Themes and theme progression in Swedish advanced learners' writing in English

Abstract

This study investigates how the Themes and Theme progressions in a sample of Swedish advanced learners" writing contribute to the method of development in their texts. A comparison is made to a sample of similar writing by British university students. It was found that the advanced learners" sample contains more interactional Themes, which create a dialogic method of development similar to that found in conversational language. Themes and Theme progressions which are typical of expository writing, on the other hand, are used less frequently. These include discourse label Themes, summative progressions, which manage the build-up of information as it accumulates in the text, and split progressions, which signal hierarchical relations between parts of the informational content.

The Textual Theme Potrayed on the Talks of Education in the Indonesian Tedx: A Systemic Functional Linguistics Approach

“…The construction was chosen by the speaker because of its many positive characteristics. In this particular instance, the theme-rheme configuration came first, and then the choice of linguistic constructions was made after that (Herriman, 2011;Nugraha, 2017;Pavavijarn, 2022;Wei, 2015). The function is a deciding factor in the selection process; for example, is there any pressing need to use the construction in order to specifically present the textual theme?…”

Research on foreign language learning, teaching, and assessment in Sweden 2012–2021

“…Taken together, the findings from Herriman (2011) and Tåqvist (2016) indicate that Swedish university students of English find it difficult to express themselves with precision in academic texts, and to find the appropriate style using a more colloquial or interactive register than native speakers. Advanced learners would surely benefit from teaching leading to increased awareness of style and register.…”

“…As mentioned in 2.3.2.1, like in many other parts of the world, scientific publishing in English is commonplace in Swedish higher education and internationalization is synonymous with the use of English. As noted by Herriman (2011) and Tåqvist (2016), notwithstanding the generally high level of English proficiency, there are weaknesses in Swedish students' writing at university level. Also, among postgraduates and researchers, all are not, or do not identify themselves as, fully fledged writers of English, which has been shown by McGrath (2015) and Rosén and Straszer (2017).…”

“…Although Swedish university students are generally very advanced users of English, an overly informal style was found in essays written in the second year of university studies (Herriman, 2011). The learners tended to select an interactional starting point in written sentences, mainly using personal pronouns ( I or you ), or forming a question or an imperative, thereby approaching the style of spoken language.…”

L2 Theme development in Discursive and Experimental undergraduate student writing

“…Contrastive studies of L2 writing in English have found that some Chinese writers to their detriment use less nominalisation in Theme position in medical papers than English writers (Gao 2012); that some Norwegian writers, influenced by their first language, tend to thematise adverbials (Hasselgård 2009); and that some Swedish writers use more interactional Themes, creating a more dialogic, conversational method of development in texts than English writers (Herriman 2011). This suggests that L2 writers use of Theme can be influenced by the writer's L1 in different respects, and that this can be perceived as detrimental when compared to an academic English norm.…”