Abstract

The paper aims at exploring the role of cohesion and coherence which play in reading comprehension. A total of 200 freshmen of comparable English level from  University separately respond to questionnaires that comprise one set of instrument, namely, a multiple-choice test with regard to reading comprehension. These subjects selected are divided into two groups with the same questionnaire but different teaching methods. One group receives training classes of cohesion and coherence while the other group has no such training. Quantitative analysis of reading comprehension indicates that students with an idea of cohesion and coherence display better comprehension of the text than the ones without any idea of cohesive devices do, which suggests that cohesion and coherence have a significant effect on reading comprehension. Thus, the responsibility of the reader is to be sensitive to cohesive devices and recognize their relationship to create lexical chains that contribute to the development of the conveyance of the writer’s intended message(s).

Key Words: cohesion, coherence, reading comprehension

摘要

本文旨在研究“衔接和连贯”在阅读理解中所起的作用。采用了问卷调查方式，共有200名大学英语水平相当的大一学生参与了此次问卷。该问卷即阅读理解选择题测试。来自不同学校的学生各成一组。各组学生采用的问卷相同，但接受的教学方式不同。一组同学接受衔接和连贯知识的训练，另一组则没有任何改变。通过定量分析发现，经过训练的学生比没有接受任何训练的学生更好的理解文章。这表明，衔接和连贯对阅读理解有着非常重要的作用。所以，读者应该对衔接手段敏感，并了解这些衔接手段是如何传达作者思路的。

关键词：衔接，连贯，阅读理解

Introduction
Reading is a significant method to get message, especially for those who learn English as a second language. Among the four skills in learning a second language, namely, listening, speaking, reading and writing, reading is the most important. As Carrell argues in The Effects on Rhetorical Organization on ESL Readers, effective reading in a second language is critical for students in EFL contexts, at an advanced level of proficiency, or with a need for English for Academic Purposes. For a long time, EFL reading has been viewed as a rather passive, bottom-up process. In other words, EFL reading is primarily a decoding process of reconstructing the author’s intended meaning through identifying the printed letters and words and building up a meaning for a text from the smallest textual units at the “bottom” (letters and words) to larger and larger units at the “top”. Correspondingly, problems of second language reading and reading comprehension are considered essentially decoding problems, deriving meaning from print.