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 inmany aspects of foreign language teaching. Writing teaching is one of the important field in which those theories canbe applied. CET-4 is now regarded as a national examination; it has already become the final goal which collegenon-majors make great efforts to achieve, and also an important method to which teachers can refer in daily writingteaching. Thus the analysis of sample writings of CET-4 will bring lots of benefits not only for passing the exam, butfor daily writing teaching. It is found in the study that Themes can yield useful information; successful writings usevarious Theme types. Besides, thematic choices and TP Patterns help a lot in the realization of cohesion andcoherence of discourses.