The role of theme and rheme in thematic progression patterns in English argumentative essays by turkish university students

Since writing requires a lot of processing of the language to produce a message, it is seen as one of the most difficult skills to be developed. To develop EFL students' writing skills, the notion of Theme/ Rheme and thematic progression patterns are widely accepted to be useful. Therefore, the present study aims to determine the thematic progression patterns in Turkish EFL students' argumentative essays by regarding their language education background. The data in this study were taken from students who study in English Language Teaching and Psychological Counselling and Guidance departments in a private university in Turkey. Moreover, eight native speakers of English participated in the present study, as well. The data was analyzed by dividing the sentences into clauses and defining the thematic progression patterns based on Danes' thematic progression patterns (1974). Results of student essays were compared within each other considering their departments. The results revealed that ELT students use more thematic progression patterns than PCG students. Furthermore, it was determined that students from both of the departments used similar variety of thematic progression patterns in their essays. Finally, seven problems that arise from misuse of Theme and Rheme were identified in Turkish EFL students' written texts.