On Textual Theme in Reading Comprehension of English Romantic and Criminal Short Stories

Year 2013, Volume: 2 Issue: 2, 51 - 61, 27.01.2014

Elnaz Ghaleasadi

Abstract

 

Short stories are woven into every stage and minutiae of life, and every one comes across reading stories. In reading and comprehending stories, textual theme plays very important role. However, little was known about the role of textual theme for reading comprehension of narratives and literary texts, especially short stories. The present study, therefore, investigated textual them in reading comprehension of English criminal and romantic short stories. Applying Hallidayan categorization of textual theme (1985, 1994), five criminal and five romantic short stories in English were analyzed in order to determine possible differences in the textual organization of these stories. The study concluded that there were similarities across stories. These similarities were attributed to the same genre family. Moreover, the results confirmed that the knowledge of textual metafunction, particularly with narratives and expository texts including short stories, is an effective resource for efforts to improve reading comprehension of stories.

Keywords

theme, rheme, textual theme, reading comprehension, short story

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