This chapter is dedicated to a micro-competence which represents a real challenge for the L2 writer, especially at lower levels: the competence to appropriately introduce new referents into the discourse and create referential chains, linking the new information to the old one presented in the preceding clauses. The linguistic term for the structuring of given and new information is “thematization”. While native speakers may subconsciously acquire such competence through extensive reading without needing instruction, L2 students are less likely to have had sufficient exposure to texts in the target language and, even with lengthy exposure, may find it difficult to discern any patterns in information structuring in a foreign language. Since thematization is a key factor in text writing because it acts as a bridge between sentence level and discourse level, in this chapter it is proposed to apply the linguistic tool of Thematic Progressions to L2 writing didactics, in the hope that it may help L2 teachers provide their students with the basic knowledge necessary to discern and produce L2 patterns in information structuring . This chapter is based on the results of the preliminary studies conducted in the framework of Wrilab2, aimed at identifying the main tendencies and oddities in Thematic Progressions in L2 Czech writing, compared to L1 Czech writing (Perissutti 2016 A, 2016 B, Adamovičová & Hajičková this volume). The chapter is structured as follows: after a brief section in which the concepts of Theme and Rheme are introduced, the Thematic Progressions proposed by F. Daneš (1974) are outlined; next, the most frequent “oddities” in Thematic Progressions found in a small corpus of 40 argumentative compositions written by L2 Czech students (level B1, B2, C1) will be identified. The chapter ends with a series of didactic suggestions to improve L2 students’ textual organization.

The Use of Thematic Progression to Improve Students’ Essay Structure

PERISSUTTI, Anna Maria
2017-01-01

Abstract

This chapter is dedicated to a micro-competence which represents a real challenge for the L2 writer, especially at lower levels: the competence to appropriately introduce new referents into the discourse and create referential chains, linking the new information to the old one presented in the preceding clauses. The linguistic term for the structuring of given and new information is “thematization”. While native speakers may subconsciously acquire such competence through extensive reading without needing instruction, L2 students are less likely to have had sufficient exposure to texts in the target language and, even with lengthy exposure, may find it difficult to discern any patterns in information structuring in a foreign language. Since thematization is a key factor in text writing because it acts as a bridge between sentence level and discourse level, in this chapter it is proposed to apply the linguistic tool of Thematic Progressions to L2 writing didactics, in the hope that it may help L2 teachers provide their students with the basic knowledge necessary to discern and produce L2 patterns in information structuring . This chapter is based on the results of the preliminary studies conducted in the framework of Wrilab2, aimed at identifying the main tendencies and oddities in Thematic Progressions in L2 Czech writing, compared to L1 Czech writing (Perissutti 2016 A, 2016 B, Adamovičová & Hajičková this volume). The chapter is structured as follows: after a brief section in which the concepts of Theme and Rheme are introduced, the Thematic Progressions proposed by F. Daneš (1974) are outlined; next, the most frequent “oddities” in Thematic Progressions found in a small corpus of 40 argumentative compositions written by L2 Czech students (level B1, B2, C1) will be identified. The chapter ends with a series of didactic suggestions to improve L2 students’ textual organization.
2017
978-3-643-90859-9
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11390/1105398
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