A Comparative Analysis Of Themes In English Thesis Abstracts Written By Chinese And Native Speakers

Abstract is a useful tool for readers to grasp the main information of the thesis. It can greatly affect a reader’s judgment of the quality of the thesis. Therefore, the writing of the abstract is quite important. This study aims to find out that compared with English thesis abstracts written by native speakers majoring in Mechanical Engineering, what are the shortcomings of such abstracts written by Chinese students majoring in the same discipline. Research objects of this study are30English abstracts written by Chinese and30English abstracts written by native speakers. All the samples are English abstracts of Master’s thesis in the same field, Mechanical Engineering. The former30samples were arbitrarily chosen from China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), while the latter30samples were arbitrarily chosen from ProQuest Digital Dissertations (PQDD). This study is a combination of quantitative study and qualitative study, using Halliday’s theme theory as the theoretical framework and at the same time, referring to some other famous linguists’point of views.By comparing the percentages that every type of the themes takes up in all the themes in all the samples, we found that English thesis abstracts written by Chinese students majoring in Mechanical Engineering and such abstracts written by native speakers majoring in the same discipline share many commonalities.(1) Topical themes make up the largest proportion of all the themes, textual themes make up the second largest proportion, and interpersonal themes make up the smallest proportion.(2) More simple themes are used than multiple themes.(3) Unmarked themes overweigh marked themes.Meanwhile, there are some slight differences as well.(1) Chinese students use less topical themes than native speakers do. In addition, the percentage of process elements (especially existential process elements) functioning as topical themes and the percentage of circumstance elements (especially angle elements) functioning as topical themes in English thesis abstracts written by Chinese students are much higher than those in thesis abstracts written by native speakers. Chinese students use more textual themes than native speakers do. Besides, Chinese students are likely to choose temporal conjunctive adjuncts to play the role of textual themes, while native speakers are inclined to choose additive or adversative conjunctive adjuncts.(2) Chinese students use more multiple themes than native speakers do. Moreover, most multiple themes used by Chinese students consist of temporal conjunctive adjuncts functioning as textual themes and circumstance elements functioning as topical themes, while most multiple themes used by native speakers comprise conjunctions (especially "and") functioning as textual themes and participant elements functioning as topical themes.(3) Chinese students use more marked themes than native speakers do.As a result, this paper suggests that in order to write more native like English thesis abstracts, Chinese students can pay more attention to thematic choice and try to avoid overusing process elements (especially existential process elements) and circumstance elements (especially angle elements) to function as topical themes, overusing temporal conjunctive adjuncts to be textual themes, and overusing marked themes.