An Empirical Study On Thematic Progression Patterns In ESL Writing

Thematic progression is one of the most important ways to realize coherence, which can help students to produce coherent writings. This thesis takes TP theory as its theoretical framework and combines the methods of qualitative and quantitative analyses to investigate the compositions written by both intermediate and high proficiency ESL learners in order to find out the similarities and differences in the use of TP patterns. The influence of thematic progression on textual coherence and possible causes of the similarities and differences are also discussed, so as to give some suggestions on how to improve ESL writing teaching and learning.In this research, 30 compositions written by intermediate proficiency ESL learners and 30 by high proficiency ones are randomly selected. The frequencies of different TP patterns are counted so as to investigate the similarities and differences in the use of thematic progression patterns. This paper also looks into the influence of thematic progression on textual coherence and employs the Graded Salience Hypothesis (GSH) to explain the similarities and differences of TP patterns in their compositions.Through statistical and empirical analyses, the following conclusions are reached: 1) there are similarities as well as differences in thematic progression patterns between intermediate proficiency ESL learners'and high proficiency ESL learners'compositions; 2) the similarities include a distinct preference for the pattern of thematic progression with a constant theme (TPCT), which constitutes the highest percentage in their compositions; a fondness of irregular thematic progression pattern (ITP) and linear thematic progression pattern (LTP) as the statistic shows that both of them make up a relatively high proportion among the five TP patterns; and a comparatively low but similar percentage of the pattern of thematic progression with a constant rheme (TPCR). The differences are: high proficiency ESL learners employ more LTP than intermediate proficiency learners; intermediate proficiency ESL learners use more ITP than high proficiency ESL learners; 3) TPCT, TPCR, LTP and CTP (Crisscrossed thematic progression pattern) are beneficial for textual coherence while ITP interrupts the smooth passing on of the information and is not good for the textual coherence; 4) the similarities and differences in intermediate proficiency and high proficiency ESL learners'compositions are in line with the assumptions of GSH.