Rationale for the research
Coherence seems to be a key indicator of the text quality as it deals with the global and local meanings and the deep organizational logic of the text The more coherent the texts are, the higher the text quality achieves In general, evaluating the text coherence is supposed as problematic because coherence has been considered to be a subjective and hazy concept which is hard to learn and teach (Lee, 2002) As Halliday and Hassan (1976) indicated, the distinction between a text and a collection of unrelated sentence is a matter of degree; therefore, the holistic evaluation is quite subjective in measuring text quality because it lacks reliability and validity for not indicating particular strengths and weaknesses of learner texts
However, subjective reader‟s evaluation on text is still a dominant method in evaluating the text in teaching contexts
Nowadays, a number of investigations have been carried out to examine how coherence is achieved in learner texts and to help the teachers make sound judgments on student compositions One major method is to analyze the topic development of the high-rated and low-rated essays by applying the Topical Structure Analysis (TSA) developed by Lautamatii (1978) This method helps to examine the links between the reader‟s evaluation and the topical developments of the text to explicitly state the text features for classifying the text quality Overall, different patterns (topical progressions) of topical structure appear to provide good predictors of student writing quality
In general, this research investigated the relationship between the holistic evaluation and the TSA of the student essays to find out the differences in topical structures and the topical progressions used between low-rated and high-rated essays.
Aims and objectives of the research
The research population is the collection of forty essays written by forth-year students at ULIS, VNU The research aims at investigating the relationship between holistic evaluation and the TSA of the essays by examining thirteen high-rated and thirteen low-rated essays for two main objectives The first objective focuses on the physical features of the essays including the numbers of t-units (the shortest unit consisting of one independent clause together with whatever dependent clauses are attached to it), paragraphs, topical depths as well as the topical structures in the essays The research examines the differences between low-rated and high-rated essays in terms of physical organization and the various combinations of the mood subjects (mood S), the topical subjects (topical S), and the initial sentence element (ISE) of the clauses in the essays in order to identify the contribution of these features to essay quality The second objective examines the relationship between the text quality and the topical progressions used in student essays It focuses on examining the proportions of topical progression types (sequential, parallel, and extended parallel) in two group essays Particularly, it separately investigates the proportions of progressions used in the introductions, the body paragraphs, and the conclusions of essays to have a view on the contribution of these progressions in the essays To sum up, the research aims to reveal the physical features, topical structures and progressions that contribute to the quality of the essays.
Research questions
In order to achieve two main objectives, the research focuses on answering two main following research questions:
Research question 1: How do the physical features in terms of lengths and the topical structures reveal the differences between low-rated and high-rated essays of Vietnamese students?
Research question 2: What is the relationship between holistic evaluation and the topical progressions used in essays of Vietnamese students?
Scope of the research
The research focuses on investigating the English essays written by Vietnamese students Particularly the research explores the essays of the forth year students at ULIS, VNU written in their American Literature course in the year of
2013 These essays are chosen as the primary data for the research because of three reasons Firstly, these essays share many similarities including the same topic which is about Buck‟s conflict in the story “The Call of the Wild” Secondly, these essays are commented and scored by the teacher, and sent back to the students through email, it brings two advantages for the researcher One is the convenience for collecting all the data without difficulty and the other is that the essays had been scored by the teacher; therefore they were an appropriate set of data for searching answers for the research questions.
Methods of the study
The research applies the TSA framework as developed by Lautamatii (1978) to identifying the relationship between clauses in the paragraphs The choice of topical structure as the focus of this study is motivated by the following considerations First, topical structure analysis probes an important aspect of texts, namely the patterns of maintenance and shifts of topics Such patterns contribute considerably to the text coherence, to the identification of what a particular stretch of discourse is about, and, consequently, to the comprehensibility of texts
Therefore, this is an objective method for analyzing the student writing Second, topical structure analysis allows for the quantification of data which makes the study more reliable, because the frequency and percentage of t-units, paragraphs, topical depths, topical structures and topical progression types in student essays are calculated based on the carefully analyzed of essays In summary, using TSA as a tool for analyzing student essays is the most suitable choice for this research.
Significance of the research
In general, the research is highly significant for the teaching and learning of English writing in Vietnam The identification of physical features, topical structures and the dominant topical progression used in essays of Vietnamese students supplies understanding on the essay writing features of Vietnamese students In addition, comparing the topical progressions of highly rated essays and low rated essays has pedagogical implications for teaching students how to write a good essay Teachers can use topical structure analysis to help orient ESL students' writing to the underlying structures that build coherence.
