Students’ Writing Background of Problem of Thesis Proposal at English Department of Universitas Muslim Nusantara Al-Washliyah Medan: An Analysis of Rhetorical Structure and Students’ Ability

Writing is one of the skills that have to be learned by students. However, writing the background of the problems becomes a strenuous task for the students, especially at the tertiary level. Studies found that students had difficulties in writing the background of the thesis proposal. This research aims to find out the moves, metadiscourse function in relation moves, and the students' ability in writing the background of a thesis proposal at the English Department of Universitas Muslim Nusantara Al-Washliyah Medan in the academic year 2017/2018. This research is descriptive method. The data were twenty-one backgrounds of the thesis proposal. The results show that Move 1 (establishing a research territory), Move 2 (establishing a niche), and Move 3 (occupying a niche) were found in the background of the problems of the students' thesis proposal. However, students did not complete all steps of rhetorical structure while the optional steps dominantly found compared to obligatory steps. Metadiscourse types related to the moves used are transition, attitude markers, evidentials, boosters, hedges, frame markers, code glosses and enggagement markers. In terms of functions of metadiscourse in relation to moves, the resources of attitude markers, boosters, evidential, code glosses, and hedges characterized Move 1. Then, the resources code glosses, boosters, endophoric markers, and hedges characterized Move 2 while metadiscourse of self-mention, frame markers, endhoporic markers and engagement markers characterized Move 3. Lastly, this research found that the students' ability to compose the background of the thesis proposal was fair category with mean score 58.