Thematic Progression Patterns Research Articles

Thematic Progression and Paragraph Development in the experimental Research paper

AbstractMost technical and academic writing manuals attempt to instruct students on how to achieve a clear and readable discourse style. Very often, the instructions they provide are based on intuition rather than empirical research into authentic technical and experimental reports. This study presents an account of an investigation into the develop-ment of information in paragraphs in all section of an experimental research paper based on Danes (1970, 1974) functional theory of Thematic Progression (TP). The results show that TP correlates with the structure of text in the research paper and that different sections of the research paper tend to employ different TP patterns to develop the information they contain. This result is shown to have great im-plications for technical and academic writing.