Theme and Thematic Progression in Narrative Texts of Indonesian EFL Learners

This study aims to analyze and describe the Thematic progression patterns and types of Theme in students’ narrative texts of Indonesian EFL Learners. This study employs a descriptive-qualitative research design. The data were obtained from a collection of students’ texts. This study uses the theory of Thematic progression: Bloor and Bloor (2004), and the theory of types of Theme developed by Halliday (1994), Gerot & Wignell (1994), Halliday et al. (2004). The finding shows a dominant use of Constant pattern in narrative texts indicates that the students are able to create a focus on specific participants as this is one of the linguistics features of narrative texts. The use of Linear pattern indicates that the students have achieved the ability to create cohesion of the texts by introducing the new information by taking a Rheme to become Theme of the upcoming clause. In terms of types of Theme, the high number of Topical Themes in students’ text may indicate that the students are able to lead the reader to focus on participants (characters) of the story. The use of Interpersonal Themes, which dominantly used by middle and low achievers, indicate that high achievers tend to be complex lexically (written language), while middle and low achievers tend to use complex grammatically (spoken language). The dominant use of Textual Theme indicates that the students are able to create complex clause and to connect the clause which helps them to create a cohesive and coherent text. Keywords— systemic functional linguistic, textual metafunction, theme, thematic progression, narrative


I. INTRODUCTION
Study in Theme and Thematic progression in students' texts is important to evaluate coherence in a writing. Coherence is a kind of relationship between ideas in a text which helps the text to hang together. It also deals with ideas that arrange clearly and logically. Halliday et al. (2004) stated that a text is said to have global coherence if the text hangs together as a whole which is referred to as "discourse flow". Therefore, if a text is coherent, the reader can understand easily the main points of the text. According to Halliday & Hasan (2014) a text is coherent if two conditions are fulfilled, first, a text must be consistent with a context in which it is created, second, a text must be connected by cohesive devices. In other words, it suggests that coherence can be built if it is relevant to context, and if there is a connection between ideas in a text.
To create a coherent text some common problems in writing may arise, especially when students are asked to write a good composition, their writing may be good in grammar, but poor in text structure and disorganize in logic, that makes the whole texts lack unity. As grammar (as well as other systems in language) contributes to the coherent flow of information in a text (Jones & Lock, 2010), it might lead teachers to pay more attention to grammatical mistakes. This might make the students to think correct grammar is the essential factor in writing, thus the students are paying too much attention to grammar rather than the order of organization, and fail to create more coherent writing. Some studies have been conducted to examine coherence in students' writing by analyzing the use of Theme and Rheme. Study in Theme and Thematic Progression in learner English focus on how appropiate use of Theme and Thematic progression to improve coherence in learners output, mainly learners of English writing, by analyzing their problem in the use of Theme and Thematic progression. This is in line with Halliday and Matthiessen (2004) state that one way to evaluate the students' writing skills in creating the text is analyzing Thematic progression based on the Theme system of Systemic Functional Linguistic. Some studies stated that one of the major problems for the students' writing is in the logical order of the text content and the coherent layout of textual structure. This is supported by Wei (2010) argued that students' English writing was lack of coherence due to the inappropriate thematic choice and thematic progression. Furthermore, Zhang (2004) found that Theme in students' writing was confusing because they were not connected to preceding Theme, and as a result, Themes did not help develop the writing.
This study aims to analyze and describe the realization of Thematic progression and the use of Theme types in students' Narrative texts. Therefore, findings of this study can be useful to examine problems in students' text and it also applies to improve students' writing skills.

Systemic Functional Linguistic
Bloor et al., (2004) state that for Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), a language as a 'system of meanings', it follows semantic (concerned with meaning) and functional (concerned with how the language is used). That is to say that when people use language, precisely they construct meaning. Besides, Thompson, (2013) also states that SFL is essentially equated with function, and that describing language from this view appears to seem to be a much less workable task than describing the structures. According to Halliday, SFL is a theory that examines language as a system in terms of functions. This theory introduces the three metafunctions of meaning, they are experiental or ideational meaning, interpersonal, and textual meaning.

Textual Metafunction
Textual metafunction concerns Theme and Rheme. The Theme highlights a certain piece of information within a clause as being more important than others, which provides the "point of departure" for the message (Halliday, 1994 There are two types of Ideational theme; unmarked theme and marked theme. The unmarked theme in the English clause is usually started with the subject. The marked theme is a non-typical theme that is characterized by other than subjects such as complement, adjunct, or predicator. The following is an example: My sister talked to me yesterday.

