Thematic progression refers to the way Themes continually pick up information that is already in the text and repeat it in some way so that the reader is always aware of:

By constantly ‘recycling’ information in the preceding sentences as Themes of the next, writers can create very strong links between one sentence and the next, and one paragraph and the next.

Three effective ways to use Theme

1. To maintain the focus on a single idea

Read the following short text and look at the highlighted Themes. In this text, the writer has chosen to maintain a focus on the media used for recording messages– all three sentence Themes are different media. The writer is using a simple Theme – Theme – Theme technique to keep the focus. Rocks were originally used to carry carved or painted messages. Scrolled leather onto which messages were crudely scratched, was used in later Neolithic times. Heavy hand copies of parchment took over in the Middle Ages/ when monks had the leisure to embellish them with fine inks and costly gold leafing.

Instead of just repeating the ideas and information in the Themes, you can use the information in the New as the next Theme.  As with repeating the Theme, you can repeat the information you take from the New almost exactly or by using a synonym or related idea.

In this short text, the writer has picked up the ideas in the New of the preceding sentences and turned them into the Themes of the following sentences. This keeps a very tight thread of ideas running through the text. In this example, the ideas in the New are quite closely mirrored in the language of the following Themes (economic disadvantage – economic disadvantage; better themselves – self-betterment).

Poor education is associated with economic disadvantage. Economic disadvantage helps to ensure/that the next generation of children is also deprived of opportunities to better themselves.

Since self-betterment is a constant expectation of our society, those who fail to engage in it will always be at a psychological as well as a financial disadvantage.

In this text, the writer has also used the ideas in the New of the preceding sentences to form the Themes of the subsequent sentences. However, the information is not directly repeated – it is repeated, instead, as exemplification (developing world – Bangladesh, Afghanistan, and many African nations) or as synonyms (developed countries – the Western world). The logical connections in the text are in no way obscured or weakened by this. The progression is obvious and the text remains strongly cohesive. The issue of educational disadvantage has been widely studied in the developing world. Countries such as Bangladesh, Afghanistan, and many African nations have extremely poor levels of education compared to the developed countries. However, the Western world seems little concerned with its responsibility to shoulder the economic and humanitarian consequences of continued poverty as a result of stagnant educational achievement.

To develop more than one Theme from a New You can also place several ideas in a single New, and then develop a series of Themes from this single New. This technique is very common in academic writing. It is particularly useful when you are organizing information within a paragraph or an argument. In this example, the New component of the opening sentence outlines several areas that will be followed through. Each one in turn is placed in the Theme position, keeping to the order in which they were originally mentioned. The result is a highly structured and visually cohesive piece of text.

There are three main categories of argument about capital punishment: retributive arguments, utilitarian arguments, and deterrence arguments.

Retributive arguments pursue the religiously inspired ‘eye for an eye’ approach arguing that a second person’s death avenges and cancels out the death of the first.

Utilitarian arguments tend to be more sanguine, encompassing economic arguments related to the lesser costs of capital punishment as well as those based on a negative view of the perpetrator’s future usefulness to society.

Deterrence arguments focus on the use of capital punishment as a preventive measure to dissuade others from committing capital crimes.

Do I have to choose a particular method of thematic progression?

No. As a writer you have choices to make. What matters is that your text is cohesive – it must flow logically and hang together well. You can use all three ways within a single paragraph or argument. Your choice of thematic organization will depend on:

·  which key ideas and information you want the reader to focus on.

·  how you want to develop your paragraph or argument; in other words, the ideas you want to introduce and how you want to relate them to one another.