Abstract:The teaching of English writing has always been the headache for both teachers and students. At present, there is a large proportion of students, whose compositions are ambiguous in the languages and the theme. It is researched that a great many compositions have problems such as the ambiguous theme and inconsistency. However, the theory of theme and rheme is an important approach employed to analyze textual cohesion and consistency. Appropriate types of themes and thematic progression is conducive to the fluency of information and cohesion among clauses. This thesis is going to explore the theory and analyze the composition data collected from English majors. The research mainly focuses on the statistics of the type of themes and the thematic progression modes( The following would be referred as TP). At last, by comparison with differences of the statistics between good, ordinary and bad examples, we draw the conclusions and devise appropriate strategies to instruct language learners to improve their writing abilities in line with its implications.

Keywords: English writing; the theory of theme and rheme; guidance

摘要:英语写作的教学一直是让老师和学生都头疼的问题。目前，仍然有一大部分中国学生在英文写作方面主题不突出且语言晦涩难懂。据调查，大量的作文存在主题不突出和语篇连贯性差的问题。主述位理论是分析语篇衔接和连贯的重要途径之一；恰当的主位类型与合适的主位推进会使小句之间的衔接紧凑，信息表达通畅。本篇论文通过对主述位理论的探讨，利用调查研究的方法收集英语专业学生的作文数据并对其进行分析研究。研究主要是针对优秀、中等和差强人意的三个等级的作文，对其主位类型和主位推进模式进行统计分析。最后通过对比三个等级作文之间的数据差异，得出相应的结论并拟定合适的教学策略来指导语言学习者提高写作能力。

关键词：英语写作；主述位理论；指导