TEXTLINGUISTICS AND THE TEACHING OF READING AND WRITING

Cohesion, coherence and controlling are the three main features of a text. Cohesion is the system of formal visible markers, which manifest the semantic relations between sentences. Coherence lies in the deep structure of a text. It refers to the complex non-linear notional-functional relations behind the linear sequences of words or sentences. Controlling is an intuitive semantic key-link, which lies on the topmost level in the hierarchical representation of a text. This thesis attempts to bring these textlinguistic theories in contact with practical issues in language teaching, especially in the teaching of reading and writing. The authors believe that their explorations of the implications of textlinguistie theories on ELT will arouse the interest of other language teachers and meanwhile give them new ideas for their language teaching.