Graduate Students’ Ability in Constructing Coherence in the Review of Related Theories of Thesis Proposal

Coherence is one of the elements that should be considered in writing, especially in writing a review of related theories of the thesis proposal. Furthermore, it is also known if the review of related theories is one of the main sections in the thesis proposal since the students’ understanding of the topic of study can be seen in this section. Their knowledge in this section can be seen when they have to find out, explain, and review the theories from some experts. However, some coherence issues occur in writing a review of related theories of the thesis proposal. The matters are the students often lack in using the transitional signals to connect the ideas in writing the review of related theories, grammatical problems, and the way students organize the ideas. Related to these issues, this article has the aim to seek the ability of graduate students to construct coherence in the review of related theories of thesis proposals. The descriptive research design was used in this study to describe their ability to create coherence. To determine their ability, 24 reviews of related theories from different thesis proposals were chosen using purposive sampling. It was found that most of the graduate students had good ability in constructing coherence in their review of related theories of thesis proposal. Thus, it can be interpreted if graduate students understood well and could apply the coherence well enough in writing a review of related theories.