What is Thematic Progression in Students’ Essay? Revision of Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

This literature review looked at relevant research articles published in reputable journals from 2018 to 2022 to try to shed light on the areas: (1) Implications of using thematic progression pattern to improve the coherence and unity of student essays; and (2) The effects of thematic problems using the thematic progression approach in the student's essay. Even though thematic progression has been studied a lot, it is still interesting to see how much scholars have looked into it, especially in the context of the second and foreign language. The previous studies had consistently confirmed the following results: (1) thematic progression contributes to the coherence and cohesion quality of student essays; (2) problematic thematic progression in student essays includes the emergence of the brand-new theme, overuse of constant pattern, empty rheme or undeveloped rheme, double rheme, intervening material between rheme, incomplete of the clause, subsequent thematization, confusing selection of textual theme, empty themes, themes with undefined reference and thematization of rheme and lack of thematic progression & loosely thematic flow. For further research, other researcher can make a review article who emphasis on thematic progression in the aspect of various fields, genres of text or non-academic texts produced by students to look the cohesive and coherent aspects of the student's writing.