Structural organization of the thesis
The research consists of three main parts, part one: Introduction, part two:
Development, and part three: Conclusion Part one briefly describes the rationale for conducting the research, two objectives of the research and the Topical structure analysis (TSA) method used Part two includes three chapters: Literature review, Research methodology, Findings and Discussions Chapter one focuses on the theoretical background as well as the review of previous research with the similar interest In the theoretical background section, the overview, approaches as well as the measurements of coherence are concerned In addition, it presents the background information of TSA In the review of related literature, there are the reviews of research on the proportions of topical progressions in student essays in different contexts and their results, and of the studies which examined the difference between low-rated and high-rated essays in terms of the use of topical progressions
In chapter 2, research method of the study is in some detail described It introduces the population and sample of the research, the data analysis procedure The third chapter, Findings and Discussions, focuses on answering two main research questions using the results from the data analysis And part three summarizes what has been found in the research, provides some implications as well as suggestions for further research.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Theoretical background of coherence in written texts
“There is little consensus on the matter of an overall definition of coherence” as Grabe and Kaplan (1996: 67) indicated In general, the understanding of coherence develops through the time with the focus from text-based features such as cohesive devices (Halliday and Hassan, 1976) and semantic property of discourse (Van Dijk, 1977) to the reader-based features (Johnson, 1986)
In the traditional approach, linguists including Halliday and Hassan (1976), Van Dijk (1977) and Enkvist (1978) focus on the text-based features to explore text coherence On one hand, Halliday and Hassan (1976) focus on linguistic features of the texts According to them, coherence or texture is the feature of a text, which identifies the text as a total unit A text is considered coherent when the various parts of a paragraph are connected together by cohesive ties On the other hand, focusing on the semantic meaning of the text, Van Dijk (1977) and Enkvist (1978) identified coherence in a text by looking at the semantic relationship between sentences in the text Van Dijk (1977) indicated that coherence may be considered as a “semantic property of discourses, based on the interpretation each individual sentence relative to the interpretation of other sentences” In addition, Enkvist
(1990) also defines coherence as “the quality that makes a text conform to a consistent world picture and is therefore summarizable and interpretable”, and coherence is primarily related to the nature and property of the text
The understanding of coherence widens from text-based into reader-based features by Johnson (1986: 247) who defines coherence in written text is “a complex concept, involving a multitude of reader- and text-based features”
According to Johns (1986: 250), coherence is “a feature internal to text, either in terms of the linking of sentences (cohesion) or as the relationships among propositions in the text (sticking to the point)” Text-based coherence refers to an inherent feature of the text, which has been discussed in the preceding paragraph
Reader-based coherence, in contrast, requires successful interaction between the reader and the text Following Johnson‟s point of view, many linguists also defines coherence in terms of reader-based features
In summary, coherence includes two main sides: text-based and reader based features These sides co-exist and create the writing coherence
Coherence is an abstract concept It is, therefore, defined differently by different linguists In this section, three aspects of coherence including cohesion, genres, and semantic relation are focused to enlighten the scopes in which coherence has been studied
According to Halliday and Hasan (1976), cohesion is the major characteristic of coherence Cohesion occurs where the interpretation of some elements in the discourse is dependent on that of another (Halliday&Hasan, 1976) Cohesion depicts how meaning-based relationship is set up by lexical and syntactic features
These explicit lexical and syntactic features are known as cohesive devices, signaling the relationship in sentences and paragraphs Halliday and Hasan (1976) introduced five different types of cohesive devices in order to provide a guideline for studying and judging the cohesion and coherence of writing: reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction and lexical cohesion They contended that through analyzing the use of cohesive devices, one could evaluate or assess writing quality from the perspective of coherence
However, the cohesive theory proposed by Halliday and Hasan (1976) was challenged by Carrell (1982) and Johns (1986) who argued for the importance of readers‟ background knowledge In other words, both the structure and content of the text and the readers‟ operation on the text should be taken into consideration
This leads to the second approach to coherence which is genre approach
According to Hinkel (2004), coherence is defined as “the organization of discourse with all elements present and fitting together logically” This denotes that a coherent essay consists of an introduction, a thesis statement, rhetorical support, and a conclusion In addition, Kaplan (1987); Ostler (1987); and Connor (1996) have demonstrated that language and writing are cultural phenomena and consequently each language tends to have its own rhetorical conventions which are unique to it In particular, the situation is the same when Vietnamese students write their essays in English On one hand, regarding the structural patterns that would characterize Vietnamese discourse, Vietnamese writings enjoy their own sense of
“literatedness” which Kaplan (1966) has considered as an approach by indirection
On the other hand, Farrel (1997a, 1997b) argues that school literacy in most English countries is a highly specialized discourse that “giving directly to the point” or being linear in its development Therefore, the relevant patterns in Vietnamese writing may be seen as digressive by some English readers When conducting an English essay, Vietnamese students need to pay attention to the rhetorical patterns of English language However, as far as an essay organization is concerned, both English and Vietnamese essays share these three components: introduction, body and conclusion What make the difference are the things included in each part The current study approach to analyze the essay components separately to have deep view on the ways ideas organized in each part
In identifying the coherence in writing, most researchers focus on the semantic relations in the text For example, Beaugrande and Dressler (1981:85) claimed that relevance within the configuration of concepts and relations” Without the continuity, any piece of writing is just plain writing, without making much sense to the reader about the points it makes In addition, Celce-Murcia and Olshtain (2000) stated that the overall coherence of a longer text depends on the coherence within each paragraph or section of the text This textual relationship is partially a result of coherent organization of the propositions and ideas presented in writing
