Thematic Progression, Macrostructure And The Teaching Of College English Writing

A text is defined as a sequence of sentences or paragraphs that display some kind of mutual dependence instead of piling up randomly. Thematic analysis and discourse macrostructure analysis, two important aspects of textual function in functional grammar, are ways of examining whether a sequence of sentences or paragraphs could construct a text. However, studies of the Chinese students'English writings in terms of thematic structures and macrostructures have hardly published. So this thesis is intended to explore the feasibility of thematic and macrostructure analysis to English writing by describing the thematic theory and macrostructure theory and by analyzing the sample compositions in CET-4 examinations. And the thesis also elucidates the effect on teaching practice produced by the mode of theme, rheme and macrostructure.Besides the parts of introduction and conclusion, this thesis is composed of five chapters:Chapter one presents a brief review of the literature on the studies of thematic and macrostructure theories and English writing. Main perspectives concerning theme and thematic progression at home and abroad are presented in this chapter, van Dijk's macrostructure and macro-rules are introduced briefly. And the relationship between them and English writing is explored. The discussion of theme is largely based on the work of Halliday (1994), and, the concept of thematic progression (TP) and its seven patterns, based on Huang Yan's model in 1989, is expounded. The writer introduces van Dijk's macrostructure and macro-rules in details, of which the enlightenment on the English writing teaching is explored. At last, the necessity and practicality of integration of these two theories into English writing teaching is analyzed.Chapter two mainly analyzes some major problems existing in the course of English writings and researches into their causes which include: unclear main topic, lack of coherence and cohesion, single sentence patterns and stiff structures etc. The reasons for them are: differences of cultural thought patterns in Chinese and English, negative transfer of native language, and shortcomings in traditional English writing teaching etc.Chapter three is about the research methodology applied in this study, including objective, data collection and procedures.Chapter four is devoted to a tentative study on the thematic and macrostructure of sixteen argumentative compositions produced by some Chinese non-English majors in CET-4 examinations. The results show that different scored compositions can be presented in the different uses of thematic progression patterns and macrostructures; the choice of TP patterns and macrostructures can not reveal certain stylistic features of the argumentations; clear and reasonable choices of TP patterns and macrostructures can ensure the coherence of a text.In chapter five, the writer first summarizes the general process of writing with the guidance of these two theories. And the specific application of thematic progression and anti macro-rules is shown in the process of writing a composition which is chosen from a test paper. Then some strategies are put forward for the integration of thematic theory and macrostructure theory into English writing teaching since these two theories can't solve all the problems about English writing. By synthesizing the merits of the approaches now used in present writing teaching, the writer proposes an integrated approach.Through the research of the thematic progression and macrostructure theories and the analysis of sample compositions, it seems that the integration of these theories into English writing is both theoretically sound and practically feasible. However, this is just a tentative study and the small sample size limits to some extent the generalization of the findings made in this study, so further study is needed in the future.