A Topical Structure Analysis To Create Coherence In English Essays Of Fourth Year Students At English Department At Vietnam National University, University Of Language And International Studies.pdf

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST GRADUATE STUDIES NGUYỄN THỊ HỒNG A TOPICAL STRUCTURE ANALYSIS TO CREATE COHERENCE IN ENGLISH ESSAYS[.]

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES NGUYỄN THỊ HỒNG A TOPICAL STRUCTURE ANALYSIS TO CREATE COHERENCE IN ENGLISH ESSAYS OF FOURTH YEAR STUDENTS AT ENGLISH DEPARTMENT AT VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES (Phân tích cấu trúc chủ đề để tạo liên kết mạch lạc luận tiếng Anh sinh viên năm khoa Anh, trường đại học Ngoại Ngữ, đại học Quốc Gia Hà Nội) M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 60220201 HANOI- 2016 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES NGUYỄN THỊ HỒNG A TOPICAL STRUCTURE ANALYSIS TO CREATE COHERENCE IN ENGLISH ESSAYS OF FOURTH YEAR STUDENTS AT ENGLISH DEPARTMENT AT VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES (Phân tích cấu trúc chủ đề để tạo liên kết mạch lạc luận tiếng Anh sinh viên năm khoa Anh, trường đại học Ngoại Ngữ, đại học Quốc Gia Hà Nội) M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 60220201 Supervisor : Professor Hoàng Văn Vân HANOI- 2016 DECLARATION I, the undersigned, hereby certify my authority of the study project report entitled A TOPICAL STRUCTURE ANALYSIS TO CREATE COHERENCE IN ENGLISH ESSAYS OF FOURTH YEAR STUDENTS AT ENGLISH DEPARTMENT AT VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master in English Linguistics Except where the reference is indicated, no other person‟s work has been used without due acknowledgement in the text of the thesis Moreover, I hereby declare that all the essays which have been used as the primary source for the research has been allowed to be investigated by the students who wrote the essays and the teacher who rated the essays and all these essays haven‟t been used in any preceding research Hanoi, 2016 Nguyễn Thị Hồng i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis could not have been completed without the help and support from a number of people First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Professor Hoàng Văn Vân, my supervisor, who has patiently and constantly supported me through the stages of the study, and whose stimulating ideas, expertise, and suggestions have inspired me greatly through my growth as an academic researcher Secondly, I would like to give my deep thank to Mr Lê Thành A (the pseudonym name of the lecturer), the lecturer of Literature in English in Vietnam National University, University of Language and International Studies, and he is the rater of the essays which I used as primary source of data for my research Last but not least, I am greatly indebted to my family, my friends for the sacrifice they have devoted to the fulfillment of this academic work ii ABSTRACT The present paper sets out to investigate English essays of Vietnamese learners using the Topical structure analysis (TSA) developed by Lautamatii (1978) In the population of forty essays written by forth year students at ULIS, VNU, twenty-six essays including thirteen high-rated and thirteen low-rated ones were taken out for two objectives The first objective is to compare and contrast the physical features of two groups and the topical structures The second objective is to establish a possible relationship between the essay holistic evaluation and the type of topical progressions used Data analysis has revealed the moderately physical differences between two groups in terms of t-units, topical depths, but no significant difference could be found in the numbers of paragraphs and topical structures In addition, findings also indicated that there was significant difference in the progression proportions used in two groups, especially in parallel progression in body paragraph and the subtypes of sequential progression in introductions and conclusions iii TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii ABSTRACT iii TABLE OF CONTENTS iv LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES viii INTRODUCTION .1 Rationale for the research Aims and objectives of the research Research questions Scope of the research Methods of the study Significance of the research Structural organization of the thesis DEVELOPMENT .5 CHAPTER - LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 Theoretical background of coherence in written texts .5 1.1.1 Overview of coherence 1.1.2 Approaches to coherence 1.1.2.1 Cohesion 1.1.2.2 Genre 1.1.2.3 Semantic relation 1.1.3 Methods for examining coherence in a text 1.1.3.1 Latent semantic analysis 1.1.3.2 Topical structure analysis (TSA) 1.2 Theoretical background of TSA 1.2.1 Topical Structures 10 1.2.2 Topical progressions 11 iv 1.3 Review of the related studies 13 1.3.1 The findings of prominent studies 13 1.3.2 The findings of other research 14 1.4 Summary 15 CHAPTER – RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 16 2.1 Research