On Application Of Discourse Construction Strategies To College English Writing

Discourse linguistics focuses on the language in use and it aims to study the features of the organizations of discourse. One of the subjects in discourse analysis is discourse construction strategies, the researches on which have provided sufficient evidence to foreign language teaching, especially to college English writing.Discourse construction strategies are choices of both the content and the form of discourses in communication by the discourse producer. Discourse construction strategies vary in language use. This thesis discusses thematic structure, thematic progression and discourse patterns.Thematic structure consists of theme and rheme. Theme is the point of departure of the message and is always put first in a clause. Rheme is the remainder of the message, the part in which the theme is developed. Theme conveys given information, rheme conveys new information. Theme is more important, for the organization of language structure is usually from the given to the new.The sequences of the theme in each clause are known as thematic progression. Different scholars in different countries have had their understanding of the patterns of thematic progression. The author mainly explores the classification of thematic progression patterns by Huang Guowen. Patterns of thematic progression differ in different discourse genres.Discourse patterns are mechanisms to link clauses and paragraphs into a discourse and to distribute information in a discourse. Discourse patterns organize all the ideas in a linear manifestation so as to make the discourse progress. This thesis discusses four discourse patterns concluded by Liu Chendan.English writing of college students has been a weak chain in their language learning. By analyzing college students' writings, the author discovers the problems of discourse construction are most serious. Therefore, the author suggests a method to teach thematic structure, thematic progression and discourse patterns based upon discourse construction strategies by the teaching process—exploring &finding, analyzing & concluding, imitating & applying. That is to guide the students to imitate to write discourses after exploring and concluding the principles in construction of clauses, paragraphs anddiscourses.In order to prove whether the teaching of thematic structure, thematic progression and discourse patterns can help to improve college students' competence to write, the author conducts an experiment in two classes, 92 students in total, of Grade One from Foreign Languages School in Xiaogan University. In the experiment which lasts 18 weeks, one is the experimental class and 47 students in this class are taught thematic structure, thematic progression and discourse patterns and encouraged to practice writing by imitation. Whereas, the other class is the controlled class and 45 students in this class are taught in a traditional way. Each week both classes have one period of writing teaching. After the correction of the compositions, the author collects the relevant data and makes analysis of the results.From the data analysis of the experiment, the author gets some findings. For instance, the average final score and coherence score of the experimental class is higher than that of the controlled class and the coherence errors of the experimental class are fewer than those of the controlled class. The results show that the teaching of thematic structure\thematic progression and discourse patterns has great effect on improving college students' writing competence. Hence, the author puts forward a suggestion to encourage the teaching of discourse construction strategies in college English writing.