THEME AND THEMATIC PROGRESSION IN ELEMENTARY AND JUNIOR STUDENTS’ TEXTS

Abstract

This is a study of texts produced by elementary and junior students. This study aims to find out the theme types, thematic progression (TP) types, and their implication in teaching writing. This study is a descriptive qualitative research. ¬The data are the texts which were written by eleven students of 5th grade of elementary school and eleven students of 8th grade of junior high school. The analysis of this study is based on the theories of Halliday and Matthiessen (2004), Paltridge (2008), Gerrot and Wignell (1995), and Martin, et al. (1997). The results show that E-texts and J-texts consist of topical theme, textual theme, and interpersonal theme. Those theme types have almost similar numbers of occurrence. Besides, E-texts and J-texts also consist of similar TP types; those are constant TP, linear TP, and multiple TP. The numbers of TP type occurrence in elementary students’ texts (E-texts) and junior students’ texts (J-texts) are much different. The largest distinctive numbers are in the use of linear TP. Based on the analysis and the discussion of theme and TP types in students’ texts, it is known that E-texts contain limited information while J-texts contain larger information. It occurs because J-respondents have higher cognitive ability than E-respondents. Besides, it also occurs because J-respondents could organize their information better than E-respondents. Therefore, teachers can improve the students’ writing skill by giving familiar topic of writing and teaching them to use more textual themes to organize their information.