Yunita, Theme and thematic progression in students’ recount texts 524 THEME AND THEMATIC PROGRESSION IN STUDENTS’ RECOUNT TEXTS Sri Yunita Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia sriyunita36@gmail.com First received: 9 August 2017 Final proof received: 29 January 2018 Abstract This study aims to investigate the Theme and Thematic progression patterns in students’ recount text in a state vocational school in Bandung. This study employs a descriptive-qualitative research design. The data were obtained from a collection of students’ texts. This study uses the theory of Theme system developed by Halliday (1994) and the theory of Thematic progression proposed by Eggins (2004) as the framework to analyze the data. The findings showed that the Theme and Thematic progression supports the character of Recount text written by the students to some extents: the Topical Theme represents the students’ ability to deliver what the text is about, the Interpersonal Theme helps students declare their personal comments, while the Textual Theme showed the students’ ability to develop the logical relationship between clauses and make their texts more cohesive and coherent. In terms of thematic progression patterns, the Theme Reiteration pattern signposts that the students tend to make the text focus by repeating the same element as Themes; the Zig Zag pattern showed that the students introduce newly information by promoting the Rheme in a clause to the Theme in the subsequent clause, and the Multiple Theme pattern specifies that the students develop the texts well according to the prior plan before writing those ideas in the text. Keywords: theme; thematic progression; recount texts Students need to pay attention to several aspects to write a good composition. One of them is the Theme of clauses. Starting a sentence with a Theme is useful in helping students to communicate their ideas successfully (Wang, 2010). The theme is the element of clause structures which serves as the point of departure of the message; it is the clause concerned (Halliday, 1994). The Theme then becomes the prominent element for standing as the grammatical system that organizes the clause in such a way that it helps construct the environment (Emilia, 2014) because it provides the environment for the remainder of the message, which is known as the Rheme, in the Theme and Rheme organization (Halliday, 1994). However, as a skill, writing is regarded as a difficult skill to be mastered by the students. It is in line with Emilia’s study (2005) which discovers that most students considered writing as a difficult subject. Most of the students’ skills are far from their learning targets, and teaching writing so far has not been satisfying. It is supported by Alwasilah (2008) who stated that communication in written language is difficult for students and even for teachers. And the difficulty in written language communication makes students tend to be not productive in writing (Alwasilah & Alwasilah, 2005). Theme-Rheme organisation or Thematic organisation of clause is the most significant factor in the development of texts (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004). Focusing the students’ writing on the Thematic progression will be very useful in helping students communicate their ideas successfully (Wang, 2010). For pedagogical contexts of writing, Downing (2001) stated that Thematic progression analysis can be applied within educational settings. Downing (2001) also suggested that one of the benefits of Theme and Thematic progression is that it can be used as a resource for analysing texts in educational setting, particularly for students’ texts. In this study, the Theme progression of Systemic Functional Linguistics is used as the instrument to analyze the text written by vocational students. There are four reasons why Thematic progression becomes reasonable to analyse. First, thematic progression is used to organise the principles where new information is conveyed in the context (Hutchin, 1987). Second, it is used to represent the text development (Grabe & Kaplan, 1996). Third, it is used to organize the texts in a linear and coherent way (Butt, Feez, Spinks, & Yallop, 2000). Fourth, it is utilized to enhance students’ ability to read and construct longer texts (Emilia, 2014) . Although the Theme and Thematic progression has been widely studied in the Indonesian vocational school contexts, the awareness of writing organisation based on Thematic progression seems to attract less attention from both teachers and students. Huda (2008) supported that the awareness of writing organisation based on Thematic progression remains unexplored from both teacher doi: 10.17509/ijal.v7i3.9797