Thematic Progression Patterns In Linguistic M.A. Theses Achieved By Lexical Cohesive Devices-A Comparative Study

With the continuous development of foreign communication, it is very crucial to improve writing levels of scholarly articles. Nowadays, English abstracts are expected by more and more international publishers and retrieval institutions. For Chinese researchers, abstract is one of the effective ways of integrating with the international academic. Therefore, on the theoretical basis of Halliday's thematic structure (2000), Huang's TP patterns (1988) and Hoey's patterns of lexis (1991), this study has made a contrastive study on English abstracts written by native English students majoring in Linguistics (L group) and Chinese students majoring in Foreign Linguistics and Applied Linguistics (FLAL group). There are four questions should be answered:1) What is the preferred theme type in L an FLAL groups.2) Are there any differences of TP patterns used in the two groups.3) Are there any differences of patterns of lexis used in the two groups.4) What are the frequently employed lexical cohesive devices in each TP pattern. Are there any differences in L and FLAL groups.A combination of qualitative and quantitative method is designed to verify the research questions, the former has focused on the description of English abstracts written by these two groups, and the latter has conducted the percentage comparison and statistic analysis (Independent Samples T-test). Research results demonstrate that the preference of theme type is similar in both groups. However, there are significant differences in the choice of TP patterns, patterns of lexis and the employment of lexical cohesive devices in each TP pattern are not the same.Next, possible factors contributing to the differences are explored in the study. The first factor results from the diversity of communication model in English and Chinese speech communities; the second factor owes to the expression of linguistic information influenced by their native languages; and the difference of thinking pattern may be seen as the last factor.In the end, some practical advices for English abstract writing and English teaching are postulated in light of the research findings.