Students’ Critical Thinking in Writing a Thesis Using the Transitivity System

Abstract

Students’ Critical Thinking in Writing a Thesis Using the Transitivity System. This paper reports on a small part of the results of a study in attempting to identify students’ ability and difficulties in writing an English undergraduate thesis in a state university in Indonesia. The paper centres around the students’ ability and difficulties in writing a data presentation and discussion chapter, which are related to critical capacity looked at in this study. The paper begins with a brief introduction, which presents the background and the theories underpinning the study. This will be followed by an account of the methodology, in which it is argued that the study used a case study method, particularly text analysis  and involved  nine theses  selected randomly and analysed based on the elements of a conventional research report and the Transitivity system of systemic functional grammar, developed by Halliday. The paper then delineates the results, showing that despite their  good control in the discourse semantic level, students in general still need a lot of guidance and assistance in writing a data presentation and discussion chapter. Recommendation for further research will conclude the paper.