Thematic Progression in Students’ Descriptive Texts

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to identify the many styles of thematic progression patterns that
students employ while writing descriptive texts and to identify the most common one. A
descriptive-qualitative research design was used for this study. Students in the eleventh grade at the
Senior High School in East Java served as the study's respondents. According to the study's
findings, students employed Constant Theme, Linear Theme, and Split Rhyme as three forms of
Thematic Progression when composing descriptive texts. Additionally, the most typical topic
utilized by students while writing descriptive language is Constant Theme.
Keywords: Thematic Progression, Descriptive Text, Coherence Text
INTRODUCTION

Given that descriptive text is part of the English curriculum in Indonesia (Kemendikbud,
2013), understanding the optimal composition of the text is crucial for both the teacher who
will be presenting it in the classroom and the students who will be expected to grasp it. The
instructor has to have sufficient understanding of how those clauses create meaning since, like
other text kinds, descriptive texts are created not only according to certain rigorous rules in
the form of sentences but also by taking into account their goal and the meaning of each
structure. The related theme and rheme composition are considered good writing. The Rheme,
which is the remainder of the message and where the Theme is developed, comes after the
Theme. According to another definition, a theme is a significant system that involves a
message's clause, and the rheme is the section where the theme is developed.

Writing has to have a good content, the vocabulary and grammatical structure are part of the
content. Cohesive and coherent material helps the reader readily comprehend the meaning in
good content (Mulatsih, 2005). When students pay attention to theme development patterns,
they can develop strong writing skills. In order to follow thematic development patterns,
themes and rheme must be present in students' texts.

A text's cohesiveness and coherence must be observed while developing sentences by topic
and rheme. According to Paltridge (2000:148), utilizing continuous information based on the
topic or rheme is one of the finest ways to construct a work. While coherence refers to a text's
contextual qualities, or how it relates to and makes sense in the circumstances in which it
occurs, cohesion refers to a text's internal qualities. The content in a series can remain
cohesive and coherent by using thematic progression. A writing technique that influences the
coherence and cohesiveness of a work is thematic development pattern, according to Lipson
and Maxine (2004). Constant theme, linear theme, and divided theme are the three types of
thematic development.
1. Theme reiteration.
According to (Bloor & Bloor, 2013), a consistent theme indicates that the initial
subject is continued and utilized at the start of the following sentence, meaning
that the clauses repeat the first theme as their major focus. According to another
definition, the topic of the initial sentence, which is chosen as the subsequent
theme at subsequent clauses, establishes the consistent theme. (Alonso-Belmonte
& McCabe- Hidalgo, 1998) Various states
Table 1
Example of Costant Theme

THEME RHEME
Smoking can give some bad impacts on people.
Smoking effects both the smoker or non-smoker.
It can cause some diseases.
The rule of smoking must be analyzed deeper by the
government.

2. Linear Theme Pattern

According to Bloor & Bloor (2013), a linear theme is utilized when the main idea
from the rheme is continued into the next sentence. In a different definition,
Paltridge (2000: 149) describes a linear theme as the ties that bind the first rheme
to the subsequent theme.

Table 2. Example of Linear Theme

THEME RHEME

One of the biggest natural disaster is earthquake

An earthquake can impact a great damage
The damage effects some aspects such as economic,
social life,etc.
Those aspects are very essential for human-life

3. Split Rheme Pattern

According to Bloor & Bloor (2013), is a development of rheme that has several
significant details that may be used as the following topics in succeeding clauses.
Additionally, split rheme is a structure of a clause when a rheme of the first clause
has more than one concept and it can be developed in some later clauses.
 Table 3. Example of Split Theme

THEME RHEME
When Japanese people write their language
They use a combination of two separate
The two alphabets alphabets as
The Chinese ideograms well as ideograms borrowed by
Chinese.
are called hiragana and katakana.

Given the aforementioned assertions, it can be inferred that the thematic development pattern is
what matters most when crafting a phrase, particularly throughout the writing process. In this
study, the researcher is interested in examining how students write descriptive texts in terms of
topic progression. Thus, the research's objectives are to identify the main thematic progression
used in students' descriptive text writing and to ascertain how thematic progression patterns are
used in student writing.
RESEARCH METHOD

The descriptive qualitative approach was employed in this study. (Kuswoyo, 2016, citing
Perry, 2005) The vocal description of the data in qualitative research is its defining feature.
The study's data came from XIth-grade students who were majoring in Instrumentasi and
Otomatisasi Process. Nine students, three high students, three middle students, and three law
students made up the sample for this study.

