Thematic Progression Patterns Research Articles

Investigating the Application of Thematic Progression in EFL Writing: A Systematic Review

A systematic literature review was conducted to examine the studies on the application of thematic progression (TP) to EFL writing. Based on three criteria of research relevance, coverage and update frequency(Shaheen,2023), five databases were chosen, covering Web of Science, Scopus, Eric, Google Scholars and ProQuest. A total of 32 research articles published from 2014 to 2023 were categorized and reviewed. The research methodology mainly follows the guidelines of PRISMA to address the three research questions: 1) What are the development trends in TP -based EFL writing studies including research publications, countries and methodologies? 2) How is TP applied to EFL writing? 3)How does TP influence EFL writing performance? It was discovered that in the past decade there was a steady increase and expansion in the number of research articles and the range of research countries and methods. Moreover, different TP patterns were found to have been distributed across six writing types. These TP patterns established stronger relations with and strengthened writing organization, language use, and content. From the above findings, it can be suggested that TP-based EFL writing researches have regained their development momentum. It can also be inferred that the distribution of TP patterns varies from genre to genre and the patterns improve the overall EFL writing performance by enhancing writing organization, content and language use.

Theme-Rheme And Thematic Progression Analysis Of Joe Biden’s Speech On Israel-Hamas And Russia-Ukraine Wars

The study mainly focuses on Theme-Rheme and Thematic Progression in the speech of Joe Biden on Israel-Hamas and Russia-Ukraine Wars. The objective of this study is to examine the type of Theme-Rheme and Thematic Progression pattern found in the speech text. To examine the data, the study employed a qualitative method with a descriptive design. The data is derived from Biden’s speech on the United States’ Response to Israel-Hamas and Russia-Ukraine Wars. The data was analysed using Halliday’s theory (1994, 2004) to analyse the Theme-Rheme and Paltridge, (2006) to analyse the Thematic Progression pattern. Based on the study, it shows that Participant as Topical theme is the most dominant, while, Constant theme is the most dominant in Thematic Progression patterns.

SFL-BASED ANALYSIS OF THEMATIC PROGRESSION OF ENGLISH GRADUATE PERSONAL STATEMENTS

The main problem faced by graduate and undergraduate students in writing their university application letters includes the difficulties of producing a coherent and cohesive text that can convince the evaluators of their suitability to the target program. The present study was conducted principally to investigate the thematic progression patterns realized in students’ statements (henceforth PSs), for their considerable role in shaping the overall structure of the text and unfolding the writer’s identity. The corpus consists of 20 PSs written by graduate English students applying for a Master's in Sociology in Western institutions. Eggin’s (2004) framework of Theme and Rheme was applied to analyze the thematic progression patterns (TPP) observed and find out the dominant pattern revealed from the students’ texts. The findings of the analysis indicated the presence of two main thematic progression patterns, namely the Reiteration pattern and Zigzag pattern, with the total absence of the Multiple theme pattern. The obtained results of this work may offer valuable insights for academic writing instructions and material developers.

Analysis of Theme and Thematic Progression in Expository Texts

Effective lesson planning and execution are ensured by deep text interpretation. The New English Curriculum reform currently places greater demands on students’ ability to read at a deep level, which raises the bar for fully evaluating the arrangement and structure of textual content. The focus of modern text linguistics, the theme-rheme theory and thematic progression pattern, play a significant role in interpreting textual composition and internal information structure of a discourse. Therefore, in order to increase the explanatory power in textual analysis, this study tries to apply theme-rheme theory and thematic progression to analyze the textual organization characteristics of expositions in National College Entrance Examination(NCEE) Volume A reading materials. Finally, this study gives the front-line teachers some reference based on the findings in order to improve their text interpretation, reading, and writing instruction, which will ultimately support effective teaching design and implementation.

