Study On The Coherence In Chinese College Students' English Compositions From Textual Metafunction Perspective

Coherence has always been an important aspect in English writing teaching. However, many Chinese linguists and language teachers study coherence mainly from such overt cohesive devices as grammatical and lexical cohesion, while ignoring the other two covert cohesive devices, namely thematic structure and information structure. In fact, thematic structure, information structure and cohesion system are the three systems of textual metafunction in systemic functional grammar. This thesis tries to examine the coherence in present Chinese college students' English compositions from these three aspects. As college students are familiar with the grammatical and lexical cohesion, the thesis focuses on elaborating the guiding effect of thematic structure and information structure to coherence teaching.The thesis includes five chapters.Chapter One is an introduction. It portrays the study on coherence both abroad and in China, meanwhile, presents the reason for making this study and the structure of the thesis.Chapter Two introduces the three systems of textual metafunction: thematic structure, information structure and cohesion. It is the rationale of this study.Chapter Three concerns the specific methods in the study and data analysis. This study includes two parts: (1) questionnaires conducted to both the students and teachers for the purpose of knowing the status of thematic structure and information structure in present coherence teaching; (2) analyzing fifty college students' English compositions from the aspects of thematic progression patterns, conjunction and lexical cohesion.Chapter Four proves the feasibility of thematic structure and information structure in ensuring coherence by modifying two problematic paragraphs with confused thematic progression in students' compositions. Meanwhile, I propose to train teachers on the theories of textual metafunction.Chapter Five is the conclusion.As I mentioned in the Introduction, this thesis is only a tentative study of applying the three systems in textual metafunction to coherence teaching. I sincerely hope that college teachers can employ these theories in teaching to test their feasibility.