Chapter Five Conclusions
5.1 Major Findings of the Research
The purpose of this study is to explore how the action research based on cohesionand coherence theory improve the performance of “Seven Options for FiveBlanks”reading comprehension and students' awareness of discourse cohesion. Theparticipants of the research are 60 senior three students. In the process of the actionresearch, the author conducted interviews, questionnaires and tests on the students.After the action research, the author obtained and analyzed the relative data, and thefollowing are the conclusions:
(1) How to improve students’ awareness of discourse cohesion by applyingcohesion and coherence theory in “Seven Options for Five Blanks” English readingteaching?
The students' awareness of discourse cohesion was cultivated by a systematicintroduction of the relevant theories and analyze a passage from the perspective ofcohesion and coherence. It’s vital to help the students have a good command of thebasic knowledge of cohesion and coherence theory. The cultivation of the awareness ofdiscourse cohesion must be based on knowing various cohesive devices and thecoherence in meaning between sentences. So the teachers’ priority is to introduce andexplain the cohesion and coherence theory just as author did at the first round of theaction research. It would be better for the students to understand clearly if the teachersprovide some vivid examples.
When it comes to analyse a passage, the students should firstly get the main ideaand the discourse structure of the passage. After that, the students applied the cohesionand coherence theory to analyse the logical relationship between the sentences andpracticed their solving strategy in the exercises. The teachers can firstly point out the various cohesive devices in the text, and explain how these cohesive devices work andfunction in the text. After a period of repeated training, students will consciously payattention to various cohesive devices. The students’ awareness of discourse cohesionwas consolidated by finishing the exercises and share their reasons of answersindependently. The author also provided the students with complete “Seven Options forFive Blanks” reading passage and let them be the quiz setter. Firstly, the students shouldglance through the first paragraph and the first sentence of each paragraph to get themain idea of passage, the main idea of each paragraph and the discourse structure. Then,the students judged the logical relationship between sentences by cohesive devices ineach paragraph. They choose five sentences affected the cohesion and coherence withinthe passage as the optional sentences and share their reasons and ideas. In the process,the students’ awareness of discourse cohesion was strengthened and consolidated.
reference(omitted)
