A Case Study on the Distribution of Thematic Progression Patterns in English Research Article

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the distributive features of thematic progression patterns in research article and analyze the reasons that cause such features based on Halliday’s thematic structure theory and Huang Guowen’s model of thematic progression patterns. Results showed that concentrated progression mainly concentrated in Introduction section, while derived progression appeared most frequently in Methods section. This study found that the communicative goals of four sections in IMRD structure and the features of research article influenced the distribution of thematic progression patterns.