A Study of Lexical Cohesion Theory in Reading Comprehension

This paper aims to introduce students to a new problem-solving method in reading comprehension through analyzing the feasibility of using the lexical cohesion theory based on Systemic Functional Linguistics. For this purpose, an empirical research was carried out to some Chinese college students. Research shows that the lexical cohesion theory can help improve students’ reading speed and accuracy and thus provide them with a new problem-solving method in reading comprehension. The implications of the lexical cohesion theory to reading comprehension can be reflected at such language levels as lexis, sentence and text. But this kind of improvement is limited to a certain extent. The students’ reading skills depend mainly on their language proficiency, and reading techniques can only play a supporting role.