methodology .16 2.1.1 Restatement of research questions 16 2.1.2 Research approach 16 2.1.3 Principles/Criteria for intended data collection and data analysis 17 2.2 Research methods .17 2.2.1 Topical Structure Analysis method 17 2.2.2 Data collection techniques 18 2.2.3 Data analysis procedure 19 2.3 Summary 23 CHAPTER - FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS 24 3.1 The physical features of essays 24 3.1.1 Findings on the essay physical features 24 3.1.1.1 Numbers of essay T-units, paragraphs and sub-topics 24 3.1.1.2 Findings on the topical structures of clauses 26 3.1.2 Discussion on the physical features of essays (Research question 1) 27 3.1.2.1 Numbers of t-units, paragraphs, and sub-topics 27 3.1.2.2 The topical structures of t-units in essays 28 3.2 Proportions of topical progressions in essays 28 3.2.1 Findings on the difference between low-rated and high-rated essays 29 3.2.1.1 Topical progressions used in all essay paragraphs 29 3.2.1.2 Topical progressions in introductions and conclusions 31 3.2.2 Discussion on the uses of topical progressions 33 3.2.2.1 Topical progressions in all essay paragraphs and body paragraphs 33 3.2.2.2 Topical progressions in introductions and conclusions 36 v CONCLUSION 41 REFERENCE 44 APPENDICES……………………………………………………………… I vi ABBREVIATIONS LSA: latent semantic analysis TSA: topical structure analysis Topical S: topical subject Mood S: mood subject ISE: initial sentence element SP(s): sequential progression(s) SP(d): directly related sequential progression SP(i): indirectly related sequential progression SP(u): unrelated sequential progression PP(s): parallel progression(s) EPP(s): extended parallel progression(s) vii LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Table 1: Essays‟ score description 18 Table 2: The mean, mode, median of the numbers of T-units, paragraphs, and topical depths of low-rated and highrated essays 24 Table 3: The variation of the frequency of T-units in introductory, body and concluding paragraphs of essays 25 Table 4: The uses of three subtypes of SP in introductions 32 Table 5: The subtypes of sequential in the conclusions 33 Figure 1: The topical structures of clauses in low-rated and highrated essays 26 Figure 2: The difference on the portions of each type of topical progression in low-rated and high-rated essays 29 Figure 3: The proportions of different types of progression in the body paragraphs of two groups of essays 30 Figure 4: The proportions of different types of progression in the introductory paragraphs 31 Figure 5: The proportions of different progression types in the concluding paragraphs 32 viii 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 In order to identify the topical depths of the t-units in the paragraphs, all the topical Ss of the t-units are charted into a diagram In the diagram, the topical depth of the topical subjects in the essays are numbered from (the highest subtopic - the first topical subject appearing in the essay) and increase if there is one more subtopic appear (the lower ones) When the next subtopic is the same as the previous one, that subtopic comes back to the topical depth of the previous subtopic No 3 The call of the wild The book Buck 10 11 12 13 Buck Topical depth TD Paragraph The first reason The moment The moment Buck Paragraph The second cause He The next and the most crucial reason Buck This 1 2 4 The arrangement of these subtopics in the diagram will be discussed clearly in this paragraph Having a look at paragraph 1, the first and the second t-units have the same topical subject (the call of the wild and the book-having the same referent), these subtopics are in the same topical depth (number 1), and the progression used in these t-units is parallel In the t-units (2) and (3), the topical subject of the second t-unit (the book) is different from the topical subject of the 21 second t-unit (Buck), the second t-unit is in the higher topical depth than the third one, and the third subtopic is in the topical depth (number 2) In addition, the change of topical depth is a sign to identify the topical progressions of t-units When two or more consecutive t-units are in the same topical depth (1) and (2), (6) and (7), they belong to parallel progression When the topical subject moves from higher topical depth to the lower one as in t-units (4) and (5), (5) and (6), (8) and (9), (9) and (10), (11) and (12), the development of these t-units belong to sequential progression When the topical subjects of the t-unit moves from higher topical depth to lower one and then come back to the higher one as from t-unit (4) to (8), and from (8) to (12), the progression of these t-units is extended parallel progression Identify the topical progressions of the topical subjects in the essay paragraphs After the topical Ss are charted, the topical progressions of each paragraph are counted Sequential topics are indented progressively A topic with EPP is lined up under the parallel topic to which it refers When a chart is made to show the topical structure of a