Application Of Thematic Progression To English Writing In Senior High School

Writing is a basic language skill,just as important as speaking,listening and reading.It also plays a significant role in College Entrance Examination.However,students in senior high school find it difficult to write compositions.There are a lot of problems lying in students’ composition.First and foremost,students’ composition is lack of logic in general.Most of students just pile up the language points so the structure of the passage is in disorder.Secondly,the vocabulary and sentence patterns are lack of change.Students usually use subjective-objective pattern,which is lack of rhythm.Last but not the least,there are many wrong choices of words and Chinese expressions in the students’ composition.Therefore,to improve students’ writing ability is an urgent task for teachers in senior high school.This thesis introduces thematic theory,thematic progression pattern and the relationship between thematic progression pattern and English writing.The notion of theme and rheme was first put forward by Mathesius in 1939.On the basis of this notion,Halliday and the Systemic School inherited and developed thematic theory.Thematic Progression is defined the relationship between theme and their rheme.It is used for discourse analysis,attracting much attention from linguists.Hu Zhuanglin,Huang Guowen,Xu Shenghuan and other linguists conducted some relative researches.They found that TP patterns have some positive effects on students’ writing.But most of them only carried on theoretical research.Some researchers have made a study concerning the application of thematic progression in college English writing,such as Huang Hui(2009)and Lv Yan(2009).However,rare research has been conducted concerning the application of thematic progression pattern into teaching for senior high school students.Hence,whether thematic progression pattern can effectively improve students’ performance needs to be explored.This thesis tries to put thematic progression into practice,expecting to improve students’ writing performance and teachers’ teaching skills.There are three research questions in this thesis:1.How the application of thematic progression enhance students’ writing coherence in English writing?2.How the application of thematic progression improve students’ learning strategies in English writing?3.How the application of thematic progression increase students’ learning interests in English writing?The participants of the experiment are 90 students of Xi’an Foreign Language School.They are from two classes in Grade Two and the number of each class is 45.Both quantitative and qualitative data analysis are employed in this experiment.Instruments used in the experiment include questionnaires,tests and interview.From questionnaires,students’ writing strategies,learning interests,and attitude can be known.Pre-test and post-test were carried out to analyze the difference of the two classes.SPSS was used to analyze the data.After a semester’s training,there were some significant changes between the two classes.Students of the experimental class performed better in writing.The author draws the following conclusions:Firstly,the application of thematic progression can improve students’ writing ability and enhance students’ writing coherence.Secondly,the application of thematic progression can improve students’learning strategies in English writing.Lastly,the application of thematic progression can increase students’ learning interests in English writing.There are also some shortcomings in this study because the number of subjects and the number of students’ compositions is small.It is no doubt that the application of thematic progression in senior high school is feasible and effective in teaching and learning English writing.