A Systemic Functional Linguistic Analysis of the Application of Theme and Thematic Progression Patterns in College English Writing Teaching—A Study of Sample Writings of CET-4

Abstract

Theories of Theme and Thematic Progression are considered important methods which can be widely applied in many aspects of foreign language teaching. Writing teaching is one of the important field in which those theories can be applied. CET-4 is now regarded as a national examination; it has already become the final goal which college non-majors make great efforts to achieve, and also an important method to which teachers can refer in daily writing teaching. Thus the analysis of sample writings of CET-4 will bring lots of benefits not only for passing the exam, but for daily writing teaching. It is found in the study that Themes can yield useful information; successful writings use various Theme types. Besides, thematic choices and TP Patterns help a lot in the realization of cohesion and coherence of discourses.