effective researching methodologies aboutdata collection，data statistics and data analysis are employed in the future study.
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