Abstract—Cohesion and coherence have long been
considered as important features of a good essay. Therefore, in
many writing tests (e.g, IELTS, TOEFL, CET4, CET6),
cohesion and coherence of articles are usually given a larger
proportion of grade. This emphasis on cohesion and coherence
has prompted English teachers to place special emphasis on the
use of cohesive devices in English writing.
Studies of cohesion and coherence have been conducted all
over the world since the publication of Halliday and Hasan’s
Cohesion in English in 1976. In particular, the use of cohesive
devices in English writing has been a significant topic. However,
the impact of the use of these devices on writings’ quality is
unclear.
Therefore, this paper aims to explore whether high school
students use cohesive devices in English writing appropriately,
with a particular focus on the issue of conjunction use.
According to a considerable number of studies, the number of
cohesive devices and the quality of writing barely have
utilitarian purposes. The results of the present study show that
the frequency of conjunctions has little to do with the quality of
English writing. In addition, it is not the frequency of cohesive
items that makes a text structured, but rather the appropriate
use of conjunctive markers.
Index Terms—Cohesive devices, conjunction, English
writing.
Li Yingle and Zhao Xueai are with the School of Foreign Languages of
Northwestern Polytechnical University, China (e-mail: yingle_li@163.com,
xazhao@nwpu.edu.cn).
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Cite:Li Yingle and Zhao Xueai, "An Analysis of Conjunctions as Cohesive Devices in High School Students‟ English Writing," International Journal of Languages, Literature and Linguistics vol. 5, no. 4, pp. 226-230, 2019.