Thematic progression of students’ writing descriptive text in junior high school

Abstract

This research is aimed to investigate the thematic progression pattern in students’ writing descriptive text in junior high school, especially to find kind of patterns and which one is dominant. This study conducted at one class of seventh grade junior high school in Karawang. This study employs a qualitative research design. This study uses the theory of thematic progression developed by Eggins (2004) as framework to analyze the data. The data of this research are six students’ writing descriptive text that obtained from writing task. The findings in this research there are three pattern of thematic progression. Reiteration themes showed that students tend to make focus to the point and create a coherence text. Zigzag theme showed that students have succeeded in developing the cohesion of the text. And multiple themes showed that students have able to develop a lot of information from a rheme as themes. In conclusions, reiteration theme was dominant used pattern in students’ descriptive texts, then the second is zigzag theme and the third is multiple themes.