The Effects of Corpus-Based Language Instruction on Productive Vocabulary Knowledge

Towards Coherence: An Analysis of the Theme in the Writing of Arab Efl Students

“…Overall, the writing of the students in the present research can be characterized as emergent concerning the effective use of TP in creating and developing ideational meanings at the macro-and hyperthematic levels. Specifically, the results show that the writing of the participants in this research is similar to the writing of Korean learners in terms of the tendency to use the same kinds of Themes (Nam and Park 2015). Also, similar to Wang's (2007) findings, the writers in this study seemed to favor constant TP.…”

“…Of interest in the present research on coherence is the SFL notion of Theme. Nam and Park (2015) define Theme as the initial position of a sentence, "where background information is condensed and connected to new arguments in a logical manner, and thus, can serve as a powerful method of [text] development" (99). According to Eggins (1994), the Theme contains given information, which is relatively familiar or which has already been mentioned somewhere else in the text, while the ensuing Rheme contains new information.…”

“…with no conceptual content to develop in the subsequent Theme; overuse of "there is/are" as Theme; using Themes with unclear reference; and overuse of brand new Themes. In another study, Nam & Park (2015) analyzed the use of Theme in the development of Korean students' argumentative essays, compared to those written by L1 English speakers. Their analysis shows a striking difference between the L1 Koreand and L1 English speakers' essays in all four key aspects of thematic structure: length, function, plurality, and semantic role.…”