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 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
Total 325 395
MEAN 29.5 25 4.5 4.4 11.4 8.9
MODE 29 23 4 4 10 8
MEDIAN 29 24 4 4 11 8
RANGE 10 5
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
43,1
41,8 8,3 2,2
4,6 High-rated essays
T1 T2 T3 T4 T5
40,3
43,5 5,1
4,8 6,3
Low-rated essays
T1 T2 T3 T4 T5
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.