A Research On Thematic Theory And Its Application To College English Writing

English writing, as one of the basic skills of English learning, constantly enjoys wide concern at both home and abroad. Many theories about English writing have been put forward, such as product-oriented writing proposed by Daniel Fogarty and James Berlin in the early 1900s, process-oriented writing by Graves in the 1970s and genre-oriented writing that after, which became the three main English writing theories abroad. These theories were introduced into China and some linguists, combining practical condition of domestic writing teaching, researched the feasibility of three new teaching methods, namely process-oriented writing, genre-oriented writing and process-genre writing approach. This thesis researches English writing from the perspective of functional grammar, mainly using thematic theory and theory of thematic progression (TP for short).The notion of theme and rheme was first articulated by Mathesius, founder of Prague School, as early as in 1939. M.A.K. Halliday took and developed the notion further.In his book An Introduction to Functional Grammar, he classified theme into three types:simple theme, multiple theme and clausal theme. Thematic progression is an important theory of coherence put forward by F. Danes, who extended thematic theory to the explanation of the inner development of texts. His basic assumption is that text development is represented, among other things, by thematic progression. The thematic organization of the text is closely connected with discourse coherence or text connexity(Angela Downing,2001, p.5). He proposed four thematic progression models.Chinese scholars adopted the view upheld by Halliday. Xu Shenghuan produced articles on theme and rheme in 1982 and 1985 respectively and has been paying great attention to the development of research of them. Besides, on the basis of others' researches, Huang Yan, Huang Guowen and Hu Zhuanglin developed their own theory of thematic progression. Huang Guowen concluded six TP models, which, coupled with thematic theory expounded by Halliday, becomes the theoretical basis of the experiment of this thesis.In the experiment, the author spends twelve hours on the following tasks: introduction to the theories concerned to the students; analysis of the TP models employed in the four types of writing (description, narration, exposition and argumentation); students'completion of compositions in the given time; comparative analysis of the students'compositions from both the experimental and controlled class. The procedure is as follows:In the first two hours, the author introduces to students thematic theory and analyzes thematic structures in the two chosen samples (one narration and one argumentation) with the students with a purpose of letting them be familiar with the new theory.The second two hours covers the introduction to theory of thematic progression and analysis of the TP models in the sampled essays (the narration being the same as used in the first hour, the argumentation being different).The following eight hours is divided into four steps, with each step lasting two hours. Each step involves a general introduction to one type of writing, analysis of the TP models in the given type and students'completion of a composition. Sample analysis is necessary. The author chooses one sampled composition of exposition respectively from both the experimental and controlled class and makes comparative analysis of the use of TP models. It is the same with sampled analysis of argumentation.From the comparative analysis, we reach the conclusion that students from experimental class are more aware of the coherence in their compositions. Meanwhile, theory of thematic progression can be a more feasible approach to the realization of coherence in students'composition.