T In this study, documenting was the primary method of data collection. The research was
based on written work produced by pupils. The responders wrote 9 texts in total. Students in
their eleventh grade served as the study's respondents. The data was then integrated and tied
to the context of the study, namely to the research questions, hypotheses, and technique for
breaking the data down into digestible parts as suggested by the researchers. The following
procedures were utilized in the data analysis: obtaining the text from the pupils 2) studying
the writing Finding the theme and rheme is step four of the process. 5) recognized the poems'
thematic development 6) Divided into three categories of thematic development patterns:
constant theme pattern, linear theme pattern, split rheme pattern.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Results

In this section, nine texts written by students that are descriptive in nature were chosen for this
research's analysis and are included in this part. High achiever, moderate achiever, and poor
achiever were the three categories used to categorize these writings. The researcher
discovered the following theme flow of the students' descriptive text after examining the data.

Table 4. Result of Constant Theme

THEME RHEME

My mother
is a very beautiful women
THEME 1
RHEME 1
 Her is Ahadina Sugihari
name
THEME 2 RHEME 2

Her tall is 162 cm

THEME 3 RHEME 3

Her weight is 55kg

THEME 4 RHEME 4

The analysis revealed that the text above made use of Constant Theme. The first theme the
kids utilized was "my mother," and they described it in the first rhyming couplet, which
served as the crucial information the pupils needed to build the topic.
Table 5. Result of Linear Theme
THEME RHEME
I will describe my family

My family Consists of 5 members

They are my father, my mother, and my

older brother
Based on the analysis above, the students’ text used Linear Theme. The students
develop the idea from the previous rheme becomes the theme in the current clause.
 Table 6. Result of Split Theme

Following study of the material above, the researcher discovered split rhema in the writing of
the pupils. When the pupils had an essential message in the first rheme and used that message
as the second subject in the second rheme, they employed split rhyming. The results of the
students' text analysis may be seen in the table below.

Table 7. Types of Thematic Progression in Descriptive Text

Types of
Students Text Category Total
Theme
High Achiever Middle Achiever Low Achiever
F % F % F % F %
Constant 26 90 44 93.6 28 87.5 98 90.7
Theme
Linear 1 3.4 2 4.2 4 12.5 7 6.48
Theme
Split 2 6.8 1 2.1 - - 3 2.77
Theme
TOTAL 29 100.2 47 99.9 32 100 108 99.95
Discussion

The results of thematic progression (Constant Theme, Linear Theme, Split Theme) are shown
in the table above for students' descriptive text writing. The Constant Theme is the most often
used theme, according to the above statistics. That happens 98 times, or 90.7 percent of the
time. There are a lot of pupils who can keep the constant theme, which is employed and
carried over into the first phrase of the next sentence, in focus. Additionally, it was discovered
that a recurring topic appeared 44 times in the writings of intermediate achievers, 28 times in
those of low achievers, and 26 times in those of low achievers.

The Linear Theme pattern appears in students' descriptive writing as the second pattern. There
are 7 occurrences of the linear theme, or 6.48 percent of all occurrences. The conclusion is
that the rheme from the preceding phrase is employed as the topic in the succeeding clauses
by high frequency pupils. According to students' academic levels, the linear theme pattern
appears four times in the texts of low achievers, twice in those of medium achievers, and once
in the texts of high achievers.

Split Theme is the third pattern that appears when students write descriptive material. In the
Split Theme pattern, this pattern appears three times, or 2.77 percent of the time. When the
rheme in the first sentence is split into two or more sections or develops into a rheme that
contains significant information that is utilized as the following topic in future clauses, the
pupils employed this pattern. Split Theme pattern was detected in the students' work in three
different ways: twice for high scorers, once for medium achievers, and not at all for poor
performers.
CONCLUSION

There are three different sorts of thematic progression, according to the analysis's findings.
Constant Theme Pattern, Linear Theme Pattern, and Split Theme Pattern are three of them.
The researcher came to the conclusion in the table above that the Constant Theme pattern is
the most prevalent Theme in students' descriptive prose. They appear 98 times, which is
equivalent to 90.7 percent of the total, making them the most frequently occurring constant
theme in students' ability to sustain the topic's emphasis when it is continued and employed at
the start of the following sentence. The pupils' usage of the Constant Topic pattern causes the
theme to repeat itself in the clause's focus. The second pattern that the majority of students
utilize in their texts is the linear theme pattern; it appears 7 times overall and accounts for
6.48 percent of all texts. The first theme was used as the major topic in a pattern that the
pupils employed. The third pattern, called Split Theme, only appears three times overall, or
2.77 percent of all patterns. It's possible that the kids are concentrating more on the topic than
on the crucial information in the rheme. The researcher may infer from this article that most
students employed the constant theme pattern to create their paragraphs in their descriptive
papers.
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