Topical Structure Analysis as an Assessment Tool in Student Academic Writing

Regala-Flores, Eden; Yin, Kexiu

doi:10.17576/3l-2015-2101-10

Cited by 6 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…The study will complement previous studies interested in writing produced by L2 learners of English (Kim & Yoon 2014, Flores & Yin 2015. Practically, the present study can also benefit learners of English as a foreign language since it is able to enhance personal awareness related to how to use the amplifiers as well as the collocations correctly.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 56%

C-Smile, COCA, and BNC: A Focus on Amplifiers and Adjective Collocations

Basthomi¹,

Yannuar²,

Widiati³

et al. 2015

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 56%

C-Smile, COCA, and BNC: A Focus on Amplifiers and Adjective Collocations

Basthomi¹,

Yannuar²,

Widiati³

et al. 2015

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“…Another study by Flores and Kexiu (2015) provided conflicting results to Burneikaite and Zabiliute (2003). In their study, Flores and Kexiu applied TSA to analyse 29 comparison-and-contrast essays (15 high-quality and 14 low-quality) written by first-year ESL students at a private university in Manila.…”

Section: Relationships Between Types Of Topical Progression and Writing Qualitymentioning

confidence: 90%

“…Campbell (1998) designed an analytic rubric, called the Composition Analysis Rubric (CAR) to assess coherence in his students' writing. This CAR consists of three variables that were thought to be indicators of coherence: topical development, topical structure, and cohesive devices (Burneikaite & Zabiliute, 2003;Cerniglia, Medsker, & Connor, 1990;Flores & Kexiu, 2015;Knoch, 2007;Liangprayoon et al, 2013). The results of Campbell's (1998) study indicated that some of the components of the CAR such as topical structure analysis (TSA) are strong components of global coherence, and Campbell's (1998) study confirmed that it is possible to use topical structure analysis (TSA) to assess coherence in writing.…”

Section: Teaching Coherencementioning

confidence: 99%

“…While some researchers focused on using TSA in the writing of EFL students (Almaden, 2006;Carreon, 2006;Kılıç, Genç, & Bada, 2016), other researchers conducted their studies to compare the use of TSA between English and other languages (Dumanig, Esteban, Lee, & Gan, 2009;Simpson, 2000) or to compare the use of TSA between EFL/ESL learners' writing and English native speakers' writing (Kim, 2012;Ouk, 2009). However, what has attracted researchers most is the use of TSA as a technique to distinguish high-rated writing from low-rated writing (Burneikaite & Zabiliute, 2003;Flores & Kexiu, 2015;Schneider & Connor, 1990;Witte, 1983aWitte, , 1983b) Witte (1983b) is one of the pioneers in examining the relationship between a reader's judgement of writing quality and topical structure features of student writing. Forty-eight texts were chosen from 180 essays written on a controlled assignment as part of an evaluation of the Freshman Writing Program at the University of Texas.…”

Section: Relationships Between Types Of Topical Progression and Writing Qualitymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Problems Of Coherence In The Writing Of Vietnamese EFL Students And An Intervention To Improve Students’ Writing Performance

