An Experimental Study Of The Effect Of Thematic Progression And Lexical Repetition Patterns On Writing For Three-year English Majors

As the two important terms in text linguistics, both thematic progression pattern and lexical repetition pattern contribute to the writing coherence (Halliday &Hanson, 1976) which gives inspiration to the author to study the effect of the two patterns on students'writing coherence.Seventy three-year English majors from Grade One in Changchun Normal College are chosen as subjects of the study. The subjects are grouped into two. Group One is instructed both the thematic progression pattern and lexical repetition pattern while Group Two is instructed the lexical repetition pattern only. Then statistical analysis is taken into use to study the students'writing scores at different stages and questionnaire and interview are taken into use to further the research.The following results have been found: (1) Participants'coherence scores are significantly improved after the instruction of thematic progression pattern. (2) The limited English knowledge and the limited time span account for the participants'imperfection in using the thematic progression pattern. (3) Participants'coherence scores do have improved after learning the lexical repetition pattern but the result is not extremely significant. (4) In addition to the complexity of the pattern itself and high demanding for the users, participants attribute the imperfection or failure in using the lexical repetition pattern especially to their limited English knowledge and the limited time span. (5) The subjects'English levels influence their mastering on the patterns.The results of the study show that the instruction of thematic progression pattern to the beginners of three-year English majors is beneficial to their writing coherence while the instruction of lexical repetition pattern has not exerted the same great effect although it does have some influence on the students'writing proficiency.