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students‟ speeches by investigating their Thematic structures and Thematic progressions.
In this study, I try to analyse the Thematic structures and Thematic progressions displayed on speeches of the 3
rd
semester students of English Department, Semarang State University in the academic year 20142015 which
were taken on the Speaking for General Purposes final test.
1.2 Reasons for Choosing the Topic
There are some reasons which are taken into account in choosing the topic of “Thematic Structures and Thematic Progressions on Students‟ Speeches A Study
on Speeches of the 3
rd
Semester Students of English Department Semarang State University in the Academic Year 20142015
”. First, the students of English Department, as EFL learners, still have
difficulties in creating text. Even though they have been through years of language instruction, they still consistently make mistakes in apparently simple grammar
features such as tense and aspects. It is important that they know how to combine words together grammatically in a clause, and how they organize the texts
produced in order to achieve goals. It, thus, catches my attention to investigate how students construct messages or textual meaning through Thematic structures.
Moreover, the way the students develop ideas in the text also becomes focus of this study as it examines how clauses in a text hang together and relate to the
context. It is expected that, by the result of this study, the English teachers can
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assist the students to improve their speaking skills especially in public speaking in order to be intelligible for the listeners.
Second, speech is considered as spoken text, and it has different aspects from written text. Both in teaching writing and speaking, teachers have to focus
on errors occurred in clause level such as incorrect tenses, inappropriate subject- verb agreement, misuse of pronoun, and so on. In addition, teaching speaking
requires the teacher to pay attention on fluency and pronunciation of words. However, in fact, they do not notice students‟ errors in the level of discourse,
where the texts are sometimes lack of coherence and cohesion. It is essential that the students pay attention on the content, and how they develop ideas systemically
in order to make a coherent and cohesive text, and the teachers need to help the students to make a good text.
Third, the topic of the speech was not defined, so the students were given the opportunity to choose their own speech topic. This, by all means, would allow the
students to develop their ideas broadly, and each of the students had different perception toward the topic according to their language skills. Developing ideas in
clauses, in other words, will lead to representation of „This is what I am talking about‟ and „This is what I am saying about it‟.
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1.3 Research Problems
