A Study Of The Effect Of Thematic Progression Patterns In Reading-writing Integrated Continuation Tasks On The Coherence Of L2 Argumentative Writing

There is a problem with incoherence between sentences and paragraphs in the majority of students’ L2 argumentative writing.Thematic progression patterns have been proven to directly affect the coherence of discourse and enable students to organize sentence order better.Xu-argument holds that language is learned through xu,a Chinese word meaning completion,extension,and creation.Numerous studies have shown that the xu-argument-derived reading-writing integrated continuation task can enhance the coherence of L2 argumentative writing.Based on this,under the guidance of xu-argument and thematic progression patterns,this paper explores the impact of the teaching method,which combines the reading-writing integrated continuation task with thematic progression patterns,on improving the coherence of students’ L2 argumentative writing.Non-English sophomore students were selected as the research participants in a12-week experiment on argumentative reading-writing integrated continuation tasks.The three research questions below are addressed:(1)What is the effect of the reading-writing integrated continuation task on the use of thematic progression patterns in L2 argumentative writing?(2)What is the effect of the teaching method that combines the continuation task and thematic progression patterns on the coherence of L2 argumentative writing?(3)How should the teaching method be implemented in order to achieve a better teaching effect?The data collection and analysis focused on the following four aspects:(1)collecting the continuation writings in the teaching experiment and analyzing their thematic progression patterns for feedback;(2)collecting the essays in the pre-test and the post-test,counting the frequency of using the thematic progression patterns,and using SPSS 26.0 to conduct paired sample t-tests to analyze the changes in the use of the patterns;(3)obtaining data of coherence by using a text analysis tool(Coh-metrix 3.0)and analyzing the changes in coherence by paired sample t-test;(4)sorting out questionnaires and interviews to understand students’ attitudes toward the teaching experiment.The results are as follows:(1)The continuation task can improve the use of thematic progression patterns in students’ L2 argumentative writing,and the patterns are used more frequently and flexibly with more types;(2)The teaching method can improve the coherence of L2 argumentative writing.Noun overlap and argument overlap in adjacent sentences and all sentences show significant differences between the pre-test and the post-test.The semantic similarity between adjacent sentences and adjacent paragraphs is significantly different.Besides,the proportion of other conjunctions except that of logical conjunctions shows significant differences.(3)The teaching method can be better implemented in the following ways: 1)understanding the participants’ writing level;2)teaching thematic progression patterns in an interesting way;3)selecting compositions with interesting content and rich use of the patterns as materials for continuation tasks;4)adopting a diversified approach to analyze the original text;5)providing timely feedback and evaluation of students’ continuation writings.This study demonstrates that the combination of the continuation task and thematic progression patterns can improve the coherence of L2 argumentative writing.However,there are shortcomings in this study,such as the subjective analysis of the patterns and the short duration of the study.Future studies can extend the teaching time to further prove the results.