The Effects of Thematic Progression in Improving Coherence and Cohesion in EFL Writing

From general observations, the writing produced by EFL students is rather difficult for native English speakers to follow due to its lack of coherence and cohesion. This problem is believed to be minimized by applying Thematic progression theory. This action research was conducted with the purpose to measure to what extent the use of thematic progression could improve coherence and cohesion in writing. Moreover, it also fulfills two sub-tasks which are identifying common theme-rheme problems and clarifying students’ difficulties when applying thematic progression in writing. To reach the answers, the action research was carried out with six-week execution and 20 participants, using both quantitative data (namely numbers of theme-rheme problems and coherence/cohesion scores) and qualitative data (students’ journals). The findings showed that by learning thematic progression, students’ coherence and cohesion band scores could be upgraded by approximately one band. Besides, inappropriate textual theme and empty theme were found to be the main theme-rheme problems. In addition, the shortage of ideas and inflexibility in using grammatical structure were discovered to be hurdles for students to employ the theory in their writing.