Thematic Progression Pattern in Al-Hikam Aphorism Arabic – Bahasa Indonesia and Arabic – English; Systemic Functional Linguistic Approach

This research investigated the information structure in translated texts Arabic – Bahasa Indonesia and Arabic – English, and how the structure is developed in terms of thematic progression pattern, so the text can be cohesive. This study also examines whether there is a topic change from the source language (SL) to the target language (TL). The method used in this study was divided into three phases: data collection, data analysis, and research report. The total of data used in this research were 435 clauses with thematic structure from 100 aphorisms in al-Hikam aphorisms Arab – Bahasa Indonesia and Arabic – English. The high percentage of unmarked topical theme shows that, textually, the information distribution in the aphorisms Arabic – Bahasa Indonesia and Arabic – English is organized in a coherent and systematic way. There are 64.35% of unmarked topical theme in Arabic – Bahasa Indonesia, and there are 59.62% in Arabic – English. The linear and zig zag progression patterns do not experience shift. Meanwhile, there is a shift in the multiple and distributed patterns. This has an impact on the level of cohesion and wholeness of the message in the thematic structure of al-Hikam aphorisms. Contextually, this research contributes to the study of cross-language and cross-cultural. A translator must be more careful in translating aphorisms in both Arabic – Bahasa Indonesia and Arabic – English since the progression patterns are multiple and distributed. Based on these results, it can be concluded that Theme mapping in information structure is an important thing that a translator should pay attention to.

Thematic Progression in Jack Ma Speech “We Never Give Up” and as an Alternate Source for Teaching Speaking

This research mostly concentrated upon the thematic progression discovered on Jack Ma’s speech “We Never Give Up”. The current study attempts to identify thematic progression patterns on the speech, to show the most common sort of theme progression pattern found in the speech, to explained the thematic progression observe in the speech. The research design is Qualitative descriptive research. The research objective was Jack Ma’s "We Never Give Up" speech. The data from the speech script formed the study's instruments. The discussions from the study may conclude three kinds of thematic progression. There is a constant pattern with 136 findings, the zig-zag pattern with 14 findings, and a multiple pattern with 4 findings. The dominant type that being used in Jack Ma’s speech is constant theme. The constant patterns can be implemented by using the prior clause's rheme as the theme in the subsequent sentence, whereas the pattern of constant theme is generally applying since it is relatively simple to employ by repeating themes from the previous clause, the split theme pattern may be involved by taking rheme for two themes, and the multiple theme patterns can be employed when developing the following clause using a theme as a topic. As an alternate source for teaching speaking, thematic progression helps the watcher to understand the message from the speech and the result from thematic progression will provide information to the watcher.

Exploring the metafunctions to improve EFL learners’ writing ability in the perspective of systemic functional linguistics

Writing in academic English is challenging and complex to learn, the root reasons for the issue, may include differences in the cultural backgrounds of the students, a deficiency in critical thinking skills, and a deficiency in linguistic proficiency. This study set out to investigate how metafunctions may be used to enhance students' writing skills. A research approach incorporating a qualitative case study will be employed to assess ninth-grade students' text composition. The data were gathered through collecting student writing over the school year 2021/2022. The students’ writings were the texts that were learnt in grade nine based on the curriculum. This study used Systemic Functional Linguistic theory and English texts to provide the framework for the text analysis. The texts were analyzed using the metafunction analysis in Hallidayan SFL to uncover the students’ ability to write English text. The teacher applied the Genre-based Approach when instructing his or her students on how to write. The results presented that metafunctions analysis was very important because there were ideational, interpersonal, and textual metafunctions. The ideational metafunction revealed the use of some processes in the students’ writing (material, mental, relational, and verbal), interpersonal revealed the importance of mood and residue elements in students’ writing and textual metafunction showed the importance of thematic progression pattern. This study indicated that to alleviate students’ challenges and strengthen their academic writing and critical thinking capacity, teachers should have a better understanding of the theory of Systemic Functional Linguistics.

The Realization of Thematic Progression in Background of Study Section Written by Undergraduate Students at Tidar University

This study aimed to find out the realization of thematic progression pattern applied in background of the study section in final projects written by undergraduate students and evaluate the quality of thematic progression used by the students. The objective of this study were to explain the realization of thematic progression pattern used and to explain the quality of thematic progression used by the students. The design of this study used qualitative approach descriptive study especially in discourse studies. This research used fifteen background of the study section as the source of the data. The researcher used documentation and interview as the instrument by using the theory proposed by Bloor & Bloor (2024). This study revealed that the students primarily used linear theme pattern to organized their writing with 310 times. They also applied linear theme pattern with 202 times. While, split rheme pattern applied by students with 32 times. The last is derived theme pattern applied by students with 15 times. In addition, the result of the quality of background of the study section are almost students applied thematic progression in fair level. To sum up the realization and the quality of thematic progression used by the students, they have practically applied the various thematic progression and made their background of the study section are coherence.

