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Description
The organization of Theme and Rheme in texts has received considerable attention in recent years since it serves as an index to the text quality (Fries, 1981; Martin, 1992; and Saeed, Karim & Mughal, 2021). This research explores the insights concerning the relationship between Theme – Rheme structure derived from the theory of Systemic Functional Grammar (Halliday, 1985; Bloor & Bloor, 1992; and Belmonte &McCabe, 1999) and its cross-referential links to the text coherence. In this study, the corpus consisting of 30 essays collected from a class of third-year students majoring in English, was analyzed using both quantitative and qualitative methods. The results demonstrate problems related to thematization as inappropriate theme placement, over-use of “There” and “It” in the theme selection, empty rheme, non-constant progression, and ambiguous references in themes. The analysis also enables us to uncover the detrimental effects of such misuses on the text coherence, including: (1). breaking cohesive ties, (2). impeding textual unity, (3). introducing irrelevant information. Pedagogical implications on Theme - Rheme construct in teaching and learning of L2 writing are also reported.
