A Contrastive Study Of English And Chinese Thematic Structures

English writing instruction is a tough task in college English pedagogy. Traditional way of teaching English writing lays undue emphasis on external textual forms, such as diction, lexical cohesion, as well as syntactic structures and grammar points, paying little attention to internal textual organization, which is mainly embodied through thematic progression (TP). Under such instructions, most Chinese EFL learners, especially those non-English majors, face great difficulties to yield well-organized and coherent English compositions though they have learned English diligently for many years (Ma Jing, 2001). In contrast, thematic progression, commencing from words and phrases, can teach our learners the layout of the whole discourse~1 through the cohesion, transition and progression between Themes and Rhemes.Icy Lee (2002) has successfully applied the Theme-Rheme Theory (T-R Theory in short) in writing pedagogy. However, there has been no corresponding empirical report in China though many researchers have ascertained the important role played by the Theme-Rheme Theory in assisting students to enhance their general writing proficiency.In view of this fact, the present researcher tries to probe into a new way to teach English writing under the guidance of the Theme-Rheme Theory. Given that we are...