从衔接连贯角度对比分析中国学生GRE论辩型文章的写作模式

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ABSTRACT

There has been an increasing number of scholars and pedagogues home and abroad

devoting their study to the effectiveness of English teaching. Among all subsidiary

branches of English teaching, training of issue writing is set in the essential position

because a high-level competence of issue writing would certainly demonstrate a

person’s ability of logical reasoning.

This thesis is aimed at discovering and analyzing the discourse patterns commonly

used by Chinese college students against those of native English speakers via GRE

General Test Issue Writing. The discrepancy found to reflect the weakness and

inappropriateness of Chinese students’ issue writing can hopefully be used in practical

teaching of issue writing or more significantly learning of issue writing by GRE

General Test takers to acquire higher score.

Methodologically, GRE CAT answers are analyzed to study the macro and micro

patterns used in GRE issue writing for the purpose of comparing the 35 Chinese

students’ GRE issue writings collected for the research. The comparative study is made

in three dimensions: organizational pattern, thematic structure and cohesion, on the

basis of theories by M.A.K. Halliday & R. Hasan. The combination of these three

dimensions is an effective way for us to scrutinize a discourse’s organization and its

cohesive net. In all, we could achieve a comprehensive understanding of a discourse

from both macro and micro perspectives by these analyses, which can be expected to

promote teaching and learning of English issue writing.

Key Words: Coherence Cohesion Issue Writing GRE

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中文摘要

随着世界迅速且激烈的全球化发展进程，越来越多的学者和教育家开始关注

起了英语教学的相关问题。其中，英语论辩型文章的写作占据着英语写作的核心

地位。拥有良好的论辩型文章写作能力不论是对于一名学者、一名教师还是一位

学生都有着极其重要的作用。

语言学中对于语篇衔接与连贯的研究与英语论辩型文章的写作有着密切的关

系。它不仅有助于我们分析语篇的组成方式，同时还可以帮助我们根据衔接纽带

在语篇中形成的网络来了解语篇发展的脉络，使我们更好地认识语篇的意义整体

和微观联系，提高自身的英语写作能力。目前，国内外许多学者将写作和衔接连

贯手段使用的研究应用于普通写作、翻译等教学领域，但笔者较少见到比较具有

针对性的写作专项应用研究。

本文将以 Halliday 和Hansan 的衔接连贯理论为基础，定位于 GRE General Test

Issue Writing，针对 35 篇不同题中国学生的习作进行整体结构、主位信息和衔接机

制的三维分析，并将其与 35 篇GRE 范文进行对比分析，以此映射并探讨中西论

辩型文章的写作模式。它旨在帮助中国学生和教师了解、熟悉西方论辩型文章的

写作模式，解决不知道如何用英语写出一篇好文章、不知道什么元素是一篇文章

的重点等问题，促进英语写作教学的发展；帮助学者在国际交流日益频繁的今天

更快更好地适应西方学术交流方式，更贴近、直观地表达自己的学术观点；同时，

在应试层面上能够帮助应试者在 GRE 考试中作文应试规律，提高作文分数。

关键词：衔接连贯论辩型文章 GRE

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Contents

Acknowledgements.....................................................................................................

ABSTRACT................................................................................................................

中文摘要.....................................................................................................................

III

Contents.......................................................................................................................

Chapter One Introduction............................................................................................

1.1 Origin of the Study.........................................................................................

1.2 Organization of the Thesis Paper...................................................................

Chapter Two Literature Review..................................................................................

2.1 Research on Discourse Analysis....................................................................

2.2 Research on EFL Writing...............................................................................

2.3 Background of GRE General Test and its Issue Writing................................

Chapter Three Theoretical Foundation of the Study...................................................

3.1 The Definition of Discourse...........................................................................

3.2 The Organizational Pattern............................................................................

3.3 Information Structure and Thematic Structure...............................................

3.4 Cohesion in Discourse...................................................................................

3.4.1 Grammatical Cohesion.........................................................................

3.4.1.1 Reference.................................................................................

3.4.1.2 Substitution.............................................................................

3.4.1.3 Ellipsis.....................................................................................

3.4.1.4 Conjunction.............................................................................

3.4.2 Lexical Cohesion..................................................................................

3.4.3 The Distance of Cohesion Items..........................................................

Chapter Four Research Methodology..........................................................................

4.1 Research Hypothesis......................................................................................

4.2 Research Procedure........................................................................................

4.2.1 The Selection of GRE Issue Writing Topics........................................

4.2.2 Research Subjects................................................................................

Chapter Five Results and Analysis..............................................................................

5.1 The Organizational Pattern Analysis..............................................................

5.1.1 The Organizational Pattern Analysis of GRE CAT Answers...............

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5.1.1.1 Introduction Pattern.................................................................

