A Study On The Theme Use And Theme-rheme Progression In Non-English Major Students' Writings

The thematic theory is regarded as one of the most important theories in the field of systemic functional linguistics and has attracted many researchers' attention.This theory can be used to study the themes of sentences and the relationship between sentences,and can effectively analyze the structure of a complete text.Mellos(2011)suggested that thematic choices and the way theme and rheme interplay or progress into one another are positively related to writing coherence.Therefore,with the help of this theory,we can analyze students' writings on the structural level so as to help them ensure coherence in writing.This study attempts to investigate the use of themes and the employment of thematic progression patterns in argumentative writings.The participants in this study include 67 junior non-English major students,who are advised to compose one piece of writing under test condition.Based on their CET-6 writing scores,three of them are chosen and defined as high level writers and another three,low level writers.The following research questions are addressed in accordance with this research purpose.1.What are the features of non-English major students' theme use?2.What are the features of non-English major students' theme-rheme progression?3.Are there any differences in theme use and theme-rheme progression between students of different proficiency levels? If yes,what are they?The major findings of this study are as follows:1.The features of students' theme use are discussed from three aspects: theme types,markedness and functions of themes.The results show that,with regard to theme types,simple theme,multiple and clause theme take up 61.2%,12.1% and 26.7%respectively.With regard to theme markedness,unmarked theme takes up a high proportion,which is 80.8%.It is out of contextual purpose,the marked themes are used.Themes can function as subject,adjunct and complement in sentences.61.9% of the themes are subjects,and adjuncts as themes also have occurrences.The least seen is the complement as theme.Students tend to give thematic position to subjects because they are used to the S-V-O structure and inverted sentences are rarely used in their writings.2.Concerning the use of theme-rheme progression patterns(TP patterns),their occurrences show that parallel pattern is most frequently used.It is followed by concentrated progression,continuous progression,with a constant theme,split-rheme-as-theme,intersectional structure and derived theme.The first three take up85.1% in students' writing,and they are proved to be commonly seen patterns in students' writings.3.Theme used by students of different levels show that high level students use fewer simple themes,more clause themes and interpersonal themes than their counterparts.The former are not restricted to using subjects as themes as they take up a relatively small proportion of the total theme use.In low level students' writings,theme as subject is more common.As regarding thematic markedness,no significant difference is found.It means that both groups of students are more inclined to use unmarked themes.TP pattern used in different groups shows that high level students use seven types of patterns and compose complex writing structures.In low level's writings,only the three commonly seen patterns are used.More disconnected sentences spring up,which is a possible evidence of students' inability to use TP patterns.The use of pattern calls for students' structural consciousness and it is also influenced by writing planning and lexical knowledge.It is sincerely hoped that in future writing classes,more structural consciousness should be instilled to students.In this way,students can try diverse patterns in future writings.