In particular, the study of „topic‟ in discourse becomes a promising branch of research in examining the semantic relation of essays Prague School linguists such as Danes (1974), Firbas, (1974), and Mathesius (1975) have contributed to the analysis of extended texts, emphasizing the role of sentences in the context of whole texts, rather than any individual units of discourse Following the Prague School, Lautamatii (1987) developed TSA to examine the topic development in the discourse Obviously, there are many methods for identifying the semantic relation between sentences in a text However, two most promising methods are Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) and TSA In the following part, brief reviews on these two methods are carried out, and the reasons for choosing TSA as the primary method in this research are stated
1.1.3 Methods for examining coherence in a text
Researchers have proposed various techniques by which teachers can measure coherence Most of these techniques are based either on statistical analysis, such as the LSA proposed by Foltz, Kintsch, and Landauer, (1998), and Lautamatti‟sTSA
Theoretical background of TSA
TSA refers to the analyzing of coherence derived by examining the internal topical structure of the paragraph as reflected by the repetition of key words and phrases In TSA, two important terms are topical structures and topical progressions
Topical structures are the combinations of the mood subject (mood S), topical subject (topical S), and initial sentence element (ISE) of the t-units in the discourse
Firstly, mood S is the structural subject of the clause Its position is before the main verb or auxiliary verb in the clause And topical S is the lexical mood S which is directly related to the discourse topic In structural dummies such as there-sentence or empty-it, the topical subjects are the noun phrases at the predicate, and these structural dummies are non-topical subjects In addition, non-topical subjects are also the lexical mood S which are not directly related to the discourse topic Non- topical linguistic materials include discourse connectives, illocution markers, modality markers, attitude markers, metatextual and commentary markers
Discourse connectives are linguistic items indicating order and logical connectors like consequently, however…Illocution markers are used to make explicit the illocutionary force of the statement concerned such as for example, to illustrate the point Modality markers illustrate the truth value of the information discussed including it seems probably, obviously, somebody suggests, I doubt whether
Attitude markers such as I would like to, it seems futile to… are used to make explicit the writer own attitude Metatextual and commentary markers such as next, we shall discuss, in later chapter, we will attempt to, are used to comment on the discourse itself, language of the text or the organization of the text Finally, ISE refers to the initially placed discourse material in sentence, whatever its form or type It may be the topical S, mood S or non-topical subject
In general, there are five possible combinations of the mood subject, topical subject, and the ISE in a clause, and they are abbreviated as T1, T2, T3, T4, and T5
Type 1 (T1): ISE = mood S = topical S Type 2 (T2): ISE ≠ mood S = topical S Type 3 (T3): ISE = mood S ≠ topical S
Type 4 (T4): ISE = topical S ≠ mood S Type 5 (T5): ISE ≠ mood S ≠ topical S
The clause belongs to T1 type if the ISE, mood S, and topical S coincide One example is the t-unit “The call of the wild (T1) was the best seller book which brought fame to Jack London in 1903” In this t-unit, the noun phrase “The call of the wild” is the ISE, the mood S as well as the topical S of the clause, so the noun phrase “The call of the wild” is bolded and marked (T1) after it The “T2” type is put after the topical S if the ISE is separated from mood and topical S, which coincide The t-unit “In order to live in a wild life, Buck (T2) has an external conflict with Spitz- another sled-dog during their trip to go to Northland” is an example The ISE of the t-unit is the adverbial phrase “In order to live in a wild life”, and the noun phrase “Buck” is both mood S and topical S of the clause The topical structure of the t-unit is marked T3 if ISE and mood S coincide while topical
S separate There are two subtypes in type 3; in one variant, the mood S of the initial main clause is a dummy, with the noun phrase in the predicate representing the topical S, as in the t-unit “it is the moment (T3) that Buck aware of the law of wild life” The other variant, the initial main clause is non-topical subject, while the topical S appears in a following sub-clause For example, it is the t-unit “It seems that Thornton’s Death (T3) releases Buck from the fragment bond with civilization” in one essay in the sample The topical S belongs to T4 if ISE and topical S coincide, while mood S is separate T4 often occurs in the t-unit which consist of the topical S in an initial sub-clause and a cohesive anaphoric pronoun as the mood S in the main clause, the clause “When Buck becomes a sled-dog with a struggle for survival, he (T4) must be used to the law of club and fang day by day, lesson after lesson” is an example The last type, T5 occurs in the clause in which the ISE, mood S, and topical S are all separate For example, the clause “In addition, it is also the moment (T5) that Buck recognizes the wildness, cold, and ruthless in Spitz’s face”, the connective “in addition” is the ISE, empty-it is the mood S, and “the moment” is the topical S In summary, this part has made a brief explanation on the topical structures and its types
In general, discourse topic is the main idea discussed in the whole essay or text Subtopics are the subordinate ideas to support for the discourse topic, and they are directly related to the discourse topic The hierarchically arrangement of subtopics expresses the development of ideas to contribute to the discourse topic
According to Lautamatii (1978), the way the written sentences in discourse relate to the discourse topic and its subtopics is called topical development of discourse
Topical progressions which show the topical development is the sequence of developing one sub-topic, adding new information about it in the predicate of that subtopic, and then proceeding to develop another sub-topic in order to contribute to the development of the discourse topic In general, Lautimatti (Ibid.) proposed three types of topical progressions including parallel (PP), sequential (SP), and extended parallel (EPP) PP consists of two consecutive clauses with the same topical subject
The use of PP is perceived by the readers as repetition of the same topics in the essay and reinforcement of the ideas, but, if used over-extensively and at the expense of EPP, may produce the impression of redundancy The second type is SP, in which the topic of the next sentence is the comment of the previous sentence, or a new different topic And, the use of SP is perceived by the readers as development of individual topic by adding details to an idea If used sensibly and in good balance with other types of progression, it may add to an overall good quality, whereas too much development for a sentence topic may distract the readers from the main ideas Thirdly, the topic in EPP is the same as the topic of the previous sentence but is interrupted by some SP The use of EPP is perceived by the readers as good focus and explicitness of expression Absence or sparse use of EPP may produce an overall impression of an unfocused text which lack global meaning
In this research, three types of progressions in the paragraphs of the essays were identified using the TSA method In addition, based on research of Schneider and Connor (1991), three subtypes of SPs also examined for further research on the differences between low-rated and high-rated essays.
