A Comparative Study Of Thematic Progression And Textual Cohesion In EST Abstracts By Chinese Scholars And Native English Scholars

Today, we live in a time that both technology development and information dissemination are very fast, so the rapid exchange of scientific innovation is very crucial. One effective way to communicate research findings is to publish scientific papers with abstracts. EST abstract, as an independent genre, is directly related to the worldwide dissemination and exchange of scientific research achievements. Some important international information retrieval organizations assess whether to hire it through reading the abstract of the non-English version paper. Therefore, a sound English abstract is the key factor of reaching academic peak for Chinese scholars.How can EST paper author make their research achievements disseminated and communicated in the international academic community? How can foreign language teachers help these scholars from a linguistic perspective? From the perspective of Halliday's functional grammar, the author intends to find where need to improve for Chinese scholars through a comparative study of textual features in EST abstracts by Chinese scholars and native English scholars. In this paper, a comparative study of TP patterns and textual cohesion devices is conducted; the research objects are randomly selected 30 English abstracts from SCI. journals written by Chinese scholars and another 30 by native English scholars. The results show that on the selection of the thematic progression patterns, the Chinese scholars prefer to use the Constant Thematic pattern while the native English scholars tend to use more linear patterns. But the cross pattern is preferred by neither groups. There are great similarities in the use of cohesion devices between Chinese scholars and native English scholars. In grammatical cohesion devices, reference and conjunction are most common in both groups of abstracts; in lexical cohesion devices, repetition is mostly preferred by two groups of scholars. Other cohesion devices are relatively rare to use.What is new in this thesis is that a empirical comparative study is conducted on a great number of EST abstracts written by Chinese scholars and native English scholars; and linguistic theories are applied to interpret the study results. In spite of the limitations existing in the research, it is significant both theoretically and practically. In theory, it will enrich the study of discourse analysis by TP patterns. In practice, it may enlighten Chinese scholars on EST abstract writing.