Thematic Progression, Genre And TEFL Reading

In recent years, the systemic Functional Grammar has increasingly been viewed as providing a powerful framework for discourse, among which, thematic structure, information structure and cohesion are three major means to realize the textual meta-function. Meanwhile, genres as communicative events that are characterized both by their communicative purpose, the various patterns of structure, style, content and intended audience, becomes strikingly much more significant than ever before in discourse analysis. This thesis aims to explore the relationship between thematic progression and genre by specific discourse analysis.This thesis, based on the theoretical contributions made by M.A.K. Halliday (1994) and F. Danes (1969; 1974); and inspired by the tentative studies conducted by Francis (1989; 1990), etc, intends to formulate different applicable Thematic Progression patterns in discourse analysis. Furthermore, it explores the relationship between Thematic Progression and Genre with the help of the detailed analysis of Thematic Progression in 55 texts or mini-texts of four genres: Narration, Description, Exposition and Argumentation, which are adopted from various College textbooks and some supplementary reading materials. Such detailed analyses not only testify Danes' assertion that thematic progression, the skeleton of the plot, represents the text connexity; they also verify the hypothesis that text type with distinct communicative purpose will demonstrate its preferred thematic progression models. Moreover, the correlation between thematic progression and genre enriches our understanding about thematic progression in discourse analysis, also, the indispensable significance of . thematic progression in the construction and the development of text and its contribution to TEFL reading are self-evident. To illustrate the contribution of thematic progression to English reading class, a five-week experiment is conducted among second-year College English learners from H university, it turns out that the application of thematic progression will not merely facilitates reading efficiency, it is also conducive to the cultivation of learner's reading consciousness and autonomous study competence.This thesis consists of six chapters:Introduction mainly represents the problems, the significance, the scope, the framework and the definition of key terms.Chapter one pertains to the relevant literatures from both theoretical andempirical perspectives. It mainly postulates thematic structure, the classification of theme, thematic progression and some tentative studies about the application of thematic progression in discourse analysis.Chapter two elucidates seven Thematic Progression models exploited in this thesis, they are: Linear TP, Parallel TP, Constant TP, Derived TP, Crossing TP, Alternating TP and Summarizing TP.Chapter three expounds the purpose, the instrument and procedures for data collection, data analysis.Chapter four demonstrates the elaborate analyses of corpuses, the detailed interpretations of the findings of this research and the evaluation of the significance of the results.Chapter five explores the pedagogical implication of the results of this study in TEFL Reading Class with the help of a small-scale experiment conducted among college English learners.Chapter six concludes theoretical and practical significances of this study; meanwhile it summarizes the limitations and the recommendations for further studies.