A Comparative Study Of Thematic Progression Patterns In English Argumentative Writings

Writing is one of the most essential but difficult skills for foreign languagelearning, especially for English learning. In China, students usually have trouble inwriting an essay in English. For example, as for content of their writing, it lacks logicand coherence and as for structure, sentence patterns are monotonous. Therefore, it isnecessary to compare Chinese students’ writings with those written by native Englishspeakers in order to discover differences and then figure out proper strategies to solvethe problems. After analyzing the previous researches which have been published andconcerned with writing, a clue can be found. That is, from the perspective of ThematicProgression Patterns, it is easy to discover the similarities and differences in textualdevelopment between writings of Chinese students and that of native English speakers.Researches based on the theory of Thematic Progression Patterns often have a closeconnection with a specific genre. Therefore, this research chooses essays ofargumentation to analyze from the perspective of Thematic Progression Patterns.To investigate carefully the similarities and differences in Thematic ProgressionPatterns in essays of argumentation written by writers in both groups, twenty oneessays of argumentation written by non-English major students in Jilin University arechosen randomly to contrast with another twenty essays of argumentation written bynative English speakers. Meanwhile, the present study employs qualitative andquantitative research methods to provide a correct and direct contrast on Theme andThematic Progression Patterns in both groups. The twenty essays written by nativeEnglish speakers are selected randomly from the corpus---LOCNESS which wasestablished by Sylaviane Granger.This study is based on M.A.K.Halliday’s Thematic Theory and Huang Guowen’s six Thematic Progression Patterns which include Parallel Thematic ProgressionPattern, Continuous Thematic Progression Pattern, Concentrated ThematicProgression Pattern, Alternative Thematic Progression Pattern, Coordinate ThematicProgression Pattern, and Derived Thematic Progression Pattern. Furthermore, ZhuYongsheng’s four patterns of Thematic Progression have been summarized in thetheoretical development in China. It shows that Thematic Progression Theory hasbeen made a precise summary of several major patterns but not too many patternswith quite a small percentage of application. Then the analysis is conducted followingthese steps. Firstly, the Theme and Rheme of each clause in all the forty one essaysare identified in accordance with the above theories. The next step is to retrieve andcount the frequency of each type of Theme and Thematic Progression Pattern byusing AntConc3.2.1. Finally, the distribution of the six Thematic ProgressionPatterns in Group NNS (non-native English speakers) is compared with that of GroupNS (native English speakers).As a consequence, the major findings of this study are made up of similaritiesand differences in the using of Thematic Progression Patterns. On the one hand, oneof the similarities is that the parallel pattern and the continuous pattern in both groupsare most frequently applied. The other similarity is the third frequently applied patternis the concentrated pattern. However, the major distinction is that the dominantpattern used in Group NNS is the parallel pattern while in the other group it is thecontinuous pattern. In addition, writers in Group NNS apply more coordinatepattern and derived pattern than those in Group NS; however, the former uses lessalternative pattern than the latter. The differences exist partly because the negativetransfer or interference of mother-tongue for Chinese college students. In addition, thetraditional examination model in China has made a profound influence on Chinesecollege students’ writing. To solve this problem, the theory of Thematic ProgressionPattern can be applied into the practical teaching and learning of writing in Chineseuniversities.The current study may contribute to enrich the research for Thematic ProgressionPatterns applied in essays of argumentation. It provides some advice for the teaching and learning of second language writing, and for Chinese college students, they needto learn the differences between first language writing and second language writingand apply appropriate Thematic Progression Patterns in second language writing.