（英语语言文学专业论文）大学生英语作文中词汇衔接手段使用的实证研究.pdf

南京航空航天大学硕士学位论文 iii 摘 要 衔接是语篇的重要组成部分之一， 它是实现语篇连贯性的重要手 段，而词汇衔接手段则是实现语篇连贯各种机制中较为重要的一种。 许多中外研究者已经从理论上和实证上得出词汇衔接手段的运用与 语篇构建的质量有直接关系的结论。 本文主要研究了中国英语专业大 二学生作文中词汇衔接手段的使用情况。 本研究统计分析了 60 名学生每人分别在考场上及课下完成的各 一篇议论文，共计 120 篇文章，并运用 28 篇美国大学生所作的作文 进行了对比分析。 考察的词汇衔接模式以韩理德和哈桑的分类标准为 基础,采用简单重复、复杂重复、同义词、反义词、上下义词、同现 关系作为 6 个相关变量，同时，对被试进行了一次问卷调查，以从定 性的角度获得更为可靠的结论。 统计结果表明中国英语专业大学生在 考场上所写的作文中所使用的词汇衔接手段与美国大学生相比较除 简单重复和反义词两种手段外，其它并无明显差别。但在课下完成的 作文中却显示出使用数量的明显不足。 本项研究的主要意义在于考察了中国学生在考场上及课下完成 的议论文及中美学生议论文中关于词汇衔接手段的使用情况。 通过与 本族语使用者的对比研究能够使本研究的结论更具有说服力。 本研究 在一定程度上可以为其他英语教师提供对中国学生英语写作中的词 汇衔接手段的基本情况介绍，并有助于促进英语写作教学的发展。 关键词关键词：衔接理论 词汇衔接手段 连贯 写作教学 英语写作 a study of the lexical cohesive devices in the chinese sophomore students compositions ii abstract as a major component of text, cohesion contributes greatly to the text coherence. lexical cohesion is one of the most important types of cohesion which regularly forms multiple relationships and the dominant mode of creating texture. many chinese and foreign researchers have reached the conclusion theoretically and practically that the adoption of lexical cohesive devices is closely related to the writing quality. this research mainly examines the features of the adoption of lexical cohesive devices in the compositions written by sophomore chinese students majoring in english. altogether 120 argumentative compositions written by 60 chinese students in the exam and after class were analyzed using the cohesion theory, in comparison with 28 compositions written by american university students. the framework of lexical cohesion pattern adopted in this research, is based on halliday and hasons classification, and includes simple repetition, complex repetition, synonym, antonym, super-ordinate/hyponym and collocation. in the meantime, one questionnaire was administered to have a more reliable conclusion. the results show there is no great difference in the lexical cohesive devices used in the compositions by chinese students in the exam and american students in terms of frequency except for the use of simple repetition. only the use of simple repetition and antonym demonstrates the difference between chinese and american students to some extent. however, chinese students use of lexical cohesive devices in the compositions written in the exam exhibits a much higher frequency than that in the compositions written after class. the change in writing is a potential explanation for it. the present research can help teachers have a better understanding of the characteristics of chinese students adoption of lexical cohesive devices in their writing and contribute to the teaching of efl writing to some extent. key words: cohesion theory, lexical cohesive devices, coherence, teaching of writing, english writing 南京航空航天大学硕士学位论文 i acknowledgements in the process of writing this thesis, i am indebted to quite a number of individuals for their help. i would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to my supervisor professor tang chengxian, who aroused my interest in linguistics, took great pains to revise this thesis, and provided insightful and invaluable comments as well as suggestions. special thanks should go to professor fan xiangtao, and professor wang xiaocun, who helped me a lot providing students compositions and administering the questionnaire. i am also deeply indebted to all the other teachers like professor jin quanyuan, and professor guo chunjie, who have been supporting and helping me in this present study. i am particularly grateful to cheng yuwei, who gave me great help and great encouragement in the present study. without her support, assistance and cooperation, the investigation of this thesis could never have been conducted so smoothly. finally, i must give my profound gratitude to my family for all their support and encouragement. their love, trust, support, and encouragement give me power and strength in everything. 南京航空航天大学硕士学位论文 1 chapter one introduction as one of the four basic language skills, writing is more complex in that it tests a persons ability to use a language to express ideas. thus, a person needs to write not only coherently but correctly, which requires much more time and skills. this is especially so when writing in a second/foreign language. although neglected for a long time in the mainland of china (liu, 2000:84-86), writing in english as a foreign language is becoming more and more important owing to the fact that even efl learners have to write papers and theses in english at secondary and tertiary levels, or send job application letters to foreign universities, among other functions. as a result, the investigation of writing processes and products in efl and esl classrooms has greatly contributed to the continued growth of scholarship in the field of second language writing. the research on the foreign language writing has a history for nearly half a century; but, in china, it lagged far behind foreign countries. however, in the last decade, we have made great achievements in this field. there has been a growing concern among teachers and researchers over large numbers of chinese students failing or getting very low grades in the english language examination. researchers have recently attached great importance to the writing problems involving cohesion because cohesion plays a critical role in composing a text as an indispensable text-forming element. lexical cohesion, the lack of which in writing is a problem that plagues many efl learners, deserves special and long-term attention. in fact, lexical cohesion is a pattern of lexical selection and focuses on lexical relations. its importance lies in the fact that lexical cohesive ties convey a great deal of information and create links across sentence boundaries to make textural coherence possible. however, because lexicon involves both meaning and