Thematic Progression And Textual Coherence

Writing is a very complex task even performed in one's mother tongue and aconsiderably more difficult enterprise when carried out in a foreign language. Therefore,EFL writing has attracted many researchers. Analysis has been done at differentlinguistic levels, in different approaches, and from various perspectives. Nowadays, ESL course books on reading or writing try to incorporate workdesigned to help learners grasp the cohesive devices of English. However, L2 writinginstructions will come across EFL students' compositions in which sentences, assessedin isolation, are grammatically correct and yet the overall effect is incoherent. ThematicProgression is an important theory of coherence put forward by Danes (1974). Danes'sgreat contribution to discourse coherence analysis (Angela Downing, 1974:114) is toextend the concept of theme as point of beginning of a single sentence to that ofexplaining the inner development of texts. By consciously selecting certain thematicprogressions, writers will achieve an effect of smooth "flow" of the text. The thesis aims to identify, from the systemic-functional perspective, what hindersChinese advanced learners from producing effective argumentative compositions inEnglish. Through a study of 20 English argumentative writings conducted by advancedChinese learners who are studying in Northeast Normal University, errors in thematicconstruction at macro-level and micro-level are identified and analyzed. These errorsare the major factors that degrade the coherence in advanced Chinese learners' Englishwritings, and cause the difficulty for native speakers to comprehend what the writerswrite. The research results found in the thesis are not only due to the above reasons butthe combination of several factors--the interference of native language, differentrhetoric conventions in Chinese and English and difference thought patterns of Easternand Western people, all these contributing to the difficult situation for Chinese learnersto construct and organize native like compositions in writing process. Therefore, bothteachers and learners should pay attention to these factors.