Type of themes and thematic progression patterns in low achiever’s descriptive writings

The Low Achiever’s writing is frequently categorized as the low coherent text due to the quality of their writings based on the rubric used at school. Hence, the focus in this study is to analyze the Types of Theme and Thematic Progression patterns found in Low Achiever’s Descriptive Writings with descriptive-qualitative research design. The objective is to observe the coherency quality of low achiever’s based on the analysis of Theme and Thematic Progression. The steps are selecting two low achiever’s descriptive texts based on the school’s rubric, dividing them to clauses, analyzing both the Theme and the Thematic progression, then providing the results of the analysis. The result shows that all types of Themes and Thematic Progressions are found in both writings. The Unmarked Topical Theme and Constant Theme Patterns are most frequently used. The conclusion is that Low Achiever’s Descriptive Writings cannot be considered as a low-coherent text based on School’s rubric only, Theme and Thematic Progression analysis is suggested to be conducted for extra observation and evaluation despite of the easy and common themes many constant types used to start the clauses in both of their writings. Keywords: descriptive text, low achiever’s writings systemic functional linguistics, theme, and thematic progression

THEMATIC PROGRESSION ON A NEWS TEXT ENTITLED “HEALTH MINISTRY ENSURES NO DATA LEAK IN PEDULILINDUNGI APP” FROM THE JAKARTA POST

This study aims to find out which theme is mostly used in the news text entitled “Health Ministry Ensures No Data Leak in PeduliLindungi App” and identify the kinds of patterns of thematic progression used in the news text. The method used for this study is descriptive qualitative. This study uses Paltridge (2012) thematic progression and Halliday (1985) theme and rheme as grounded theory. The result of the study showed that the most used theme from the news text is textual theme and the pattern of thematic progression used for this news text is multiple themes or split rheme. The result for the kind of theme used by the news text is considered from the number of times textual theme used in the news text which is about 23 times or 57.5%. The pattern of thematic progression used by the news text is multiple theme or split rheme because there are a mix of constant theme and linear theme on the overall pattern of the news text. Based on the pattern of thematic progression the number of constant themes used in the news text is 10 times and linear theme is three times, which makes it considered as a multiple theme or split rheme.

L1 Transfer in Chinese EFL Learners’ Use of Thematic Progression in English Argumentative Writing

This study addresses L1 transfer in Chinese EFL learners’ use of thematic progression in English argumentative writing. Through a series of statistical analyses of the data collected from argumentative essays written by Chinese and American university students, the study finds that the overuse of thematic progression patterns in English writing is under the influence of Chinese EFL learners’ native language both linguistically and conceptually. Tests of potential effects of intra-group homogeneity and intra-L1-group congruity provide convincing evidence for the identification of L1 transfer. In addition, the study further explores the underlying causes of L1 transfer both at linguistic and conceptual levels.

THEME AND RHEME ANALYSIS IN THE STUDENTS’ WRITING DESCRIPTIVE TEXT AT A JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL

The aims of this study were to describe types of themes and thematic progression patterns found in students’ descriptive texts. This study was conducted by using descriptive qualitative design. The data were collected by using documentation and interview technique. The data were in the form of clauses from students’ descriptive texts at SMPN 1 Delitua. In this study, it was found that there were 267 clauses and 145 types of thematic progression patterns of 20 students’ descriptive texts. The first finding of this study indicate that Unmarked Simple Theme (UST) held the highest frequency of occurrence at 78%, followed by Unmarked Multiple Theme (UMT) at 11.5%, Marked Multiple Theme (MMT) at 7.5%, and Marked Simple Theme at 3%. The second finding of this study indicate that Constant Theme Progression (CTP) held the highest frequency of occurrence at 62.08%, followed by Simple Linear Progression (SLP) at 28.27%, Split Rheme Progression (SRP) at 6.9%, and Derived Hyper-Theme Progression (DTHP) at 2.75%.