usage, it becomes a much more complicated and difficult task for foreign learners of english. mccarthy (1991:78-79) notes that the poor use of lexical cohesive patterns in the text can result a study of the lexical cohesive devices in the chinese sophomore students compositions 2 in the unnaturalness and inauthenticity in the text level. the late70s and early 80s witness the beginning of the study of cohesion, which began to take shape as a theory in mid-80s. from then on, plenty of related studies have been carried out in the past two decades. however, till now, almost all the researches on cohesion have focused their attention on the reader. as a result, they tell us very little about the writer and how the writer actually uses cohesive devices in their writing. the present study makes an effort to find the features of lexical cohesion in the argumentative compositions written by sophomore english majors to provide some insights for teachers in the field of teaching of the english writing. the aim of the present study includes: (1) to compare the number of different lexical cohesive devices adopted in the compositions of chinese students written after class and in the exam. (2) to compare the number of different lexical cohesive devices adopted in the compositions written by chinese and american students. (3) to find the characteristics of lexical cohesive devices adopted in the compositions written by chinese students in comparison with american students. it is expected that this study will provide teachers with a better understanding of chinese students use of lexical cohesive devices in their writing under different situations with some practical pedagogical implications for the teaching of english writing in china. this thesis is organized in the following way: chapter 1 is a brief introduction to the present study. chapter 2 is literature review. first, it introduces in detail cohesion theory; then sums up some major empirical researches both at home and abroad. chapter 3 introduces the methodology adopted in the present study, including the objectives, subjects, instrument and data analysis. 南京航空航天大学硕士学位论文 3 chapter 4 deals with the results of the present study and related discussion. it is divided into two parts. the first part is about the general findings of lexical cohesive devices. the second part is the detailed description of all the lexical cohesive devices in different categories. chapter 5 serves as a conclusion. it summarizes the present study and gives some suggestions and pedagogical applications. meanwhile, it also touches on the limitations of the present study and recommendations for future research. a study of the lexical cohesive devices in the chinese sophomore students compositions 4 chapter two literature review halliday and hasons cohesion in english promoted much research by educators, most of which aimed at estimating the potential role of the cohesion system in teaching and evaluating writing. therefore, it is necessary to look at some previous researches so as to understand what has been achieved. 2.1 cohesion theory text has been defined as a multidimensional construct conveying meanings at different levels. cohesion is the study of text organization which is made up of relationships amongst items within the text. it may be crudely defined as the way in which certain words or grammatical features of a sentence connect to its predecessors. in fact, the study of cohesion as a unity-creating device in texts has been advocated by halliday and hasan (1976:7-14), who suggest cohesion as a kind of measure of the texture of a text. lexical cohesion, which is a special kind of cohesion, investigates the repeated sequences of lexical items and their relations to core sentences. they describe cohesion as a semantic concept that refers to relations of meaning that exist within a text. hason (1984:181-219) defines coherence as the property of “unity”, of “hanging together”. she thinks that textual coherence is a relative, not an absolute property, so that it is possible to rank a group of texts on a cline from most coherent to least coherent. cohesion and coherence are two of the seven standards that a text must meet if it is to be regarded as communicative according to beaugrande and dressler. they (1981:57-69) argue that cohesion deals with the ways in which the components of the surface text, the actual words we hear or see, are mutually connected within a sequence. however, coherence concerns the ways in which the components of the textual world, i.e. the configuration of concepts and relations which underlie that 南京航空航天大学硕士学位论文 5 surface text, are mutually accessible. he believes that coherence is not a typical linguistic problem, but a general principle for the interpretation of all human activity. later, hason makes some improvement in this field. in language, context and text published in 1985, hason enlarges the application scope of the concept of cohesion and classifies the cohesion into structural cohesion and non-structural cohesion. the former includes the parallel symmetrical structure, theme and rheme structure, and given information-new information structure. the latter can be further divided into component relation cohesion and organic relation cohesion. the component relation cohesion includes the reference, substitution, ellipsis and lexical cohesion among 5 cohesive devices in the book cohesion in english. these five cohesive ties can form three relations of co-referentiality, co-classification and co-extension. the organic relation includes the linking relation, adjacent pair, and continuing relation. the major contribution made by hason is her enlarging the application of cohesion into the relations between structures to maintain the text coherence. there are still some problems in the cohesion theory. for example, halliday and hason put