A Study On The Application Of Thematic Progression Theory To English Majors’ Extensive Reading

The Theme-Rheme theory, as one important part of Functional Sentence Perspective,brings more and more worldwide researchers and linguists to attention at present inApplied Linguistic studies. Students’ reading ability is one of the most importantcomponents of their English proficiency. Therefore, enhancing students’ reading abilitybecomes a key link in the chain of improving their achievements in the English class.Although many linguists propose that using the Theme-Rheme theory can make greatcontribution to English learning, few empirical studies have been undertaken to examineits effect, especially for English majors. Compared with lots of theoretical studies, there isan urgent need for empirical research.Two classes of English majors in Grade Two, coming from Jin Zhong University,were chosen as the subjects. They were selected randomly as an Experimental Group (EG)and a Control Group (CG). In this experiment, the Control Group was taught in thetraditional teaching method, and the Theme-Rheme analysis approach was applied to theExperimental Group during the same term. At the beginning of the term, the two groupswere required to take the same reading comprehension test—pre-test in the given timewhile at the end of the term, a second reading comprehension test—post-test differentfrom the one used previously was given to the two groups to examine their final learningresults. After that, the papers were scored and data collected and then all the data wereanalyzed with computer.After collecting the data, SPSS 11.5 was employed for statistic analysis. Resultsshowed that there was no significant difference on the scores between the two groups inthe pre-test. However, in the post-test, the scores of EG were significantly higher thanthose of CG. As the only difference was the use of different teaching approachesthroughout the experiment, statistics show that the application of the Theme-Rhemeanalysis approach in EG promotes to improve the reading achievements of the students. The research shows: firstly, employing the Theme-Rheme analysis approach inextensive class and emphasizing the textual analysis have a positive effect on improvingreading proficiency; secondly, the teaching method does improve teaching efficiency, andreduce the time of teaching and training than the traditional one so as to achieve thepurpose of reducing students’ learning burden; thirdly, language teaching through theTheme-Rheme analysis approach is feasible. Then the paper summarizes some mainexperimental findings, mentions the limitations which may be covered in this research,and comes to pedagogic implications for future teaching practice.