Theme (unmarked theme) Rheme Ideational Theme
Last month my sister talked to me.

Theme (Marked theme) Rheme Ideational Theme
The Interpersonal theme relate to the relationship either between the speaker and his addresses or between the speaker and its message. In addition, Gerot & Wignell (1994)  The Textual theme helps to structure the text and develops connection to other clauses (Halliday, 1994), it realized by conjuctive adjunct, e.g and, however; conjunction, e.g before, after, how, which, and continuative". Textual theme is categorized into continuative, conjunction, and conjunctive adjunct.

Thematic Progression
Thematic progression is the way the themes are linked together to form a text. According to Eggins (2004), Thematic progression is the flow of information between sequential themes and rhemes. Analyzing the flow of information is considered important because an analysis of how these themes progress and collaborate with rheme is essential to see the organization of a text. In this case, Bloor et al. (2004) have proposed several Thematic patterns that are commonly found in texts. They are Constant theme pattern, Linear theme pattern, Split Rheme pattern and Derived themes

Constant theme Pattern
The Constant theme pattern shows that the topic of the first clause is introduced in the first theme, and then becomes the second, the third and the fourth theme of each clause as represented below.

Linear theme pattern
The Linear theme pattern shows that the rheme of each clause becomes the theme of the next clause as represented below. Clause 1. Theme A + Rheme B Clause 2. Theme B + Rheme C Clause 3. Theme C + Rheme C The museum is located in the center of town near the square. This square is a common destination for tourist buses. The buses, all belonging to the Island Tour Bus. (Sujatna, 2013)

Split Rheme pattern
This type occurs when the rheme of a clause has two or more components, each rheme is taken as the theme of the next clause as represented below.

Derived Theme
The Derived theme occurs when the theme of a clause is not stated explicitly in the themerheme of the previous clauses by the form, but it relates in meaning to the theme or rheme of the previous clause as represented below.

Theme 3
The rat-like rodents include hamsters, lemmings, voles and gerbils, as well as rats and mice. The black rat is found in buildings, sewers and rubbish yards, but has been largely replaced by the bigger, more aggressive, brown rat. Voles are mouse-like rodents that live in the grassland of Europe and Asia; water voles, or water rats, build complex tunnels along river banks. The house mouse often lives inside buildings and is a serious pest because it eats stored food. The field mouse, on the other hand, very rarely comes near human dwellings. (Bloor et al., 2004)

III. METHODOLOGY
This study is designed as a qualitative and descriptive research method since the primary purpose of this study is to analyze and describe the types of Theme and Thematic progression in students' narrative texts, a descriptive qualitative method was considered appropriate (Creswell, 2009). The descriptive method is method research that attempts to describe and interpret the objects under reality. Moreover, Keizer (2015) argues that all linguistics research is first and foremost based on observation and description.
The data of the study were taken from the sixth grade of International Elementary School in Bandung. The data is nine students' narrative texts which were intentionally selected based on teacher's suggestion, these data represent low, middle, and high achievement category based on school's writing rubic score.
The steps in analyzing the data: first the identification of Thematic progression, followed by the Next, the identification of types of Theme is conducted, the text also divided into some stages of narrative, by breaking down the texts into numbered clauses, text orientation, complication, and resolution. Then the types of Theme were identified based on the theory of Halliday (1994), Gerot & Wignell (1994), and Halliday et al., (2004) in terms of Topical, Interpersonal, or Textual theme. The identification of types of Theme would describe how the students organize the idea textually.
in students' narrative texts. The findings concerning the types of Thematic progression are presented in Table 1.
The table above describes that only two types of Thematic progression (Constant and Linear) are used in Students' narrative texts. Based on the table above, the Constant patterns is the most frequent Thematic progression used. It occurs 80 times or equal to 63% of the total. The high number of Constant pattern in students' narrative texts indicates that the students tend to represent the continuing information by focusing on the Theme of the text in the preceding clause. This trend shows us how elementary students are able to maintain the focus of the story by repeating the Theme in the next clause. In terms of students' text category, Constant theme pattern is mostly found both in the middle achiever for 25 times and low achiever for 25 times, then followed by high achievers' for 30 times.
Besides the Constant Theme, another Thematic progression which occurs in students' narrative writing is the Linear pattern. The Linear pattern is mostly found in the low achievers' texts for 18 times, then followed by high achievers' for 17, and the middle achievers' 11. The high frequency of Linear pattern implicitly indicates that the students have achieved the ability to create cohesion of the texts by introducing the new information by taking a Rheme to become Theme of the upcoming clause. In terms of students' text category, the Linear pattern is mostly found in the low achievers' texts for 18 times, then followed by high achievers' for 17, and the middle a

