Improving Coherence of The Students’ Sentences by Applying Thematic Progression And Personal Blog In The Sentence-Based Writing Class

Abstract

This study was aimed at describing what kinds of thematic progression
patterns mostly employed by the students, describing how to apply
thematic progression theory and personal blog in the sentence-based
writing class, and finding out whether the use of thematic progression
theory and personal blog give positive significances to coherence of the
students‘ sentences. This is an action research study employing two
cycles. The subject of the study was 24 students of group 2, in a class of
sentence-based writing (SBW), and the object of the study was students‘
sentences created by the students in the teaching and learning process
(TLP). The result of the study shows that thematic progression patterns
moslty employed by the students are constant theme pattern followed by
zig zag and multiple theme patterns. In TLP, the materials were devided
and given to the students in two cycles. The first cycle focused on
introducing the thematic progression theory and its kinds of patterns.
Then, in the next cycle the students focused on sharing ideas with other
classmates via individual blogs. Based on the result of the study, teaching
SBW using thematic progression theory gives its positive significance by
varied patterns used by the students. It can be seen from the analysis of
the students‘ sentences from pretest, paragraf 1, paragraf 2, paragraf 3
and posttest. The students also give positive responses upon its teaching and learning process using thematic progression and personal blogs based
on the pre and post test questionnaire data. It is hoped that the result of
the study gives positive contribution to the students in preparing them to
write in bigger contexts - paragraph-based writing, genre-based writng
and academic writing in the next coming semesters.

Keywords: Mind mapping ; writing skills ; Class Action Research.