forward the formal marker cohesive ties and the decisive factors that enable the formal marker to be the cohesive marker register continuity. they dont carry out the detailed analysis and description of how register influences the text coherence and how register continuity dominates the text cohesion. these two elements are more important than the examples and types of cohesion. as for other important cohesive ties, such as the cohesive functions of intonation and tone, tense and voice, transitive system, they fail to make the research, too. different linguists maintain diversified opinions on the relationships between cohesion and coherence and their controversy concentrates on how cohesion functions in the aspect of coherence. halliday, hason and some other linguists think a coherent text must be cohesive and cohesion is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for a study of the lexical cohesive devices in the chinese sophomore students compositions 6 coherence. in this field, some chinese scholars, including hu zhuanglin, and zhang delu, also make some contributions. hu (1994:26-109) advocates the multi-phases in the discourse cohesion and coherence and further expands the scope of cohesion. he expands the scope of structure cohesion, adding the transitivity as one cohesive device together with the isomorphic relation. in his book, he treats the text structure as one cohesive device and formulates the cohesive devices in the phonological level, integrating the intonation and tone mode into the cohesion. finally, with the idea of text coherence concerning multiple phases, he thinks the social semiotic has an important influence in the text coherence and has studied the effect of social semiotic factors on the coherence. zhang (2003:19-92) studies the condition of text coherence and discusses the restrictive effect of context, information structure, theme structure and cohesion mechanism on the text coherence. in these years, he further studies the scope of cohesion mechanism and its relation to the text coherence. he makes some achievements in the following fields, trans-group cohesion mechanism, concept of exophoric cohesion, implicit cohesion mechanism and plural semantic cohesion. he believes that the interpersonal semantic relation, like the conception meaning relation possesses the function of cohesion. the different formal mechanism can also produce the cohesive relation. the items with the characteristics of exophoric reference in the text can be regarded as the cohesion between the text and context, including the exophoric reference and lexis. the cohesion between the text and context resulting from the meaning vacancy has the characteristics of continuity and substantiality. lexical cohesion, which is important to the discussion of this research, originates in halliday and hason cohesion theory. according to their opinion, lexical cohesion is achieved by lexical choices and refers to the cohesive effect of the use of lexical items in discourse where the choice of an item relates to the choices that have gone before (halliday, et al, 1976:14-73). they include a variety of kinds of semantic 南京航空航天大学硕士学位论文 7 relationship that can exist between lexical items, clustering them into two broad sub-classes, reiteration and collocation. reiteration is considered as a “form of lexical cohesion which involves the repetition of a lexical item at one end of the scale; the use of a general word to refer back to a lexical item, at the other end of the scale; and a number of things lying in between the use of a synonym, near-synonym, or super-ordinate” (ibid, 278). collocation is achieved through the association of lexical items that regularly co-occur. the concept of collocation is considered by them as “the most problematical part of cohesion. mccarthy (1991:47-59) argues “it is debatable whether collocation properly belongs to the notion of lexical cohesion, since collocation only refers to the probability that lexical items will co-occur, and is not a semantic relation between words”. to make up for the problem related to the category of collocation, hason (1984:148) incorporates within her sub-categories some lexical relations that would previously have been handled under the umbrella heading of collocation. her revised sub-categories of lexical cohesion are listed as follows (1984:202): categories of lexical cohesion a general i. repetition leave, leaving, left ii. synonymy leave, depart iii.antonymy leave, arrive iv.hyponymy travel, leave (including co-hyponyms, leave, arrive) v. meronymy hand, finger(including co-meronyms, finger, thumb) b instantial i. equivalence the sailor was their daddy; you be the patient, ill be the doctor ii. naming the dog was called toto; they named the dog fluffy. iii.semblance the deck was like a pool; all my pleasures are like yesterdays. hoey (1991:4-21) argues that lexical cohesion is the only type of cohesion that a study of the lexical cohesive devices in the chinese sophomore students compositions 8 regularly forms multiple relationship though occasionally reference does so too and takes lexical cohesion as the dominant mode of creating texture. he gives a much more detailed analysis and amends halliday and hasons framework of lexical cohesion as simple repetition, complex repetition, simple paraphrase (including mutual and partial), complex paraphrase (including antonym and link triangle), super-ordinate and hyponym, and co-reference. this present study makes use of six categories of lexical cohesive devices, i.e. simple repetition, complex repetition, synonym, antonym, super-ordinate/hyponym and collocation. the framework used in this present research is the schemes proposed by halliday and hason. however, to have a better understanding of the characteristics of the lexical cohesive devices adoption in the compositions, some useful el