An Analysis of Thematic Progression Patterns in Zambian Students' ESL Academic Writing: Evidence of Coherence-Obscuring Patterns

Abstract

: This study investigated the types of theme and rheme patterns that obscured discourse coherence in the writings produced by English second language undergraduate learners at the University of Zambia. It also established the extent to which the coherence-obscuring theme-rheme patterns affect the communicative effectiveness in the students‟ written discourses. The data were based on Bloor and Bloor (1992) argument that some theme-rheme patterns contribute to incoherence in written pieces of discourse. The data were 400 undergraduate written scripts from the School of Education and the School of Humanities and Social Sciences. From each script coherence –obscuring theme rheme patterns were identified and presented according to types. Data analysis and interpretation mainly followed the qualitative approach . The type of assessments included one in-class test and end of year examination for the year 2021 for each academic level of study. The results showed that seven coherent obscuring theme-rheme patterns were used by the undergraduate students at the university of Zambia which included; brand new theme, empty rheme, empty use of there, use of the dummy it, incomplete split progression, split theme progression and use of the conversational personal pronouns.