IV. RESULT AND DISCUSSION
There are nine texts which were purposively analyzed in this study. These texts were categorized into three levels of achievement: low, middle, and high achievement. Each category consists of three texts. This section is to answer a part of research questions about type of Thematic progression and the type of Theme applied in students' narrative texts. The findings concerning the types of Thematic progression are presented in Table 1.  The absence of the Split rheme pattern and Derived theme pattern in students' narrative texts show that the students of elementary school rarely tend to compose a complex text, however they are able to create a well-organized and understandable texts through Constant and Linear patterns. The dominant use of Constant pattern in narrative texts also means that the students are able to create focus on specific participants as this is one of the linguistics features of narrative text.
This section is to answer a part of research question about types of Theme realized in students' narrative texts, which is represented in Table 2.
The three types of Theme (Topical, Interpersonal, and Textual Themes) are used in students' narrative texts. Based on Table 2, the Topical Theme is the most frequent Theme used. It occurs 412 times or 69% of the total. This Topical Theme is divided into two parts, they are the marked Themes which occur 30 times or 5%, and the unmarked Theme which occur 392 times or 64%. The finding of the high number of Topical Themes in students' texts may indicate that the students are able to lead the reader to focus to participants (characters) of the story. As one of linguistic features of narrative text is to focus on specific and usually individualized participants, thus it may be the cause of the dominant number of Topical Theme occurrences in students' narrative texts. Meanwhile, the Interpersonal theme is the least type of Theme found in students' text. The number of Interpersonal Themes in the total of students' texts are 30 or equal to 5%. This theme mostly found in spoken text, which is in the dialogue of the story, as Interpersonal Theme commonly happens in the conversation (Eggin, 2004). The use of Interpersonal Theme is highly occured in middle achievers for 14 times, followed by low achievers for 13 times, and high achievers for 3 times. These numbers show that high achievers tend to use dialogue less than middle and low achievers, these also indicate that high achievers, tend to be complex lexically (written language), while middle and low achievers tend to be complex grammatically (spoken language).
On the other hand, the Textual Theme occurs 161 times or equal to 26% of the total. The use of Textual Theme is highly occured in middle achievers for 90 times or 35%, followed by high achievers for 37 times or 23%, and low achievers for 34 times or 17%. The dominant use of Textual Theme indicates that the students are able to create complex clause and to connect the clause which helps them to create a cohesive and coherent text To conclude, the Topical Themes are the most frequent that occur in students' narrative texts of all levels (69%), followed by Textual Themes (26%). Meanwhile, the Interpersonal Themes are the least used in the narrative text (5%). This result supports the research that conducted by Safitri (2013), about Theme system in the narrative text whose finding showed that there were three types of Theme used by the students, they are Topical, Textual and Interpersonal, and it stated that Topical Theme was the most frequently used.

V. CONCLUSION
The finding showed that Thematic progression and types of Theme support one of the linguistic features of narrative text. In terms of Thematic progression, the dominant use of Constant pattern in narrative text indicates that the students are able to create focus on specific participants as this is one of the linguistics features of the narrative texts. The use of Linear patterns indicates that the students have achieved the ability to create cohesion of the texts by introducing the new information by taking a Rheme to become Theme of the upcoming clause. In terms of types of Theme, the high number of Topical Themes in students' texts may indicate that the students are able to lead the reader to focus on participant (characters) of the story. The use of Interpersonal, which dominantly used by middle and low indicate that high achievers tend to be complex lexically (written language), while middle and low achievers tend to be complex grammatically (spoken language). The dominant use of Textual Theme indicates that the students are able to create complex clause and to connect the clause which helps them to create a cohesive and coherent text. Further research in Theme and Thematic progression for elementary school students can be applied in other genres such as in recount text, procedural text, or expository text.