This research was conducted to find out the discourse competence of PBSI UMP
students of 2013-2015 in writing research background in their undergraduate
thesis. This is a descriptive research. This research employed language analysis
method which involved three steps, data collection, data analysis, and presentation
of data analysis result. The source of the data in this research was 41
undergraduate theses in 2013-2015 which comes from four areas of study namely
linguistics, literature, language education, and literature education. The result of
this research shows that the students‟ competence in making cohesive and
coherent discourses is very good which is indicated in their ability in using
cohesive and coherence markers with the average score of the theses from
academic year 2013 to 2015, consecutively, are 95.7, 96.4, and 97.1. However,
some incohesive paragraphs can still be found despite the use of some cohesive
markers in those paragraphs. There are also some incoherent paragraphs found in
the theses despite the use of patterns of connections between sentences They are
considered so due to some sentences that are not related to the topic sentence and
some sentences with jumpy ideas. Furthermore, the students‟ competence in
presenting systematic, logic, and harmonious sequence of ideas is good with the
average score of the theses from academic year 2013 to 2015, consecutively, are
79.9, 75.6, and 78.8. The presentation of accurate sequence of ideas are found in 9
out of 41 theses, so there are 32 theses that are still inaccurate in presenting their
sequence of ideas. The inaccuracies are found in the sequence of ideas, connection
between ideas, and emphasis of ideas. The aspects of connection between ideas
and emphasis of ideas have lower scores compared to the aspect of sequence of
ideas.