A Case Study On The Implication Of Thematic Progression Theory To The Teaching Of English Writing In Senior High School

In teaching writing at the senior high school,the teacher usually follows the pattern that firstly the teacher explains the difficulties in English writing and writing skills.Then students do writing.After practice,teachers grade the students’ papers.This method of teaching writing is boring and the teaching effect is poor.The student can’t write as well as what is expected.This paper uses the theory of thematic progression patterns to conduct a case study to teaching of English writing,in order to help English teachers reflect on their teaching writing methods,and guide students to write more fluently and produce excellent compositions in the teaching process,so as to improve the English writing proficiency in the college entrance examination.This paper is divided into five chapters.The first chapter briefly introduces the historical background of the research,the main problems of the research,the significance of the research and the main overall research contents of the paper in the form of introduction.In the second chapter,the literature review describes the main theories used for the study,including theme and rheme theory,thematic progression patterns and output-oriented teaching theory.It also briefly introduces the importance of English writing and the teaching of English writing as well as the three dimensions of English writing output assessment: accuracy,fluency and complexity.The third chapter is the detailed introduction of the case study,including the research methods and research participant,research tools,research procedures and teaching implementation,writing portfolio management and evaluation,interviews and writing output analysis.The fourth chapter presents the results and discussion,which deals with students’ mastery of thematic progression patterns and assessment of students ’ writing output level from the three dimensions of accuracy,fluency and complexity,as well as the summary of writing portfolio and interview.Chapter Five concludes the research with a research summary,research limitations and prospects for the current research.The research questions are as follows:1.In what way(s)does the application of thematic progression theory improve the accuracy of high school students’ English writings?2.To what extent does the application of thematic progression theory improve the fluency of high school students’ English writings?3.Can the application of thematic progression theory improve the complexity of high school students’ English writing?The researcher selected a second-year student from a senior high school in Qianguo County,Songyuan City,Jilin Province.Using writing test,writing portfolio and interview outline as research tools,bi-weekly English writing class is conducted by using thematic progression patterns theory.The whole teaching process lasts 12 weeks,so as to see whether thematic progression patterns theory can promote the improvement of English writing ability of high school students.In terms of writing accuracy,fluency and complexity,the researcher will take error free T-unit ratio,error free T-unit length and clause index as research tools.According to the analysis of the research results,the following conclusion can be drawn:1.The application of thematic progression theory in teaching greatly improves the accuracy of English writing for senior high school students.2.The application of thematic progression theory in teaching leads to more fluent English writings with senior high school students.3.The application of thematic progression theory in teaching doesn’t necessarily improve the complexity of English writing for senior high school students.In addition,according to the comparison of the two interviews,it can be concluded that thematic progression theory has a very good effect on the teaching of English writing.Therefore,the researcher suggests that teachers should apply new teaching methods,such as the thematic progression theory to help senior high school students form better English writing logic and improve their English writing ability.