text, the progressive indenting represents topical depth No 1 10 11 12 13 Topical depth The call of the wild The book Buck TD Paragraph Buck The first reason The moment The moment Paragraph Buck The second cause He The next and the most crucial reason Buck This 1 2 4 From the diagram, it can be seen that paragraph one above contains one PP (from clause 1to 2), and one SP (from clause to 3) Paragraph two is more 22 complicated, it consists of one PP (from clause to 7), five SPs (from clause to 5, to 6, to 9, to 10, and 12 to 13), and three EPPs (from clause to 8, to 12, and to 11) After the topical progressions of all paragraphs are identified, the numbers of PP, SP, and EPP are counted for further study 2.3 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 23 CHAPTER - FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS 3.1 The physical features of essays 3.1.1 Findings on the essay physical features 3.1.1.1 Numbers of essay t-units, paragraphs and sub-topics Overall, the physical features of the essays revealed the difference between low quality and high quality writings Table 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 highrated 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 Total MEAN MODE MEDIAN RANGE T-units low-rated 325 29.5 29 29 high-rated 395 25 23 24 paragraph low-rated high-rated 4.5 4.4 4 4 topical depth low-rated high-rated 11.4 10 11 10 8.9 8 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 24 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 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 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 mean mode median Introduction parts High-rated low-rated 2.8 3 Body paragraphs High-rated low-rated 8.5 9.5 10 Concluding paragraphs High-rated low-rated 2.5 3.5 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 in low-rated essays, which indicates that the average number of t-units per introductory paragraph in thirteen high-rated essays is nearly t-units and t-units in the introductions of low-rated 25 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 and respectively, which indicate that there are more than half of the low-rated essays consisting more than 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 4,6 2,2 High-rated essays Low-rated essays 4,8 8,3 5,1 T1 43,1 41,8 6,3 T1 40,3 T2 T2 T3 T3 T4 T4 T5 T5 43,5 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 (T1), and topical structure type (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 26 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 lowrated 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 27 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 (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 suggests that students often represent their ideas in a direct way by starting the clause with the topical subjects Especially, the topical structure type often uses in the first clause of a paragraph in introduction and body paragraphs 3.2 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 28 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 High-rated essays Low-rated essays 27,8 38,3 43,9 58,3 13,9 Parallel Extended Parallel Sequential 12,8 Figure 2: The difference on the portions of each type of topical progression in Low-rated and high-rated essays Figure 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 highrated 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% 29 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 indicates the Sequential proportions of types of progressions in the development paragraphs of 27 Parallel between low-rated and high-rated high-rated essays 16 14,8 Extended parallel student essays Overall, differences 57 43,4 20 Low-rated essays 41,8 40 60 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 30 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 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 S 60 2,5 EP 24 P 20 Figure describes the percentage of 76 topical progression types in the high-rated essays Low-rated 37,5 essays 40 60 introductory parts Overall, the introductions 80 have of essays good-essay the same tendency in the use of progressions Figure 4: The proportions of different types of in all paragraphs They contain progression in the introductions of two groups of more SP, and less PP than the bad essays essays Particularly, there is no use of EPP in the introductory paragraphs in highrated 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 31 Table illustrates the uses of Introduction lowhighrated rated 21 19 S S(d) 8 S(i) 11 S(u) lowhighrated rated 100 100 9.5 47.4 38.1 42.1 52.4 10.5 there is a significant difference in the frequency percentage (%) percentage of three subtypes of SP in Table 4: The subtypes of sequential in the introductions three subtypes of SP in introductory paragraphs of two group essays According to statistics in Table 4, 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 50 S 56,2 10 9,4 EP P Figure 5: 20 The Figure describes the portions of high-rated essays Low-rated essays 40 34,4 40 proportions progressions