The Thematic Progression Patterns In English Majors’ Argumentative Writings

Writing is the most difficult part in English learning and teaching and even advancedlearners find it difficult to write a very coherent composition. Therefore, many linguists directtheir attention to thematic progression. Clear and reasonable thematic progression contributesto the coherence and good-organization of a text, which has a close relationship with writingquality. However, many studies are concerned with the thematic progression in compositionsof non-English majors and compositions written by students of different proficiency, but afew are about its application by English majors and by students from different grades.Thematic progression was put forward by Frantisek Danes in1974, used for examiningthe coherence of a text. Based on thematic progression, the present study intends to conduct acomparative study on thematic progression patterns in freshmen’s and juniors’ compositions,and high-scored and low-scored compositions in the two grades so as to find out therelationship between grades and thematic progression, and the relationship between scoresand thematic progression. Moreover, the factors attributing to the similarities and differencesin thematic progression of the compositions written by freshmen and juniors and ofhigh-scored and low-scored compositions are explored. It is hoped that the study will providea better understanding of thematic progression in English majors’ compositions and give somesuggestions to English Writing teaching.The author adopts Zhu’s classification of TP patterns, namely the same Theme, the sameRheme, the continuous pattern and the alternative pattern. In this research, freshmen andjuniors majoring in English are asked to write an argumentative composition entitled “Do firstimpressions count?” within40minutes in class. All the compositions are scored by the authoraccording to the content, organization, vocabulary, language use and mechanics and the totalscore is regarded as the writing quality. There are totally four corpora and30compositions foreach: high-scored compositions written by freshmen; low-scored compositions written byfreshmen; high-scored compositions written by juniors; low-scored compositions written byjuniors. To see if high-scored and low-scored groups show a significant difference in theirscores, independent-sample t-tests were conducted. The results show that high-scored aresignificant different from low-scored groups. Next, Themes and Rhemes were marked, and then TP patters were marked and counted. At last, the overall TP patterns in the compositionsof the four groups were analyzed.It is found that each composition employs more than one pattern and the generaltendency of the TP patterns employed is T-T> R-R> R-T> T-R. The same Theme, the sameRheme and the continuous pattern are the three most frequently used patterns，and only thealternative pattern is seldom used. However, the percentage of each pattern is different.Compared with high-scored compositions written by freshmen, high-scored compositionswritten by juniors employ less the same Theme, but more the same Rheme and the continuouspattern, which is regarded as a good combination of the patterns and is good for the coherenceof a text. No significance is found in the employment of the alternative pattern. From thedifferences, we can infer that high-grade students employ thematic progression moreeffectively to achieve coherence and therefore writing course has an effect on writing qualitythough TP patterns are not taught in class. Comparisons are also made between high-scoredand low-scored compositions in Grade1and Grade3. High-scored students employed less thesame Theme but more the same Rheme and the continuous pattern than low-scored students.The alternative pattern only accounts for a very small percentage in both high-scored andlow-scored students’ compositions. The results show that TP patterns has a great contributionto writing quality.In order to make students have a bigger progress in using TP patterns, it is suggested thatthematic progression should be applied to College English writing course though the presentwriting course has some effect. It will make a big difference if appropriate patterns are chosenand special attention is paid to the combination of different patterns to achieve diversity andcoherence.