| Acknowledgments | 第1-5页 |
| 中文摘要 | 第5-6页 |
| Abstract | 第6-10页 |
| Chapter One INTRODUCTION | 第10-14页 |
| ·Research Origin and Background | 第10-11页 |
| ·Research Questions | 第11页 |
| ·Motivation | 第11-13页 |
| ·Structure of the Thesis | 第13-14页 |
| Chapter Two THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK AND LITERATURE REVIEW | 第14-35页 |
| ·Rhetorical Structure Theory | 第14-27页 |
| ·Definitions for relations, schemas and structures | 第14-18页 |
| ·Relations | 第15-16页 |
| ·Schemas and schema applications | 第16-17页 |
| ·Order of spans | 第17-18页 |
| ·Relations and relation definitions | 第18-25页 |
| ·Relations taxonomy | 第18-20页 |
| ·Relation definitions | 第20-25页 |
| ·History and development of RST | 第25-26页 |
| ·The relation between RST and other theories | 第26-27页 |
| ·A Literature Review of Relevant Researches | 第27-33页 |
| ·Representative papers on RST in China | 第27-28页 |
| ·Researches applying RST | 第28-31页 |
| ·Researches in Writing | 第31-33页 |
| ·Why Using RST as the Framework of this Research? | 第33-35页 |
| Chapter Three RESEARCH DESIGN | 第35-47页 |
| ·Research Subjects and Tools | 第35-37页 |
| ·Research subjects and raw material collection | 第35-36页 |
| ·Research tools | 第36-37页 |
| ·Pretreatment of Raw Materials | 第37-40页 |
| ·Raw materials | 第37-38页 |
| ·Pretreatment of raw materials | 第38-40页 |
| ·Punctuation | 第39-40页 |
| ·Space | 第40页 |
| ·Paragraph marks | 第40页 |
| ·RST Discourse Treebank Building | 第40-47页 |
| ·Raw corpus building and annotation maxims | 第40-41页 |
| ·RST discourse treebank building | 第41-46页 |
| ·Segmenting texts into units | 第42-43页 |
| ·Building up the discourse structure | 第43-44页 |
| ·Determining nuclearity | 第44-45页 |
| ·Tagging strategies | 第45-46页 |
| ·Quality assurance | 第46-47页 |
| Chapter Four THE COMPARISON BETWEEN THE RHETORICAL STRUCTURE DIAGRAMS OF COMPOSITIONS BY CHINESE STUDENTS AND NATIVE SPEAKERS | 第47-73页 |
| ·Findings on Hypothesis One | 第47-54页 |
| ·General description of the RST diagrams | 第48-49页 |
| ·General preferences for discourse relations | 第49-54页 |
| ·Summary of findings corresponding to hypothesis one | 第54页 |
| ·Frequency and Position of Joint | 第54-64页 |
| ·The reason for studying joint | 第55-56页 |
| ·The frequency and position of joint | 第56-64页 |
| ·Joints in the RST diagrams of Chinese students' compositions | 第58-61页 |
| ·The frequency and position of joints in each diagram | 第59-60页 |
| ·Cohesive ties | 第60-61页 |
| ·Joints in the RST diagrams of native speakers' compositions | 第61-64页 |
| ·The frequency and position of joints in each diagram | 第62页 |
| ·Cohesive ties | 第62-64页 |
| ·Comparison of joints in the diagrams of Chinese students' and native speakers' compositions | 第64页 |
| ·Top Structure of the RST Diagrams of Chinese Students' and Native speakers' Compositions | 第64-73页 |
| ·The top structure of the RST diagrams of Chinese students' compositions | 第65-68页 |
| ·The top structure of the RST diagrams of native speakers' compositions | 第68-70页 |
| ·A detailed description of composition B's diagram | 第70-71页 |
| ·Comparison between the top structure of the diagrams of Chinese students' and native speakers' compositions | 第71-73页 |
| Chapter Five CONCLUSION | 第73-76页 |
| ·Conclusions | 第73-74页 |
| ·Limitations and Further Study | 第74-76页 |
| REFERENCES | 第76-80页 |
| APPENDIX 1 Frequency and Percentage of Each Relation in Chinese Students' Compositions | 第80-81页 |
| APPENDIX 2 Frequency and Percentage of Each Relation in Native Speakers' Compositions | 第81-82页 |
| APPENDIX 3 Sample RST Diagram of One Composition | 第82-83页 |
| APPENDIX 4 Sample Compositions | 第83-96页 |
| 作者简介 | 第96页 |
