A Study On Coherence Of Senior School Students’ English Writing Based On Theme-Rheme Theory

Writing is an essential cognitive activity in human society, which is also animportant way to process，produce and store information on the basis of languageknowledge. With the rapid acceleration of English learning in China, it gives moreand more demands on learners’English writing ability. However, English writing hasalways been the weakest part of senior school students, hence, many researchers andteachers are trying to find some effective approaches to instruct writing. Therefore,how to improve teaching and learning of English writing has become an urgent task.This thesis is based on theme-rheme theory, which explores the effect oftheme-rheme theory and thematic progression patterns on coherence of Englishwriting. Through analyzing the existing problems of teaching and learning of Englishwriting in senior school, it intends to introduce theme-rheme theory to improvecoherence in students’English writing and their ability of comprehensive analysis andprocessing.The study employs both quantitative and qualitative data analysis. Instrumentsused in the study contain questionnaires and experiments. Questionnaires can help toknow students’changes of attitude, interests, learning methods and writing habit.Experiments are conducted through pre-test and post-test, and SPSS is used to showspecific correlated analysis. After a semester’s training, the author finds somesignificant changes between the two groups, from students’interests to their learningmethods. Students in the experimental group develop their writing skills better thanthose in the controlled group. By analyzing the results, it can be concluded that it is practical and reasonable to introduce theme-rheme theory and thematic progressionpatterns to English writing in senior school. However, there are also some deficienciesin this method, and it needs to be improved in practice.The whole thesis can be divided into five chapters. The first chapter isintroduction, and the second one is literature review. The third chapter methodology isfollowed. The main part is chapter four results and discussion. The last chapter isconclusion.