| Writing is one of the difficulties for English learners, which has been paid more and more attention in English teaching. Writers often meet with difficult problems in writing such as where to start with, how to connect sentences or paragraphs and so on. Thematic Progression Theory is an important part of three components of Hallday's theory of metafunctions in the Systemic-Functional Grammar by Halliday (1970), indicating the relationship between themes and rhemes of different clauses in the hierarchy of text. By understanding TP Patterns in a text, writers can know how to work out the skeleton of the plot, how to organize and develop a text more efficiently and effectively. Icy Lee (2002) has succeeded in applying the Thematic Theory in the teaching of English writing, while few related experimental researches were made in China.This thesis is based on Halliday's Thematic Theory (1970), the six patters of Thematic Progression by Huang Guowen (2001), aiming at verifying the effects and feasibility of applying TP Theory into Chinese non-English majors'English writing course and the corresponding relationships between TPPs and genres by exploring the differences in the use of TPPs between Chinese non-English majors'English narrations, argumentations and English NSs'. Thirty subjects were sophomores from Tourism College, Inner Mongolia Finance and Economy University. Data collected in this study were from two writing tasks in the pretest and the post-test, and English NSs'writings from a corpus - VLC Web Concordancer. Through the study in the pretest, treatment, and the post-test, the following research questions were expected to be solved: 1) Are there any differences in the use of TPPs between Chinese non-English majors'English narrations, argumentations and English NSs'in the pretest and the post-test? If any, what are they? 2) Does the teaching of TP Theory increase the use of the TPPs in Chinese non-English majors'writings in the post-test? 3) Do certain TPPs tend to be more used than other types in the narrative and argumentative writings written by English NSs?After 18 weeks of TPP-teaching programme to subjects, the major findings are summarized as follows:1) In the pretest, a lot of differences in the use of TPPs existed between English NSs'narrations and argumentations and Chinese non-English majors'. There was no case of using the Comparison TP, Crossing TP and Derivation TP in Chinese non-English majors'narrations and argumentations.2) In the post-test, the differences in the use of TPPs between English NSs'narrations, argumentations and Chinese non-English majors'became much less obvious than those in the pretest. The Comparison, Crossing and Deviation TPPs were used in Chinese students'compositions.3) Compared with the results in the pretest, from the rise in the use of TPPs in Chinese non-English majors'narrations and argumentations in the post-test, it could be concluded that the way of applying TPPs in Chinese non-English majors'teaching of writing do great help these students improve the application of TPPs in their English narrative and argumentative compositions.4) Through studying TPPs in English NSs'narrative and argumentative writings, it could be found that different genre has its preferred TPPs. For instance, the major patterns in narrations were Parallel TP and Linear TP, while the derivation TP in argumentations.Based on this study, some suggestions and implications for teaching of English writing could be offered. It is helpful to do some activities, such as reading-based practice, exercises in class, writing practice, etc. It is conductive to introducing the TP Theory into college English writing course, which prepares students for constructing coherent writing. The practice of applying TPPs into real teaching of English writing among non-English majors enrich our understanding of the role of Thematic Progression in writings. Meanwhile, the practical values of this study, especially in writing, are self-evident.
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