摘要
玛泰修斯于1939年提出主位、述位这两个概念。主位是信息的起点,提供交际双方已知的信息,述位则是相对于起点而言的,表达出作者要传递的新信息。丹尼斯于1974年提出了一个动态的概念---主位推进。他指出篇章中的信息结构是由主位和述位的推进模式决定的,句子的主位或述位之间按照一定的规律不断联系变换,形成主位推进模式,而篇章的连贯正是取决于这种主位推进模式。近些年来,主位理论在语篇分析研究中占有越来越重要的地位,国内外关于主位理论的研究很多。有些学者研究主位理论与语篇连贯的关系,有些研究中英主位结构的对比分析,最近还有一些学者研究主位理论在翻译和英语教学中的应用。
本文主要研究主位理论在大学英语写作教学中的应用,为此笔者提出两点假设:其一,主位类型和主位推进模式越多样化学生的作文分数越高,复合主位和延续型主位推进模式在高分作文中的出现频率要比低分作文高。其二,学生的写作水平能通过主位理论的学习而得到提高。目的是探讨主位理论应用于大学英语写作教学中的效果。就收集的40篇学生作文,笔者根据实验获得的数据进行了一系列的分析和比较。主要比较主位类型和主位推进模式在教学前后作文中的差别,以及比较教学前后的作文分数,得到的实验结果是,主位类型和主位推进模式的选择与学生作文分数密切相关,而且通过主位理论的学习,学生作文分数有着明显的提高。
最后笔者提出了一些对将来的写作教学会有指导意义的教学启示;得出结论,主位理论的学习能够帮助学生提高写作的连贯性,从而提高学生英语写作的水平;并提出了本研究的局限性和对未来研究的建议。
Theme and rheme were first proposed in 1939 by Vitem Mathesius. Theme is the starting point of utterance and carries the known or given information; while rheme is what the speaker says about in regard to the starting point of the utterance and carries new information. F. Danes, in1974, proposed a more dynamic view of theme: Thematic Progression (TP). He propounds that the organization of information in a discourse is determined by the progression in the sequence of themes and their corresponding rhemes, and this progression between the successive themes and rhemes can be defined as thematic progression which represents text cohesion. In recent years, thematic theory has gained more and more attention in discourse analysis and abundant studies have been conducted on thematic theory both at home and abroad. Some scholars deal with the relationship between thematic theory and discourse coherence; and some conduct contrastive study of thematic structure in Chinese and English discourses; besides, recently there are some researches on its application in the translation field as well as the application to English teaching.
This study is to apply thematic theory to the teaching of college students’writing, and two hypotheses are proposed that 1) The more varied the theme types and TP patterns are, the higher scores of English writing are; the frequency of multiple themes and simple linear pattern of high score compositions is higher than that of low score compositions. 2) The students’writing ability can be improved through the training of thematic theory. It aims at probing into the effect of the application. Based on the 40 compositions collected and the data collected in the experiment, a series of analyses and comparative study are conducted. By the comparative study on theme types, TP patterns and scores in pre-teaching and post-teaching compositions, the results show that theme types and TP patterns are closely related to the score of English writing, and the students’writing score can be improved through the training of thematic theory.
Finally, some pedagogical implications which may be helpful in the future teaching of writing are put forward; the conclusion is drawn, that is, themes and TP patterns are helpful for students’coherent writing, and the students’writing ability can be improved through the training of thematic theory; then the limitations of this study and suggestions for future research are presented at the end of the thesis.
引文
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