An investigation on Thematic Progression in Academic Writing of Iranian Civil Engineering Scholars

Coherence has always been taken as a serious index of reference to evaluate texts such as articles. And in turn, thematic progression has been considered as an index, to rate coherence. This study attempts to explore the thematic progression of Iranian and native English scholars in civil engineering field of study. To do so, 20 articles (10 written by Iranians and 10 written by native scholars) were randomly selected to be described in terms of the development and comparison. First the articles were analyzed based on 7 thematic patterns, say, simple linear, constant, derived, split, linear constant, constant linear, and finally elliptic. Then the results were conclusively and quantitatively described and compared in two groups. The results show that in general, native scholars use more patterns than Iranians, although the difference is insignificant. Specifically, it is found that native scholars tend to use more complex patterns such as constant linear, and linear constant, and Iranians are more on simple patterns such as constant and simple linear. At the end some implications from the research are given to the scholars and policy-makers. Also some suggestions are offered to other research interested in thematic development in texts.