Review of the related studies
In general, TSA is considered as an objective method to check coherence and proportions of topical progression in students‟ texts (Gao,2012; Almaden, 2006;
Barabas&Jumao-a, 2009; Carreon, 2006; Phuwichit (2004), Simpson, 2000;
Lautamatti, 1987; Witte &Faigley, 1981) In this part, the research on how TSA identified the proportions of topical progressions in student texts as well as the use of TSA as a tool for classification between low-rated and high-rated essays would be reviewed
1.3.1 The findings of prominent studies
This section briefly presents the findings of previous studies that investigated the relationship between the progressions of topical structure and the assessors' judgments of essay‟s quality The two most prominent studies are the studies of Schneider and Connor (1991) and Witte (1983a, 1983b) In general, both of the research indicated that there are significant differences between the low-rated and high-rated essays in the frequency of the three topical progressions However, the findings of two studies on the progressions which distinguish between low-rated and high-rated essays are contradictory While Witte found that low-rated essays contained more SPs than high-rated essays, Schneider and Connor (Ibid.) found that highly rated essays contained a high proportion of coherence-building SPs and an EPP that helps return the essay to its main theme
According to Schneider and Connor (Ibid.), the differences in criteria for coding progressions led to the differences in the findings in the studies of Schneider and Connor (1991) and Witte (1983a, 1983b) And Schneider and Connor (1991:422) believed that "Not all sequential topics contribute equally to the coherence of a text" It is clear that “directly related” SP which the topic of a sentence is related to the comment of the previous sentence and indirectly related
SP which the topic of the new sentence is partly related to the comment of the previous sentence (indirectly related topics) build coherence in the essays And the subtopics which are not directly related to the discourse topic (unrelated SPs) are not likely to contribute to create coherence in the paragraphs Therefore, deep investigations to the SP by examining three subtypes of SP contribute to the coherence of the essays especially in introductory and concluding parts
Besides the research of Schneider and Connor (1991) and Witte (1983a, 1983b), there are other research which focused on searching the differences between low-rated and high-rated writings such as Connor and Farmer (1990), Makinen (1992), Burneikaite&Zabiliute (2003)Liangprayoon, Chaya&Thep- ackraphong (2013)
As Connor and Farmer (1990) indicated, if a writer logically makes use of SP and make good balance with the other types of topical progression, it may add to the overall good quality Additionally, essays are perceived as better quality and particularly more coherent when the use of the PP is in good balance with the use of EPP (Burneikaite&Zabiliute, 2003) And the texts are considered as poor quality essays when PP is over-extensive and EPP is insufficient
Moreover, by applying TSA to short compositions written in English, Makinen (1992) concluded that good writers have the ability to develop the topics in their compositions more evenly across several topic levels than mid-quality writers and especially the poor writers The reverse is true of the lowest topical depths Good writers tend to return to higher topic levels at the end of their compositions more often than the writers in the other categories In addition, the research on the effectiveness of TSA instruction of Liangprayoon, Chaya&Thep- ackraphong (2013) found that the proportions of topical progressions used in the highly-rated essays were not different from those used in the low-rated ones
Further, both successful and less successful students employed the SP the most in the essays.
Summary
This chapter focuses on theoretical background and literature review of the research The theoretical background discusses the term coherence and the TSA framework to approach to analyze the texts On one hand, text coherence is expressed through text quality based on reader‟s evaluation On the other hand, TSA includes the analysis of topical structures and topical progressions Therefore, this research examines the relationship between reader‟s evaluation and TSA of the essays Through the literature review, there are many differences in the level of topical depths, the proportions of topical progressions, and the balance between topical progressions to the level of coherence in an essay, so this research aims to identify the differences between low-rated and high-rated essays by using TSA.
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Research methodology
The two research questions raised on pages are repeated here for exploration:
Research question 1: How do the physical features in terms of lengths and the topical structures reveal the differences between low-rated and high-rated essays of Vietnamese students?
Research question 2: What is the relationship between holistic evaluation and the topical progressions used in essays of Vietnamese students?
