A Study On Thematic Progression Patterns In English Abstracts Written By Chinese MA Students Majoring In Foreign Linguistics And Applied Linguistics

As a highly condensed part of a full text,the abstract plays an integral part in academic papers,and its role is drawing constant attention.Almost all the academic papers are required to have an abstract,particularly in China.Students not only have to write Chinese abstracts,but also to write an English abstract.Therefore,how to write a good English abstract is very important.For many readers,reading an abstract can help them quickly understand the basic outline of the paper and its content,and then decide whether to continue in-depth reading or not.In reviewing the relevant researches of scholars on abstracts,this paper intends to analyze English abstracts by Chinese MA students of Foreign Linguistics and Applied Linguistics,trying to dig out the selection of thematic progression and characteristics of patterns employment,and the overall tendency of the use of thematic progression patterns in recent years and try to analyze the reason for such a tendency.In this paper,on the basis of Xu Shenghuan’s seven logical semantic relations and Huang Guowen’s six thematic progressions,forty papers on Foreign Linguistics and Applied Linguistics are selected from CMFD(China Master’s Theses Full-Text Databases).These s are selected from 2010 to 2013,ten papers a year.Through dividing the clauses in s,marking the themes of clauses,then calculating the occurring frequency of thematic progression,conducting further comparative analysis,this paper intends to answer three questions below:① Which kind of thematic progression pattern is preferred by four groups of MA students from Foreign Linguistics and Applied Linguistics when writing English abstracts?② What are the characteristics of choosing thematic progression patterns for four groups?What are the similarities and differences?③ What is the overall tendency of the employment in these thematic progression patterns?What possible factors may contribute to the tendency?The results show that there are slight differences between four groups in the choice of the thematic progression,but the overall tendency is the same.Thematic progressions that four groups of students use the most are the parallel progression,concentrated progression and continuous progression.The other two types of thematic progressions,the alternative progression and the derived progression are also used,but not so frequent,and the coordinate progression hardly occurs.Then,this paper discusses the reasons presented for the tendency in the choice of thematic progression patterns.This study has some limitations,but it enriches researches on thematic progression in textual function theoretically and verifies the results of previous studies.In terms of practical significance,the study offers some guidance for the writing of academic papers and teaching of college English writing.