A Study Of The Thematic Progression Patterns In The Reading Texts Of Junior High Schools And Students’ English Compositions

As the fundamental language skills for second language acquisition,writing skills occupy an essential place in language teaching.However,there is a phenomenon concerning English teaching that when students are reading to accumulate writing material and cultivate writing skills,teachers and students pay too much attention to the individual words instead of the text meaning,coherence of the texts and the writers’ intention.Consequently,it is of necessity to analyze the reading texts in teaching material carefully in order to improve students’ writing and reading ability.Thematic Progression Pattern,as one of the most important theories in the field of functional grammar,deals with the Themes,Rhemes and the relations between clauses in the texts,which can be of great help in writing and reading teaching.Based on the background above and in order to improve students’ writing and reading proficiency,with the combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods and under the theoretical framework of Bloor & Bloor’s 4 main Thematic Progression Patterns,this thesis strives to study the features of Thematic Progression Patterns in the reading texts in textbooks and students’ English compositions in terms of 5 genres(narration,description,argumentation,practical writing and exposition)and by comparing the features of the two kinds,the paper tries to analyze the similarities and differences between the Thematic Progression Patterns in the teaching texts and students’ English compositions and then draw some pedagogical implications concerning writing and reading.With the help of the “excel” software,the findings of the study are as follows.To begin with,in most genres of writing(narration,description,argumentation,exposition),the constant and linear Thematic Progression Patterns occupy the largest proportion in the teaching texts.For the simple and brief style of practical writing,there is less thematic patterning in this genre.Furthermore,the features of Thematic Progression Patterns in most of the students’ English compositions(narration,description,practical writing and argumentation)correspond with those in the teaching texts,which indicates that basically the writing teaching for junior high school students are on the right track.Though Thematic Progression Patterns are not introduced to students,teachers guide them to write compositions with the consideration of texts’ coherence.Finally,the study finds that getting students realize the Themes,Rhemes and the Thematic Progression Patterns in the texts can be of great help to both writing and reading skills’ cultivation.