The research approach is quantitative, because it is an objective approach to achieve the research aim For the first research question, quantitative approach helps to identify the physical lengths and topical structures in essays written by Vietnamese students After analyzing the student essays, the numerical data including the numbers of t-units, paragraphs, topical depths, the topical structures and topical progressions of the paragraphs are collected for findings and discussions In particular, these data are classified into low-rated and high-rated groups for comparing and contrasting After that the standard deviation of the numerical statistics are counted to examine the tendency of these features in student essays For research question two, the topical progressions of each group are identified, counted, and then compared to explore the differences between the two groups by constructing statistical models and figures In summary, this study bases on the statistics to investigate the differences between low-rated and high-rated essays
2.1.3 Principles/Criteria for intended data collection and data analysis
The research population is the collection of 40 essays from two classes E11QH2009 and E12QH2009 in ULIS, VNU These essays were written in their 8 th semester in their Literature in English course in the year of 2013
These essays are taken as the primary data for the research for two reasons
Firstly, all these essays are written to complete the task of writing a 400 word essay about Buck‟s conflict in the story “The Call of the Wild” Therefore, all these essays will show the way each student organized their ideas to develop the discourse topic Secondly, student essays in each class were collected into a folder by the class monitor, and essay collections of two classes were sent to their teacher by email for scoring Then the teacher sent the results back to the students through email too It brings two advantages for the researcher One is the convenience for collecting all the data without difficulty and the other is that the essays were scored by the teacher; therefore it is an appropriate set of data for searching findings for the research questions.
Research methods
The choice of TSA as the research focus is motivated by the following considerations First, TSA probes an important aspect of texts, namely the patterns of maintenance and shifts of topics Such patterns contribute considerably to the coherence of texts, to the identification of what a particular stretch of discourse is about, and, consequently, to the comprehensibility of texts Therefore, this is an objective method for analyzing the student writing Second, TSA allows for the quantification of data which makes the study more reliable In summary, using TSA as a tool for analyzing student essays is carefully considered for the research purposes
The data are essays collected from the student written products of two classes at ULIS, VNU They include the essay final drafts, and all of these written products were rated by their lecturer of Literature in English The rater is lecture Lê Thành Trung who has great knowledge on English in general and on American Literature in particular
In the population of forty essays, twenty-six essays consisting of thirteen high- rated and thirteen low-rated ones are taken as a primary source for data analysis In the following part, I would explain how the samples of the research are selected
For the research objectives, it is necessary to take the equal numbers of high-rated and low-rated essays By having a glance to the essay score description (Table 1), it could be seen that half the essays in population are the essays with the scores of A and A-, the other are the essays of A+, B+, B, B-, C+, D-, and F number Percent
While the total of A+ and A essays is 13 essays and the number of low-rated essays (B, B-, C+, D-, F) is 14 essays Therefore, to have a good balance of low- rated and high-rate essays for analysis, one essay mark B is taken out Therefore, two groups are selected, one group contains thirteen high-rated essays including two A+ and eleven A essays, and the other group is made up by thirteen low-rated essays including six F, three D-, one C+, two B-, and one B essays
In summary, the numbers of essays which are chosen for analyzing the difference between low-rated and high-rated essays in this research are thirteen good quality and thirteen low quality essays
This research follows the coding guidelines for TSA proposed by Schneider and Connor (1990) (See in the Appendix 1, page II) to investigate the essays To analyze the essays, four steps are implemented The first step is to divide the essays into t-units The second step is to identify and mark all the topical subjects in the essays, and the third step is to define the topical structures of the topics in the clauses The last step is to construct a diagram corresponding to the topical structure of the essay to identify the topical progressions of the clauses in the essays
The following examples will illustrate the way 26 essays are analyzed The examples are two first paragraphs of the essay written by a Vietnamese student
Identifying t-units and topical subjects in the essays
In general, the length of the essays will be measured in terms of t-units In other words, t-unit can be defined as the shortest unit which a sentence can be reduced to, and consisting of one independent clause together with whatever dependent clauses are attached to it Compound and compound-complex sentences which consists of two clauses connecting by the conjunctions and, or, but, for, nor, yet would be viewed as containing two t-units Predicates that share the same subject are taken as one unit with the subject omitted The first step in conducting TSA is to number the clauses in the paragraph As in the examples, the first paragraph consists of three clauses, and they were numbered from 1 to 3
(1) The call of the wild (T1) was the best seller book which brought fame to Jack London in
1903 (2) The book (T1) tells a trip of a dog in his life going through a lot of happiness, hardships and challenges (3) When Buck becomes a sled-dog with a struggle for survival, he (T4) must be used to the law of club and fang day by day, lesson after lesson
And the second paragraph has 10 clauses, and they continue to be marked from 4 to 13 at the beginning of the clause
(4) In order to live in a wild life, Buck (T2) has an external conflict with Spitz- another sled-dog during their trip to go to Northland (5) The first reason (T1) leads to conflict is when Buck saw the violent fight between Curly and a husky dog, (6) it is the moment (T3) that Buck aware of the law of wild life: you must be a winner or you must die (7) In addition, it is also the moment (T5) that Buck recognizes the wildness, cold, and ruthless in Spitz‟s face- “ Spitz run out his scarlet tongue in a way he had of laughing” (8) and Buck (T2) hate him with “bitter and deathless hatred” (Source) (9) The second cause (T1) is that Spitz is very domineering; (10) he (T1) always “growled sharp reproof now and again or cunningly threw his weight in the traces to jerk Buck into the way he should go” (11) The next and the most crucial reason (T1) leads to the long fight between Buck and Spitz is that his nest was occupied by Spitz after he had a meal (12) and “till now, Buck (T2) had avoided trouble with his enemy, (13) but this (T2) was too much”
Identify the topical structures of the clauses in the essays
The second step is to identify the topical structures or the combinations of ISE, mood S, and topical S of the t-units in the paragraphs The ISE, topical S and mood subject of each t-unit in the paragraphs are identified and then the topical structure of each clause are defined by adding T1, T2, T3, T4 or T5 after the bolded topical S of that t-unit Following are the examples of two paragraphs above after they are analyzed
(1) The call of the wild (T1) was the best seller book which brought fame to Jack London in 1903
(2) The book (T1) tells a trip of a dog in his life going through a lot of happiness, hardships and challenges (3) When Buck becomes a sled-dog with a struggle for survival, he (T4) must be used to the law of club and fang day by day, lesson after lesson.
