English Thematic Structure, Thematic Progression And Coherence Of College English Writing

The statistics of the results of CET-4/-6 indicate that most college English students'writing ability is inferior to the other language abilities and fails to reach the required basic writing level prescribed by the College English Syllabus. This is mainly owed to the fact that, under the guidance of the traditional formalism, college English students generally lack the knowledge of text linguistics. They tend to adopt the bottom-up thinking way, write sentence by sentence in a linear sequence and fail to plan the composition's global schematic structure. As a consequence, from the perspectives of Thematic Structure and Thematic Progression, their compositions are filled with such serious problems as straying away from the point, inappropriate use of Thematic Progression pattern(s), illogical and disordered thread of thought, lack of cohesive harmony, lack of manifestation of the explicit logico-semantic relations, lack of variety of sentence patterns and flexible length of sentences, registerial incoherence and generic incoherence.The founder of Systemic Functional Grammar, Halliday (1994: XV) thinks the purpose of building up the SFG is to provide a theoretical framework for textual analysis. It involves all the text's internal organic indexes of language and such external indexes as context, genre, even ideology associated with language production. It proves that SFG has not only great theoretical significance but also great applicable value in guiding the teaching and learning of college English writing. However, many college English teachers haven't known much about SFG. The absolute majority of college English students have even known less. It is evident that the traditional formalism has deeply rooted in college English teaching and learning. All English teachers have the obligation to contribute to diffusing and applying SFG into the teaching and learning of college English writing and greatly improve college English students'writing level.This thesis mainly integrates the theories of Thematic Structure and Thematic Progression with the text coherence theories, explores the fundamental factors that influence texts'macro-coherence and micro-coherence, which can be summarized as follows: cohesive strings and cohesive chains determine texts'cohesive harmony; Theme-Rheme and Given·New determine texts'method of development / point; registerial consistency and generic structure determine the mode of text-forming resources. All the above-mentioned factors interweaving and interacting determine texts'overall cohesion and coherence.Through case studies and integrating the related theories like Thematic Structure, Thematic Progression and textual cohesion and coherence, this thesis creatively comes up with the following feasible and practical solutions with respect to the common college English writing problems, which turn out to be the most effective cures and the most significant guidelines worth diffusing and applying into college English writing teaching and leaning.(i) Thematisation (the choice of Theme) is not only a clausal process but also a discoursal process. In light of the text's schematic structure, thematisation should benefit forming appropriate text strategic continuity(-ies).(ii) Multiple Theme manifests intersentential logico-semantic relations in a text. The combination of Multiple Theme and thematic progression brings the intrasentential resources of THEME and INFORMATION into the picture alongside the intersentential resources of cohesion. All contributes to CET writing's cohesion and coherence.(iii)Interacting and interweaving hierarchical Themes and Rhemes guarantee sticking to the point. A paragraph, even a passage always has its schematic structure, in which there exist predictive relations among the macro-Theme, hyper-Themes and clause Themes, while cumulative relations exist among the macro-New, hyper-News and clause News. So in the course of writing, we'd better first conceive the text's global schematic structure, then make full use of the predictive relations among the three hierarchical Themes to construct the whole content of the text.(iv) Thematic progression must benefit registerial coherence and generic coherence. Pseudo-coherence or non-coherence fails to form registerial or generic coherence. In my view, register consistency and generic structure determine the mode of text-forming resources. Register consistency mainly refers to: a) the text has a normal schematic structure; b) the text has a macro-topic, which predicts all sub-topics. The macro-topic is the cognitive framework in which all the content of the text can be contained. As to generic structure, the teacher should help the students distinguish and internalize the most common text types, such as narration, description, exposition and argumentation.(v) Thematic Progression helps the author eliminate illogical and disordered thread of thought. Some English compositions violate the principle of'unity', which is a big"taboo"in writing. The teacher should instruct the students to make full use of thematic progression to strengthen texts'internal organic semantic relations to get over mental blocks, make the central idea outstanding, coordinate the macro-topic and subtopics and improve the text's cohesion and coherence.(vi) The use of marked Theme and multiple Theme predicts variety of sentences and flexible length of sentences. Marked Theme not only plays a cohesive and rhetoric role but also conveys special implication. Textual Theme and Interpersonal Theme preceding Experiential Theme not only strengthen local and even global coherence of the text but also play their own textual and interpersonal role.In all, these improvement techniques not only are essential remedies for these college English writing problems, but also play a key role in changing our traditional thinking way in college English writing: such as integrating the top-down thinking way with the bottom-up thinking way, shifting our focus on the final writing product towards focus on the writing process, strengthening texts'internal organic relations instead of achieving superficial cohesion or pseudo cohesion. Nevertheless, this thesis can't exhaust all college English writing theories and techniques. It only attempts to cast a brick to attract jade and attempts to turn all the mentioned theories and writing techniques into real-time text production forces, supplies college English teachers and students with scientific guidance and enlightenment, calls on the students to intentionally and willingly absorb and adopt them and directly benefit from it.