GRAMMATICAL FEATURES IN THE INTRODUCTION SECTION OF ENGLISH MASTER THESES OF UNIVERSITY OF BENGKULU

Grammatical features are the criteria to determine the quality of the
introduction section and thesis writing and have a strong relationship with
the introduction section of thesis writing. The introduction is the first
section of the study or thesis. The objectives of this study were first, to find
out the tenses used (present, past, and present perfect) in the introduction
section of English master theses by the students of the Postgraduate
Programme of English of the Faculty of Teacher and Education of the
University of Bengkulu. Second, voice forms used in the introduction
section of English master theses by the students of the Postgraduate
Programme of English of the Faculty of Teacher and Education of the
University of Bengkulu. The researcher used a quantitative method to
analyse the data in this research. The numerical data showed and
explained theoretically. An observation checklist was used as the analysis
tool, with the help of a co-rater, to merge the observation data. The results
show first the tense used in the introduction section. It was found that the
present tense is dominantly used in writing an introduction section of
English master theses. The second result is voice forms identification. The
result showed that active voice is the most used in writing the introduction
section, occurring 1030 times, the highest of all data. Meanwhile, passive
voice occurs 285 times. It can be concluded that present tense, past
tense, present perfect tense, and voice form identification are used in
writing an introduction section of English master theses, in which present
tense and active voice are dominantly used. The research's findings will
benefit future scholars looking into grammatical feature analysis or other
relevant areas.
Keywords: grammatical features, introduction section, master theses