(4) In order to live in a wild life, Buck (T2) has an external conflict with Spitz- another sled- dog during their trip to go to Northland (5) The first reason (T1) leads to conflict is when Buck saw the violent fight between Curly and a husky dog, (6) it is the moment (T3) that Buck aware of the law of wild life: you must be a winner or you must die (7) In addition, it is also the moment (T5) that Buck recognizes the wildness, cold, and ruthless in Spitz‟s face- “ Spitz run out his scarlet tongue in a way he had of laughing” (8) and Buck (T2) hate him with “bitter and deathless hatred”
(Source) (9) The second cause (T1) is that Spitz is very domineering; (10) he (T1) always
“growled sharp reproof now and again or cunningly threw his weight in the traces to jerk Buck into the way he should go” (11) The next and the most crucial reason (T1) leads to the long fight between Buck and Spitz is that his nest was occupied by Spitz after he had a meal (12) and “till now, Buck (T2) had avoided trouble with his enemy, (13) but this (T2) was too much”
After all the topical structures of the clauses are identified, the frequency and proportions of T1, T2, T3, T4, and T5 are calculated for further analysis
Identifying the topical depth of the subtopics in the essay
Topical depth is the hierarchy of the subtopics in the student essays In another words, the topical depth shows the order of the topical subjects appearing from the beginning to the end of the essay
Summary
In this chapter, I have presented the research design and methodology As can be seen the research approach is the quantitative analysis of the student essays The research applies TSA method for identifying the physical features and topic development of essay paragraphs written by Vietnamese students In the population of forty essays of two classes E11QH2009 and E12QH2009 written in their Literature in English course in the year of 2013, thirteen high-rated and thirteen low-rated essays are selected to examine the physical features and the portions of the topical progressions of the introductory, body and concluding parts of two groups.
FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS
The physical features of essays
Overall, the physical features of the essays revealed the difference between low quality and high quality writings
Table 3 below illustrates the mean (the average value of t-units per an essay), mode (the most frequently occurred value of t-units), and the median (the middle value of t-units) of the numbers of t-units, paragraphs and topical depths in the essays From the statistics in table 3, the physical difference between low-rated and high-rated essays did not show in the numbers of paragraphs per essay but in the numbers of t-units and sub-topics In terms of numbers of paragraphs, most of high- rated and low-rated essays contained four paragraphs, which were one introductory paragraph, two body paragraphs and one concluding paragraph In general, these essays had the same rhetoric pattern which was the general way discourse topic is developed
T-units paragraph topical depth low-rated high-rated low-rated high-rated low-rated high-rated
Table 2: The mean, mode, median of the numbers of T-units, paragraphs, and topical depths of low-rated and high-rated essays
In contrast, the two groups of essays differed from each other in terms of t-unit numbers per essay, and the level of topical depths Overall, the low quality essays contained more t-units and sub-topics than the high quality essays In the analysis of t-units, the value of mean, mode, and median were about 29 It meant that low quality essays consisted of about 29 t-units in an essay However, the mean, mode, and median of high-rated essays were 25, 23, and 24 respectively It showed that the numbers of clauses in high quality essays was just less than 25 which were fewer than low-rated essays In topical depth‟s analysis, the difference between the average number of topics in low-rated and high-rated was not large, about two topics, but they significantly differed in terms of range which was the distance between the highest and lowest numbers of topics per essay While the range of low-rated essays was 10, the high-rated essay range was just 5 It meant there was a large distance in topical depths of the low-rated essays (10 topics)
In summary, high-rated essays and low rated essays were different from each other in terms of t-units and topical depths
The numbers of t-units in the whole essays, and in different parts of the essays
In previous part, general finding on the difference between high and low rated essays was found; this part examines the difference between low-rated and high-rated essays in terms of the numbers of t-units in different parts of the essays Table 2 describes the mean, mode, and median of the clause numbers in introductory, body and concluding paragraphs of thirteen high-rated and thirteen low-rated essays
Introduction parts Body paragraphs Concluding paragraphs
High-rated low-rated High-rated low-rated High-rated low-rated mean 2.8 4 8.5 9.5 2.5 3.5 mode 3 3 8 10 2 3 median 3 4 8 9 2 3
Table 3: The variation of the frequency of T-units in introductory, body and concluding paragraphs of essays
