GRAMMATICAL PROBLEMS IN THE DISCUSSION SECTION OF MASTER THESES

The discussion section is one part of the thesis that describes the findings
made with the results of previous research by demonstrating deep knowledge of the
findings, interpreting the findings, and emphasizing the contribution to the current
knowledge. It is also the most challenging part of the thesis. This study aimed to find
out the most grammatical problems and causes of grammatical problems in
discussing the master thesis written by English education postgraduate program
students at Bengkulu University. This study used a mixed method. Most of the
grammatical problems were investigated quantitatively, and the causes of
grammatical problems were studied qualitatively. The corpus of this study was 30
master theses written by English education postgraduate program students who have
graduated in 2021. The findings showed that the most frequent grammatical problems
found in the discussion section of the master thesis were incorrect verbs with 65,4%
or 121 times, which were dominated by tense confusion and subject-verb agreement
which confuse the reader. Further, they also often have lack of the necessary syntactic
connections between the verb and the nearest subject. The cause of the grammatical
problems found in the discussion section of the thesis was first-language since the
first grammar rules still significantly influence writing in foreign languages. The
conclusion of this study provides information about the most frequent grammatical
problems and possible causes in the master thesis discussion section to increase the
writer's awareness about the importance of grammatical writing in the discussion
section.
Key words: Grammatical Problems, Discussion Section, Writing Thesis, Academic
Writing