The CATESOL Journal

For many ESL students, the linguistic resources needed for explicit development of abstract ideas, a central tenet of academic writing, are difficult to control (Schleppegrell, 2004). Using the linguistic notion of Theme and Rheme (Halliday & Mathiessen, 2004), this piece is intended to share a way for teachers to explain differences between these two genres (analytical and personal) and raise students’ awareness of the new expectations of academic writing. The notions of Theme and Rheme focus instructors and students on specific language resources and at the same time reference broader discourse features that allow teachers the flexibility of both a micro and macro approach to writing instruction. Such an approach also provides ESL students a toolkit with which they can evaluate their own linguistic choices and incorporate their strengths with the personal genre of writing into a more academic, analytic genre of writing.