From table 2, it can be seen that low-rated essays contain more clauses than high-rated essays in all three parts of the essays The most significant difference is in the numbers of clauses in introductory parts In these paragraphs, the mean of the number of clauses is 2.8 in high-rated essays and 4 in low-rated essays, which indicates that the average number of t-units per introductory paragraph in thirteen high-rated essays is nearly 3 t-units and 4 t-units in the introductions of low-rated essays In addition, the mode and the median in high-rated essays are 3, which indicate that most of the essays consist of three t-units in the introductory paragraph In low-rated essays, the mode and the median are 3 and 4 respectively, which indicate that there are more than half of the low-rated essays consisting more than 4 t-units per introductory paragraph
In summary, the length of introductory paragraphs significantly contributes to classify the quality of two groups
3.1.1.2 Findings on the topical structures of clauses
Figure 1: The topical structures of clauses in low-rated and high-rated essays
The figure describes the topical structures of clauses in thirteen high-rated and thirteen low-rated essays written by Vietnamese students The statistics indicates that there is no significant difference between two groups in terms of topical structures In both groups, topical structure type 1 (T1), and topical structure type 2 (T2) are dominant in student essays Topical structure type 1, which the ISE, mood subject, and topical subject of most clauses coincide, is slightly greater in high quality essays than in low quality ones with the proportion of 43.1% and 40.3% respectively Topical structure type 2, which topical subject and mood subject coincide while ISE is separate is greater in low quality essays (43.5%) than in high quality ones (41.8%) Topical structure type 3, which ISE and mood subject
T1T2T3T4T5 coincide while topical subject is separate, type 4, which ISE and topical structure coincide while mood subject is different, and type 5, which ISE, topical subject and mood subject are all separate, account for a small portion of the topical structures used
In summary, the topical structures did not reflect the difference between low- rated and high-rated essays
3.1.2 Discussion on the physical features of essays (Research question 1) 3.1.2.1 Numbers of t-units, paragraphs, and sub-topics
From the finding‟s part, it can be concluded that physical differences distinguish between low-rated and high-rated essays
In terms of paragraphs, the high-rated and high-rated essays are similar in the numbers of paragraphs per essay, which indicates that they have the same rhetorical pattern, which included four paragraphs, one introduction, two body paragraphs and one concluding paragraph The introductory paragraph introduces the discourse topic which is the conflict in the novel “The call of the wild” The first body paragraph describes the conflict in the novel, the second body paragraph show how the conflict is solved The last paragraph concludes what has been discussed in the body paragraphs In short, there is no difference in rhetorical pattern of the low quality and high quality essays
In terms of t-units, low-rated essays contain more t-units than high-rated essays At low-rated essays, t-units are often short, and the ideas are expressed by many clauses Although the requirement of the topic is to write an essay in 400 words, most of the low-rated ones exceed the required word number In this part, the discussion focuses on the difference between two groups of essay quality in the numbers of t-units in three main parts: introduction, body paragraphs and conclusion As far as an essay organization is concerned, both English and Vietnamese essays share these three components: introduction, body and conclusion What make the difference are the things included in each part The
Vietnamese indirect ways of expressing ideas decrease the level of coherence of the essays, especially in introductory and concluding paragraphs
The low-rated essays also contain more sub-topics than high-rated ones The students who wrote high quality essays introduced fewer new subtopics in their essays than did the low proficiency group High-rated essays, writers have the ability to develop the topics in their compositions more evenly cross several topic levels than writers of low quality essays Good writer tend to return to higher topic level at the end of the composition rather than low rated essays
3.1.2.2 The topical structures of t-units in essays
Overall, the tendency in the uses of topical structures which indicates the realization of the ISE, mood S and the topical S of the clauses in high-rated essays is similar in low-rated ones Two groups mainly use the topical structure type 1(T1) which the ISE, the mood S and the topical S coincide and topical type 2 (T2) which the ISE is separate while mood S and topical S coincide to develop the ideas in the clauses The large proportion in the use of topical structure type 1 suggests that students often represent their ideas in a direct way by starting the clause with the topical subjects Especially, the topical structure type 1 often uses in the first clause of a paragraph in introduction and body paragraphs.
