Abstract

A way for developing good writing skills is by using thematic progression. It can help students improve their writing abilities. Theme and rheme are used to analyze the thematic progression. This study aimed to find out the types of thematic progression of students' descriptive texts and the most dominant pattern of thematic progression in students’ descriptive texts. The researcher used the descriptive qualitative method in the research design. There were 50 texts written by students at SMP Swasta Sultan Agung Pematangsiantar. The data was analyzed using (Eggins, 2005) theory as the theoretical framework that found three types of thematic progression. The findings revealed that the students' descriptive texts follow three thematic progression patterns: reiteration or constant pattern, zig-zag or linear pattern, and multiple patterns or split rheme pattern. The constant pattern was the most dominant used by students in 271 occurences (91.80%), followed by zig-zag or linear pattern occurred 13 times (4.4%) and multiple patterns or split rheme pattern occurred 11 times (3.8%)l. The findings show students, in writing descriptive text, tend to use simple thematic progression due to their level of knowledge in grammar and thematic progression is relatively low.

Highlights

  • Descriptive text is the kinds of texts that learners would study in junior high school based on the Indonesian education curriculum

  • This study aimed to find out how students' descriptive texts progressed from one theme to the in their writing

  • The students will be asked to write a descriptive text on a topic of their choice Thematic Progression patterns, such as Constant Pattern, Linear Pattern, and Split Pattern, create sentences by transferring the theme or rheme of one clause to the

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Summary

Introduction

Descriptive text is the kinds of texts that learners would study in junior high school based on the Indonesian education curriculum. A descriptive text explains something in detail so that the reader may imagine the object being described. Besides listening, speaking, and reading, students are expected to master writing as one of four skills in English. This is supported by (Harmer, 2004), who argues that writing is an important skill. Writing is the process of creating a written product. It is the method of developing thoughts into written text that is coherent and cohesive. For most language learners studying English as a second or foreign language, writing an English text is a challenging task. (Bani Younes & Salamh Albalawi, 2015)

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