英语论文哪里有？本研究的第一个研究问题是TP模式对高中生继续写作中的局部连贯有什么影响。为了回答这个问题，作者进行了一个为期三个月的实验，其中两个平行班作为参与者。在实验之前，这两个班在三个维度上处于同一水平。经过调查，发现两个类在两个维度上存在明显差异，相邻的论点重叠，相邻句子之间的LSA。
Chapter One Introduction
1.4 Structure of the Thesis
The first chapter is a broad introduction to the necessity of this study, including the research background, research significance, and research purpose. Chapter Two reviews previous studies concerning Thematic Progression Patterns and continuation writings, and previous applications of TP to continuation writing. Chapter Three covers the theoretical basis of this thesis. And Chapter Four is the center part, in which an experiment is designed to answer two research questions. It embraces the research questions, participants, methods employed, and research procedures. Chapter Five studies the data collected and the results we can gain from the data. The last chapter, Chapter Six, is the conclusion part, in which the major findings and the limitations of this study are incorporated.
Chapter Three Theoretical Basis
3.1 Thematic Theory
The introduction of Thematic Theory involves the definition of theme and rheme abroad and in China, including the difference between theme and subject considering its confusability.
3.1.1 Definition of theme and rheme abroad and in China
Mathesius (1939) proposed the concepts of ―theme‖ and ―theme‖ for the first time by dividing a sentence into three parts: theme, rheme, and transition. He (1939) claimed that the theme is the starting point and the foundation of utterances, which can be known from the previous contexts, while the rheme stands for the information which can‘t be known from the earlier contexts and is often the core of utterances. The transition combines the theme and the rheme. Brown and Yule (1983) defined the theme as the left element of a clause and thought that the rheme is the other element following after the theme. Firbas (1995) disagreed with the idea of given and new information and argued that communication is dynamic instead of still. Therefore, he put forward the Communicative Dynamism. Different from the division of subject and object, Firbas (1987) analyzed the communicative functions by evaluating the communicative dynamism of different meaningful clauses, and proposed that the theme carries the least communicative dynamism; on the contrary, the rheme carries the highest degree of communicative dynamism and is seen as the new information.
Chapter Five Data Results and Discussion
5.1 Effects of TP on the Local Coherence of Students’ Continuation Writings
As has been discussed before (see in Chapter Two), Liang (2006) proved that three dimensions in Coh-Metrix are indicative of local coherence and that coherence plays a vital role in scoring continuation writings. Therefore, data collected with Coh-Metrix and the scores in the pre-test and post-test can be gleaned and discussed in response to the first research question: what effects will the Thematic Progression have on local coherence in continuation writing for senior students?
5.1.1 Data analysis with Coh-Metrix
The author collected 150 back-to-back compositions which were then typed into the systems of Coh-Metrix, and obtained a series of indexes. According to Liang Maocheng‘s study (2006), there are three dimensions that are indicative of the local coherence of students‘ writings: adjacent arguments overlap; adjacent stems overlap, and LSA between adjacent sentences, so data in the target three dimensions will be presented and discussed one by one in this part. For each dimension, two sets of comparisons will be made.
5.2 Correlations between TP and the Quality of Students’ Writings
After the 3-month learning of TP, the average score of students in EC has increased by 14%, but there are still significant differences among students‘ performance in EC. The highest score of their compositions is 22, while the lowest one is only 8. Taking both the scores of students‘ compositions and the indexes in the three target dimensions into consideration, the author sorted their compositions in the post-test and picked out the top three and the last three to make a comparison, which aims to answer the second research question by comparing the features and specific differences in using themes and thematic progression patterns.
When analyzing, the author took the experiential theme, that is, the topical theme, as the most important message in the multiple theme and the clausal theme, as the theme of a clause consists of a topical theme together with anything else before it (Halliday, 1994).
Chapter Six Findings and Implications
6.1 Major Findings
6.1.1 Effects of TP on the local coherence of students’ writings
The first research question of this study is what effects TP patterns will have on local coherence in continuation writing for senior students. To answer the question, the author carried out a three-month experiment, in which two parallel classes are taken as participants. Before the experiment, the two classes were at the same level in the three dimensions. After the investigation, it turned out that there are apparent differences between the two classes on two dimensions, the adjacent arguments overlap and the LSA between adjacent sentences. The mean numbers in the two dimensions of EC increased by 30% and 63%, respectively, which are higher than those of CC. However, both classes have made some progress and are still parallel in the dimension of adjacent stems overlap. And the growth rate of CC is higher than that of EC.
In addition, the scores of students‘ compositions can also help to answer the question. Compared with topic writing, the level of coherence is of great significance in continuation writings. Thus, the score of students‘ compositions is indicative of students‘ writing coherence. In this study, after the experiment, the average grades of students in EC grew by 14.3% The mean score of CC increased by 6.2%, implying that the application of TP in EC can improve the coherence of students‘ continuation writings more efficiently.
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