An Empirical Study On Application Of Thematic Progression Pattern In English Writing Teaching In Senior High School

English writing is not only an important language skill but also an important criterion for measuring English learners' English competence.What's more,writing accounts for a large proportion in English examinations.However,the actual writing ability of them is far from satisfactory.Most of Chinese senior school students have been studying English since they were at primary school.Although they have accumulated a great deal of vocabulary and specific grammar rules,they find it difficult to write down their ideas logically and coherently.Hence,it is an urgent task to find an effective way to help students improve their English writing ability.Thematic progression pattern is an important branch of Halliday's study of Systemic Functional Grammar.In theory,each sentence has its own theme and rheme.The relationship between theme and their rheme is called Thematic Progression.Thematic progression pattern has attracted some scholars' attention considered as one of the discourse coherent devices.They have begun to research on the relationship between thematic progression pattern and discourse coherence in English writing by analyzing sample compositions from students and strongly advocate that thematic progression pattern should be applied to practical English teaching.The thesis is based on thematic progression pattern explore the effect of thematic progression pattern on English writing in senior high schools,aiming to present a more effective and more practical English writing teaching method.Both quantitative and qualitative data analysis are adopted in this study.Instruments used in the study contain questionnaires,experiments and interview.Experiments are conducted through pre-test and post-test.SPSS 22.0 is used to make data analysis.The subjects are 90 students from two classes of Grade two in Liaoning Province Shiyan High School.One class is the experimental class.One class is the control class.The study mainly deals with the following two questions:1.What is the effect of thematic progression pattern on senior high school students' English writing?2.What are students' changes of attitudes towards English writing after the application of TP?After a semester's training,the author finds that students in the experimental group have made much further progress in English writing than students in the controlled class.And it is practical and effective to introduce thematic progression pattern to English writing in senior school.However,the study still has some shortcomings that need to be improved in practice.