A STUDY OF XI JINPING’S SPEECHES BASED ON THEMATIC PROGRESSION PATTERN - TAKE KEYNOTE SPEECHES AT THE BELT AND ROAD FORUM FOR INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION FOR EXAMPLE

The Belt and Road Initiative has opened new windows of opportunity and is of far-reaching significance. The speeches of President Xi Jinping at the two Belt and Road Forums for International Cooperation were crucial in demonstrating China's attitude. Thematic progression theory are very important for discourse analysis. Most existing studies analyze important speeches of President Xi from the perspectives of political science, sociology and translation studies, but few scholars conduct discourse analysis on them. Therefore, this paper takes Zhu Yongsheng's thematic progression theory as the theoretical framework, selects two keynote speeches that President Xi delivered at the opening ceremony of the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation as the corpus, and uses quantitative and qualitative research methods to analyze the themes and thematic progression patterns in the selected corpus. Through the analysis, this study finds out what TP patterns are used in the important speeches of President Xi Jinping, how many percentages of TP patterns are in those important speeches, and how those TP patterns realize their social functions. Especially, the use of the pronoun we as the constant theme, is an exquisite design of the discourse. It realizes its own social functions.

What is Thematic Progression in Students’ Essay? Revision of Systematic Literature Review

This literature review looked at relevant research articles published in reputable journals from 2018 to 2022 to try to shed light on the areas: (1) Implications of using thematic progression pattern to improve the coherence and unity of student essays and (2) The effects of thematic problems using the thematic progression approach in the student's essay. Even though thematic progression has been studied a lot, it is still interesting to see how much scholars have looked into it, especially in the context of the second and foreign language. The previous studies had consistently confirmed the following results: (1) thematic progression contributes to the coherence and cohesion quality of student essays (2) problematic thematic progression in student essays includes the emergence of the brand-new theme, overuse of constant pattern, empty rheme or undeveloped rheme, double rheme, intervening material between rheme, incomplete of the clause, subsequent thematization, confusing selection of textual theme, empty themes, themes with undefined reference and thematization of rheme and lack of thematic progression & loosely thematic flow. for further research, other researcher can make a review article who emphasis on thematic progression in the aspect of various fields, genres of text or non-academic texts produced by students to look the cohesive and coherent aspects of the student's writing.

Comparing the Move Structure and Thematic Progression Pattern of Chinese and Native Speakers’ English Research Article Abstracts (RAA)—A Corpus Based Study of Aeronautics RAA

Abstract reflects the main content of a research article. Linguists have made great efforts to analyze the structure of abstracts by using genre analysis. However, there have been little quantitative studies to compare Chinese scholars RA’s English abstract with that of the native speakers in the field of aeronautics. In particular, few studies have focused on analyzing them by means of combing the theory of genre analysis and thematic progression. This study analyzed the move structure and thematic progression pattern of 60 English abstracts selected from two aeronautics journals respectively (AIAA, CJA). Of the 60 English abstracts, 30 are written by Chinese scholars and 30 by native speakers. The results show that the frequency, order of moves, and the choice of thematic progression patterns in each move differ a lot in the two corpora. This study will not only enrich the empirical study of abstract analysis but also have some implications for academic paper writing, publishing, and teaching.

중-한 문학번역의 주제 전개 방식 비교 연구 - 루쉰의 『아Q정전』과 21개의 한역본을 중심으로 -

Drawing on the concept of thematic progression based on Daneš (1974) and Zhu’s (1995) classification, this paper quantitatively compares the thematic progressions in the literary work ‘The True Story of Ah Q’ and its 21 Korean translations, to demonstrate how Chinese in the original and Korean in translations achieve textual equivalence in terms of cohesion. The theme, what the text is talking about, and the rheme, the development of the theme, maintain the cohesion of the text through thematic progression. The data analysis reveals that thematic progression patterns and their shifts in translation pertain to certain regularities in their frequency. In the original work, the Chinese language mainly uses ‘TP with a constant theme’, ‘simple linear TP’ and ‘TP with a constant rheme’ to organize the text, while the Korean translations also use ‘TP with derived theme’ and ‘TP with split rheme’ to organize the discourses. It is fair to say the Korean translations use a richer thematic progression than the original work. It highlights the fact that translators will generally follow the thematic progression of the original text in the process of the translation, but they also use additional thematic progressions in accordance with the Korean language to organize the texts.

