An Analysis of The Thematic Progression Patterns in The Abstract of The Undergraduate Thesis

Abstract

The analysis of thematic progression in various texts has been carried out by many researchers. However, the study of thematic progression and its contribution towards the coherence and cohesion of the texts particularly the ones such as the undergraduate thesis abstracts is rarely done. This study aims to examine the use of thematic progression
patterns and its contribution to the coherence and cohesion of the undergraduate thesis abstract. To achieve the objective, the study employed qualitative research in which the study involved eight abstracts to be analyzed. The aforesaid abstracts were drawn from the 8 high achieving undergraduate students in one of the universities in Garut for the past two years 2020-2021. The data were analyzed by following Eggins, Halliday and Hasan’s framework. The findings showed that from the three patterns, Reiteration was found to be the most frequent pattern in the students writing (48,78%), followed by the Zig-zag pattern and the Multiple Rheme pattern by 39% and 12,2% respectively. Meanwhile, in regard to the contribution of the patterns toward the coherence and the cohesion of the abstract, the results showed that the usage of thematic progression and the cohesive device can contribute to making the thesis abstract coherence and cohesion. The study concluded that understanding the thematic progression is important because it can make the writing have more coherence and cohesion.