Application Of The Thematic-Progression In The English Writing Teaching In Senior High Schools

This study investigates, within the theory of Thematic Progression patterns (TPpatterns), the effect of TP pattern instruction on Senior High School students’ writingperformance and TP pattern use. Specifically, the difference of the frequency of TPpattern use between Science students and Arts students as well as between males andfemale is investigated.A cohort of92Senior Two students from Guangzhou No.3Middle School,including38students majoring in Arts (N=38) and53students majoring in Science(N=53) participated in the study. The Arts Class consists of11boys and27girls whilethe Science Class is made up of33boys and20girls. A series of training schemeswere prepared by the researcher, which served as guideline for the researcher toconduct the instruction on four TP patterns in normal class sessions for a duration of4months which consisted of two stages. During the first stage, the relevant theorieswere introduced to the students by the researcher, and four TP patterns wereintroduced to the participants. During the second stage, students had some training forwriting and assessed their writing with the application of TP patterns. A posttest wasadministered and results of the Pre-test and Post-test were compared. These resultswere analyzed from quantitative and qualitative perspectives.The findings showed that:1) The instruction of the TP patterns did not enable theScience students and Arts students to improve their writing performance.2) Thefrequency of the TP patterns improved significantly after the experiment. Specifically,three TP patterns (i.e., TP with a continuous Rheme, Simple Linear TP, RhemeRegression) were higher than before, especially the TP with a continuous Rhemesignificantly increased.3) The difference of the writing scores between Science classand Arts class was not significant. The frequency of the TP pattern uses betweenScience class and Arts class has some differences. It reveals that Arts class preferredto use “TP with a continuous Theme” while Science class preferred to apply “SimpleLinear TP”.4) There was no significant difference concerning the writing performance between males and females. With respect to the use of the four TPpatterns females had a preference for TP with a continuous Rheme whereas malespreferred to use TP with a continuous theme and TP linear pattern.In conclusion, although the study has not shown clear improvement in thestudents’ writing performance, it has increased, to some extent, the students’ use of TPpatterns. It is necessary for the teachers to instruct the students to master TP patternsin their composition, which will positively assist them to become more activelyengaged in their writing and enable them to have a coherent writing. The findingssuggest that TP patterns are teachable and learnable.