Analisis Struktur Topikal Pada Paragraf Mahasiswa Pendidikan Bahasa Inggris Universitas PGRI Semarang

Abstract

This research attempted to reveal the internal coherence of paragrahs written by second semester students of English department of Universitas PGRI Semarang. The data were then broken up into clauses to know the internal coherence of the paragraphs through the analysis of physical structure, repetition of keywords, cohesive marker and progressions. This descriptive study used the framework from Lautamatti and Simpson. Based on the analysis of the physical structure of the paragraphs, it shows that students tend to be wordy in writing their paragraphs. Students used some techniques in repeating the keynoun. They used pronouns to replace the keyword in their paragraphs. It reached 31.04% occurences. Specification and direct repetition reached 24.14% each. Phrasal counterparts occurred five times in all paragraphs or 17.24 %. Synonym only happened once in all paragraphs or 3.5%. Students applied five different cohesive markers in their paragraphs. Discourse connectives happened 20 times of all paragraphs or 55.6%. Illocution marker occurred 7 times or 19.44%. modality marker and attitude marker was found four times each or 11.11%. Metalinguistics marker was found once or 2.7%. The last part to be analyzed is the progressions in the paragraphs. The researchers found four types of progression on students’ paragraphs. Those are Parallel Progression, Sequential progression, Extended Parallel Progression and Extended Sequential Paragraph. Parallel Progression was the most applied by the students in their paragraphs. It reached 26 times or 66.67%. The second place was Sequential Progression. It occurred 10 times in all paragraphs or 25.6%. Extended Parallel Progression happened twice or 5.3%. The fourth place was Extended Sequential Progression. It reached 2.6%. From those findings, some implications can be referred. Writing lecturer needs to introduce more about communicative features of a text to students. Furthermore, lecturer should encourage the students to apply more progressions in their writing so that they can produce more varied and well-developed text.

Keyword: progression; Topical Structure Analysis; text; writing