in the concluding parts of essays In general, there is a slightly difference the progression proportions in low-rated and high-rated 60 of in different progression types in the concluding paragraphs 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 32 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 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- highrated rated 14 S S(d) 1 S(i) 11 S(u) 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 In summary, SP and PP are most frequently used in introductions and conclusions, and their occurrences are slightly different The uses of different subtypes of SP contribute to classify the introductions of different essay quality Highrated essays contain more coherence-building SP than low-rated essays However, the role of coherence building SP is not significant in classifying concluding paragraphs of high-rated and low-rated essays, both groups contained much SP(u) 3.2.2 Discussion on the uses of topical progressions 3.2.2.1 Topical progressions in all paragraphs and body paragraphs Obviously, body paragraphs play the most important role in developing the discourse topic of the essays The features of the body paragraphs express the features of paragraphs written by Vietnamese students because they express the ways discourse topic is developed In general, the findings of this study are consistent to the previous studies of Schneider and Connor (1991), Liangprayoon, Chaya&Thep-ackraphong (2013) that differentiate between low-rated and highrated essays Tải FULL (86 trang): https://bit.ly/3BKIcC7 Dự phòng: fb.com/TaiHo123doc.net Like the finding of the study of Liangprayoon, Chaya&Thep-ackraphong (2013), the research finds that both successful and less successful students 33 employed the SP the most in the essays And the tendency of the proportions of topical progressions used in the highly-rated essays were not different from those used in the low-rated ones, in which SP was dominant in both low-rated and highrated essays, following by PP and EPP respectively However, different from finding of Liangprayoon,Chaya&Thep-ackraphong, the research finds that different essay quality reveals different proportions of topical progressions The two groups are noticeably different in terms of SP and PP but quite comparable in terms of EPP It suggests that both SP and PP are very important in differentiating the two groups of essays, while the EPP appears to contribute only minimally to group separation Tải FULL (86 trang): https://bit.ly/3BKIcC7 Dự phòng: fb.com/TaiHo123doc.net Unlike the finding of Connor and Farmer‟s study (1990), the research has revealed no evidence for the finding that if a writer logically makes use of the SP and make good balance with the other types of topical progression, it may add to the overall good quality However, the research finds that 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 as in the study of Burneikaite&Zabiliute (2003) Essays are perceived as better quality texts when the use of PP is in good balance with the EPP The texts are considered as poor quality when the PP is over-extensive and EPP is insufficient This research is in line with the studies by Schneider and Connor (1991) which found that highly rated essays contained a high proportion of EPP that helps return the essay to its main theme Following are examples of topical progressions of two body paragraphs in a high-rated essay (see essay no 1, in the appendix, page VIII).In body paragraph and body paragraph of essay no 1, EPP are used to return the topics of the next clauses to the first topic of the paragraph which is about “Buck” 34 For example, paragraph starts with the topic about “Buck” in clause 4, and then in the next clause, it develops to the topic “the first reason”, and “the moment” in clauses 5, 6, and In clause 8, the topic of the paragraph returns to Buck, which is mentioned in clause 4, and then it continues to be developed to another subtopics in clauses 9, 10, and 11 At clause 12, the end of the paragraph, it comes back to the first topic “Buck” Body paragraph of essay In body 2, the development of the topic is the same with the topic “Buck” being reinforced after some new subtopics appear In these high-rated body paragraphs, the EPP(s) are successfully used to return the topics of the paragraph to the focus of the essays Body paragraph of essay In contrast, EPP(s) in low-rated essays are not used to return the topic of the essays to its focus; moreover, PP is over-used Following are examples of topical progressions of low-rated essays (see essay 38 in the appendix, page LVI) 35 6813407 .. .VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES NGUYỄN THỊ HỒNG A TOPICAL STRUCTURE ANALYSIS TO CREATE COHERENCE IN ENGLISH. .. 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 32 essays, and PP is greater in high-rated essays This feature is... ANALYSIS TO CREATE COHERENCE IN ENGLISH ESSAYS OF FOURTH YEAR STUDENTS AT ENGLISH DEPARTMENT AT VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES (Phân tích cấu trúc chủ