Proportions of topical progressions in essays
This part aims at investigating the relationship between holistic evaluation and the topical progression used in essays written by Vietnamese students This part focuses on comparing and contrasting between low-rated and high-rated essays in terms of the topical progression occurrences in the essay paragraphs In particular, topical progression portions of introductions, body paragraphs, and conclusions of two groups are examined to have a deeper view on the contribution of each type of progression on the quality of the essays
3.2.1 Findings on the difference between two groups of essays 3.2.1.1 Topical progressions used in all essay paragraphs
Comparing and contrasting the progression portions of all paragraphs
In general, there were significant differences in the proportions of each type of progressions between high-scored and low-scored essays
Figure 2: The difference on the portions of each type of topical progression in Low-rated and high-rated essays
Figure 2 indicates the proportions of different progression types in two groups of essays According to Figure 2, the proportions of topical progressions used in the highly-rated essays are different from those used in the low-rated ones; especially these two groups differ in the proportion of SP and PP
In general, SP are dominant in both high-rated and low-rated essays, following by the PP and EPP respectively Portion of SP in high-rated essays is greater than in low-rated ones SP accounts for 58.3% in high-rated essays, and 43.9% in low-rated ones The proportions of EPP in two groups are quite similar with 13.9% in high- rated essays and 12.8% in low-rated ones The most significant difference in two groups is in the proportions of PP The low-rated essays contain more PP(s) than the high-rated essays While the portion of PP in low-scored essays is 38.3%, the portion in high-scored was 27.8%
In summary, the difference in the proportions of SP and PP makes the difference in the essay quality The high-rated essays contain more SP and less PP(s) than low-rated essays
Comparing and contrasting the topical portions of body paragraphs
Obviously, different proportions of different type of topical progression found in two groups of high-rated and low-rated essays However, it is important to note that each part of the essays including introductory, developing and concluding paragraphs has specific roles in the essays, and their roles partly affect the use of topical progressions in their paragraphs After describing the features of all essay paragraphs, this part continued to reveal the statistic on the differences between two groups in body paragraphs The finding on developing paragraphs of essays was shown in this part, because the topical progressions of body paragraphs contributed to most of the progressions of the whole essays
Figure 3 indicates the proportions of types of progressions in the development paragraphs of student essays Overall, differences between low-rated and high-rated essays in the body parts are the same as the whole essays Figure 3: The proportions of different types of progression in the body paragraphs of two groups of essays
Like the tendency of the progressions in all paragraphs in the essays, the features of body paragraphs include the high proportion of SP (57%) in high-rated essays and small proportions of PP (27%) and EPP (16%) In contrast, low quality essays contain a large proportion of PP (41.8%) while SP is 43.4%.In addition, there are balanced uses of PP and EPP in high-rated essays Balanced uses meant the gap between percentages of PP and EPP is small, as in the figure the ratio of PP and EPP is just 27/16, while it is 41.8/14.8 in low rated essays
Sequential high-rated essays Low-rated essays
In summary, the portion of PP is significantly different between the body paragraphs in low-rated and high-rated essays
3.2.1.2 Topical progressions in introductions and conclusions
This section makes a deep comparison on the percentage of progressions in introductions and conclusions of the two groups Overall, the difference of introductory and concluding parts between low-rated and high-rated essays do not expose in the proportion of progressions, because there is a slightly difference in the uses of progression in these parts However, the use of different subtypes of SP considerably diverged the introductions of high quality essays from those of low quality one
Topical progressions used in introductory parts of the essays
Figure 4: The proportions of different types of progression in the introductions of two groups of essays
Figure 4 describes the percentage of topical progression types in the introductory parts of essays
Overall, the good-essay introductions have the same tendency in the use of progressions in all paragraphs They contain more SP, and less PP than the bad essays
Particularly, there is no use of EPP in the introductory paragraphs in high- rated essays.Similar to the results of the previous parts, the most frequently used progression in the introductions is the SP However, there are three subtypes of SP (Schneider and Conner, 1990), it is necessary to have a look at how these three subtypes may help distinguish between low and high quality essays
S high-rated essays Low-rated essays
Table 4 illustrates the uses of three subtypes of SP in introductory paragraphs of two group essays
According to statistics in Table 4, there is a significant difference in the percentage of three subtypes of SP in the introductions
Introduction low- rated high- rated low- rated high- rated
Table 4: The subtypes of sequential in the introductions
In general, the frequencies of SP in low-rated and high-rated essays are nearly the same, 21 and 22 respectively It could be seen that the high-rated essays contain a great proportion of SP (d) - 47,4% and a small proportion of SP (u)-10.5% The low-rated essays are contradictory with small percentage of SP (d) (9.5%) and large proportion of SP (u) (52.4%)
In summary, the difference in the introduction parts of low quality and high quality essays was not dependent on proportions of three main types of progressions but on the percentage of three subtypes of SP The good essays contained more SP (d) and less SP (u) in the introductory parts than in those of the low-rated ones
Topical progressions used in concluding parts of the essays
Figure 5: The proportions of different progression types in the concluding paragraphs
Figure 5 describes the portions of progressions in the concluding parts of essays In general, there is a slightly difference in the progression proportions in low-rated and high-rated essays, compared to the proportions of progressions in all essay paragraphs
Both groups of essays mainly use SP and PP at the last paragraph of the essays However, the percentage of SP in low-rated essays is greater than high-rated
S high-rated essays Low-rated essays essays, and PP is greater in high-rated essays This feature is different from the tendency of topical progression of the whole essays
Like the above part, the features of subtypes of SP in conclusions are also examined
Table 5 illustrates the frequency three subtypes of SP in the concluding parts of the Vietnamese student essays Overall, low-rated essays contain more SP than low-rated ones frequency Conclusion low- rated high- rated
Table 5: The subtypes of S in conclusions
The conclusion of low-quality and high-quality essays have the same tendency, contain more SP (u) - (11/14 in low-rated essays and 4/8 in high rated ones), which is different from the introductory paragraphs