A Contrastive Analysis of Ideational, Interpersonal and Textual Themes in English and Urdu

The present study deals with metafunctional diversity of thematic relations i.e. ideational, interpersonal and textual in English and Urdu. The objectives are: (1) to describe the functional significance particular to thematic progression (McCabe, 1999) of thematic structures in the English and the Urdu texts, and (2) to discuss how effectively the English thematic structures have been translated into Urdu. The English text Things Fall Apart by Achebe(1994) and its Urdu translation, Bikharti Duniya byUllah (1991) have been annotated through the annotation scheme of the UAM Corpus Tool(O`Donnell, 2008). The annotated English and Urdu clauses are analyzed to discuss their the maticstructures. The results show that the functional significance and thematic progression patterns are identical, but because of the unmotivated displacement of themes, the translation choices become ambiguous.To resolve ambiguities, possible translation choices have been suggested.

The Realization of Thematic Progression in the Essays of English Undergraduate Students

This study focuses on the realization of thematic progression, the problems concerning the thematic progression, and the coherence of English undergraduate students’ essays in one of the private universities in Lubuklinggau. The researchers investigated en argumentative essays written by the third-semester students by employing descriptive qualitative with written discourse analysis. The researchers used documentation and interview as the instruments. This study used Eggins’ theory (2004). This study revealed that the students mainly realized the thematic progression patterns in their writing, although they did not have a proper thematic progression insight. The students applied Theme reiteration, zig-zag pattern, multiple-Rheme pattern, and split Theme in the thematic progression. Meanwhile, the problems concerning the thematic progression were the problem of brand-new Theme, empty Rheme, incomplete clause, and confusing selection of textual Theme. Brand-new Theme mainly occurred in students’ essays, in which they carried forward the new information that did not relate to the preceding clause. Ten students’ argumentative essays were more coherent in terms of coherence as they had already employed various thematic progression patterns and were not monotonous in one pattern only. To sum up, although theoretically, they lack an understanding of thematic progression, they have practically applied the various thematic progression patterns and made their essays more coherent.

Thematic and Rhematic Progression in Scientific Writing: A Pilot Study

The Hallidayan Theme-Rheme framework is commonly used to account for the message structure of language. Much has been done to investigate the message structure of different text types using the Hallidayan framework and Daneš’s notion of thematic progression (TP). Similar studies targeting scientific research articles, however, are few, and the Rhemes in these studies are almost always sidelined. Diagrams capturing the development patterns of Themes and Rhemes at the whole-text level are also lacking. To address these gaps, this study compared the TP and rhematic progression (RP) patterns of 50 scientific research articles, adopting both a diagrammatic and quantitative approach. The quantification of TP and RP was based on the thematic-density index (TDI) and rhematic-density index (RDI), respectively. The results revealed that TDI was greater than RDI at all levels of the text. The TP and RP patterns were also different and distinct. Whereas the TP pattern comprised a simple-linear progression in the introduction section followed by a constant development in the rest of the article, the RP pattern was generally simple-linear in its shape. The observed TP and RP patterns capture not merely the message structure of scientific writing, but its communicative function. Further work involving more varied scientific texts is recommended to investigate whether these patterns are robust across disciplines.

Thematic Progression and Discourse Analysis

Thematic progression is a very important means for discourse construction. Different types of discourse will choose different thematic progression patterns in order to realize their different communicative purposes. Analyzing discourse through thematic progression pattern is helpful to understand the content and organization of the discourse. This paper uses Halliday’s [1] Theme-Rheme Theory and Zhu’s [2] four patterns of thematic progression to analyze Obama’s inaugural speech. It founds that the simple theme, unmarked theme and the constant thematic progression pattern are used mostly to achieving the communicative purposes.