| Reading is a key way of human beings to acquire information; it is not only frequently used by native speakers but also those foreign language learners particularly the college students. With strengthened reading proficiency, EFL readers shall make greater progress and achieve superior development in all academic areas. Furthermore, reading comprehension ability could be a primary means for students to search out experiences and accumulate the necessary information in their specialties after graduation. Therefore, EFL reading comprehension competence is considered as the core of EFL teaching. However, even if the EFL reading teaching in China has made great progress and the students'English level is significantly enhanced, it still requires more time and energy for exploring and reforming. The traditional "bottom-up" model of EFL reading teaching is excessively adopted in classroom instruction, students have consumed much more time and energy in learning reading but still encounter a mass of tough problems in text comprehension.The notion of Theme is an important component of text linguistics, which is initially put forward by Henri Weil in 1844. Mathesius (1937) of the Prague School divides a clause into three parts:Theme, Rheme and Transition; and he deems that Theme is "the starting point of the utterance, that which is known or at least obvious in the given situation, and form which the speaker proceeds", while "what the speaker states about, or in regard to, the starting point of the utterance" is Rheme. (Nwogu and Bloor,1991:396) Later in 1985, Halliday and Hasan accepted Mathesius and other Prague School linguists concepts of Theme, published their Language, Context and Text, in which they propose that Theme is "the element which serves as the point of departure of the message; it is that which the clause is concerned. The Remainder of the message, the part in which the Theme is developed, is called Rheme". (Halliday,1985:38) Halliday also puts forward different types of Theme according to the syntactic structure of the initial constituents of a sentence, and generally classifies them as Simple Theme, Multiple Theme, and Clausal Theme.Without a doubt, Hallidayan Theme-Rheme theory offers the far-reaching implications on contemporary linguistics. For enlarging Hallidayan Theme-Rheme theory, Danes (1969) firstly reckons that it is the systematic arrangement of Themes and Rhemes that develop the contexts and he formalizes the three Thematic Progression patterns. In China, many researchers such as Xu Shenghuan (1982), Huang Yan (1985), Huang Guowen (1988), Hu Zhuanglin (1994) and Zhu Yongsheng (1995) respectively propose their studies on Thematic Progression.At the meantime, many researchers in China also apply the Theme-Rheme Theory and Thematic Progression to EFL Reading Teaching as well. Zhao Hong (1998) applies the Theme-Rheme Theory to the fast reading of TEM-4 and TEM-8 and she points out that the adoption of Theme-Rheme Theory is a highly efficient instrument to increase the students' reading rate. Liu Chendan (1999) announces that the Theme-Rheme Theory should be involved in EFL reading and writing teaching and he manifests detailedly how to analyze a text with the Theme-Rheme theory to students. Additionally, other researchers including Zhu Yongsheng (2002) and Zhang Delu (2003) propound that Theme-Rheme Theory is helpful for improving students'reading efficiency, while Xiang Lan (2002) links Theme-Rheme Theory to English reading teaching and counts that the Thematic Progression is the outline of text content but restricted by its genres. All these research have laid solitude foundations for the present study.The principal objective of this research is to apply the Theme-Rheme theory in EFL reading teaching for Non-English majors in college. It also explores the influence of this theory on students'EFL reading proficiency. The research begins with the participation of 171 students of Jilin University Heping Campus, who are distributed in one control group (85 persons) and one experimental group (86 persons). The reading intervention treatment starts after pre-experiment test and the questionnaire, in which totally 48 academic hours are involved. In the Reading Teaching and Reading Training Section, a conventional "bottom-up" reading teaching model is performed to the control group while generally the combination of "bottom-up" and "top-down" models is conducted in experiment group. That is to say, for CG, the instructor chiefly delivers the traditional reading teaching methods for the instruction. The clarification and accumulation of vocabulary and the analysis of complex sentences are highly emphasized. However in EG, not only the linguistic knowledge but also the contextual information, especially the initial parts of sentences and the logical interlink among sentences and paragraphs are highlighted. The students are required to generate summaries on what they have read in class and draw the sketches of Thematic Progression patterns of some of the passages. After the treatment, a post-experiment test and an interview are carried out to verify the effectiveness of the experiment, and all the data are collected and both qualitative and quantitative methods are involved for statistics analysis.The result of this study proves that the Theme-Rheme theory and the thematic progression patterns is an effective system and they have positive influence on college EFL reading teaching and learning. The findings reveal that, firstly, the students'capability of global understanding can be trained by the application of Theme-Rheme theory, which proposed a new-fangled approach of EFL reading teaching and learning because the macro-grasp of text is highly valued by both teachers and students. Secondly, the students' capability of detailed understanding is obtained. The arrangement of the details in a text turns to be more logical and clear and easy to grasp, the theme sentences of paragraphs, and the authors'attitudes are highlighted by students while reading. Thirdly, the students reading rate are enhanced but it is only effective when dong some comparatively simple reading materials. When it comes to those more complicated passages, the students still need to seek their understanding by word recognizing and sentence analyzing, hence, their reading rate slows down.In conclusion, EFL reading instruction should attach weight to comprehend usage of various teaching methods and the application of Theme-Rheme theory to EFL reading teaching is feasible and effective.
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