5.1.1.2 Main Body Pattern..................................................................

5.1.2 The Organizational Pattern Analysis of Chinese Students’ Answers...

5.1.2.1 Introduction Pattern.................................................................

5.1.2.2 Main Body Pattern..................................................................

5.1.3 The Comparison of Two Organizational Patterns................................

5.1.3.1 Introduction Pattern.................................................................

5.1.3.2 Main Body Pattern..................................................................

5.2 The Thematic Structure Analysis...................................................................

5.3 The Cohesion Analysis...................................................................................

5.3.1 The Cohesion Analysis of GRE CAT Answers....................................

5.3.1.1 Cohesive Ties..........................................................................

5.3.1.2 Distance of Cohesive Ties.......................................................

5.3.2 The Cohesion Analysis of Chinese Students’ Answers........................

5.3.1.1 Cohesive Ties..........................................................................

5.3.1.2 Distance of Cohesive Ties.......................................................

5.3.3 The Comparison of Two Cohesion Usages..........................................

5.3.3.1 Cohesive Ties..........................................................................

5.3.3.2 Distance of Cohesive Ties.......................................................

Chapter Six Conclusion..............................................................................................

6.1 Summary........................................................................................................

6.2 Pedagogical Implications...............................................................................

6.3 Limitations of the Research...........................................................................

6.4 Suggestions for Further Research..................................................................

Appendix.....................................................................................................................

Bibliography................................................................................................................

在读期间公开发表的论文.........................................................................................

Chapter One Introduction

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Chapter One Introduction

1.1 Origin of the Study

With the rapid process of the world globalization, English, a prevalent language, is

put into an increasingly important place for the inter-country communication in China,

especially after its entry into WTO. It is closely related to every aspect of people’s life.

One may encounter foreigners while studying in the school or going shopping. There is

also much higher possibility of having a colleague from other countries in the same

working group than before. Also, in academic world, over fifty percent of the millions

of academic papers published are written in English every year and this percentage is

soaring year by year. Therefore, mastering English is more and more emphasized and

English education tends to be put in the core of the national education plan.

Writing, one of the vital competences, occupies the core of English skills. In a

general sense, written documents save and spread the knowledge and experience

accumulated ever since written language was created, which is crucial for the

development of human civilization. In a specific sense, writing combines one’s

expressing and learning abilities and indicates one’s own educational level. A skillful

writer is more likely to succeed since his language proficiency could allow him to

express his idea clearly and efficiently. Thomas H. Huckin and Leslie A. Olsen,

American professors, also point out in their book English for Science and Technology: A

Handbook for Nonnative Speakers and I paraphrase that, even with excellent talents, a

scientist will not get grand achievement and his theories won’t be adopted until he could

persuade others. This kind of persuasion is partially reflected in writing such as the

academic paper. If one cannot express his idea in an effective way, he will not succeed

in the end.

However, writing is almost always neglected in this quick-profit world. More and

more adults attend variety of oral English classes and pay much more attention to the

listening and speaking which could reflect their language competence of English in a

more superficial way. Nobody can deny the popularity of spoken proficiency since most

learners, who has spent years in learning English, expects the conquering of shabby

English and achieving efficient communication. This also leads to the amount of

researches and studies focusing on the pedagogies of listening and speaking, while

writing are sometimes overlooked. Fewer people realize that writing, as a mirror of the

GRE Issue Writing by Chinese Students—A Comparative Study of Cohesion and Coherence

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comprehensive language-using ability, is also an imperative factor leading to successful

language learning. Yet, writing, as an essential tool for all cultivated people, need to be

given prominence, especially for English scholars and learners.

Issues writing, a special category of English writing exerts great influence on people,

especially in the academic field. The success of a scholar largely depends on his ability

of issue writing. Whether he could express his original idea clearly and convincingly,

whether he could persuade others and make them fully grasp his points, and whether he

could retort others’ proposal all rely on his issue-writing competence. For a student, the

ability of issue writing greatly affects the study life, especially those who plan to study

abroad. In non-English speaking countries, for example China, most of those who learn

English energetically in school are seeking for opportunities to study and do research

overseas. Issue writing appears in almost all the standard tests and usually takes up a

relatively high percent of the total scores comparing with listening and speaking, which

also reflects the importance of this part in the eyes of those people managing the tests.

Additionally, even you are already admitted into a university, it also has great influence

into your graduate study. Whether one could gain a better score in the college, and

whether one could graduate without a hitch would all closely connect with the

issue-writing competence. Actually, many professors evaluate a student’s performance

in most courses not only by his in-class behavior and exam scores but also by his term

paper or thesis paper in the end. Those students who are skilled at issue writing will

unsurprisingly get satisfying scores, while those who fail to express themselves in

writing will suffer from this. It is impossible for a student to make, or even to anticipate,

a great progress if he merely tries hard enough to improve the writing to a proper level.

Furthermore, since the in-depth international communication, countless students

desperately try intend to study abroad. The spokesperson of Ministry of Education of

the People’s Republic of China said in 2008 that there were about 160,000 people going

abroad for study, among whom 20,000~30,000 were students, and he predicted that this

figure would be refreshed by a larger number in the near future. With this flow, how to

write an issue will naturally turn to be the hot topic among people.

Although word selection and sentence construction is very critical, the texture

occupies an incredible position of English learning. Especially to those senior English

learners, there is little need to discuss the basic language usage of their writing since

they could choose proper words or construct sentences proficiently almost like a native

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-II-ABSTRACTTherehasbeenanincreasingnumberofscholarsandpedagogueshomeandabroaddevotingtheirstudytotheeffectivenessofEnglishteaching.AmongallsubsidiarybranchesofEnglishteaching,trainingofissuewritingissetintheessentialpositionbecauseahigh-levelcompetenceofissuewritingwouldcertainlydemonstrateaperson’...

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