Pham¹

2021

Preprint

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Coherence has been claimed to be one among the difficult aspects of writing to teach and learn . Both teachers and learners find it hard to explain why one piece of writing is incoherent and another is not. There have been a few studies (Gramegna, 2007; Wikborg, 1990) investigating the types of coherence breaks in EFL/ESL writing and a few studies (Johns, 1986; Lee, 2002b) investigating the effects of teaching aspects of coherence on students’ writing performance. However, there have been no studies identifying the coherence problems in students’ writing and then using these to teach students how to avoid these coherence problems. In addition to teaching students to avoid coherence problems, an approach called topical structure analysis (TSA) (Liangprayoon, Chaya, & Thep-ackraphong, 2013; Schneider & Connor, 1990) has been considered as an effective technique to help improve students’ writing coherence. Some studies (Attelisi, 2012; Connor & Farmer, 1990) have examined the effect of teaching TSA in promoting EFL students’ awareness of coherence, but investigating the effect of the combination of teaching coherence problems and TSA on EFL students’ writing performance has not been done in any previous studies. My study fills both of these gaps. There are two main phases in my study. In Phase 1, I developed a system of coherence problems based on the analysis of 69 essays written by Vietnamese EFL students. Then, this system of coherence problems was used to identify the types and frequency of coherence problems in the writing of Vietnamese EFL students. In Phase 2, an intervention was conducted in a university in Vietnam. Fifty-eight students participated in the intervention and were divided into a control group and a treatment group. While the combination of teaching the system of coherence problems developed in Phase 1 and teaching TSA was delivered to the treatment group in the intervention, the control group was taught other aspects of writing such as grammar, vocabulary, etc. The aim of Phase 2 of this study was to examine the effect of the intervention on students’ writing performance, especially on coherence and overall writing quality. Data for Phase 1 was 69 essays on a single topic. Using this set of essays, the types of coherence problems and their frequency were identified. Data for Phase 2 included three sets of writing. The first set of writing was 58 essays written by students in both the treatment group and the control group before the intervention was conducted. The second set of writing involved the students revising their first draft right after the intervention finished. The third set of writing was 58 new essays on a different topic from the first and the second sets written by students in the control and treatment groups four weeks after the intervention. These three sets of writing were analysed and rated by the same raters as in Phase 1. In addition, students completed questionnaires and participated in focus group interviews in Phase 2. Findings of Phase 1 show that there were five main types of coherence problems that Vietnamese EFL students had in their writing. These were macrostructure-related problems, topic unity-related problems, paragraph unity-related problems, cohesion-related problems, and metadiscourse-related problems. Of these five main types of coherence problems, paragraph unity-related problems were the most frequent ones, and “no/ little elaboration of the proposition made” was the most frequent subtype of paragraph-unity problems. Findings from Phase 2 show that there was a significant difference in terms of coherence problems, types of topical progression, and writing quality between the two groups after the intervention finished. To be specific, there were significantly fewer instances of coherence problems in the writing of the treatment group than in the writing of the control group, and the scores for coherence and overall quality achieved by the treatment group were significantly higher than those achieved by the control group. Also, the focus group interviews suggest that most students found the intervention helpful in improving their writing performance. This means the combination of teaching coherence problems and TSA to students had a positive impact on students’ writing coherence and writing quality. Based on the findings, some suggestions are made for teaching writing to EFL students in general and for the teaching of coherence in the Vietnamese university context in particular.

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“…Selection of description text because it is related to the description of an event through a process of observation and experience. Writing is an exploration and generative process to convey meanings (Flores, 2015). Cohesion in a writing lesson is usually based on socio-cultural aspects (Jay & Quinto, 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Adverbial” Anaphora Resistance in Students’ Descriptive Texts

Azis

Juanda

2020

Humaniora

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The present research aimed to analyze adverbial anaphora resistance in students’ descriptive texts at the Department of Indonesian Language Education and Literature, Faculty of Languages and Literature, Universitas Negeri Makassar. The problem “How is adverbial anaphora (resistance) was presented in the descriptive texts written by the students? A descriptive qualitative content analysis was employed in this research. Data collection was performed through documentation of the five-semester students’ descriptive texts. The results show that adverbial anaphora resistance in the students’ descriptive texts consists of: (1) anaphora within adverbs of place ( ini “this” and di sana “there” that occupy a different position); (2) anaphora within adverbs of time (tahun “year”, pagi hari “in the morning”, and malam hari “at night”); (2) anaphora within adverbs of purpose (bagi “for” and untuk “to”); (4) anaphora within adverbs of comparison (seperti “like”); (5) anaphora within adverbs of cause (sebab “cause” and karena “because”). Adverbial anaphora is highly associated with the placement of words, the relationship between words and phrases, or interrelationship among sentences. The limited number of adverbial anaphora produced by the students originates from the students’ lack of competence in writing a text.

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Topical Structure Analysis as an Assessment Tool in Student Academic Writing

Cited by 6 publications

References 12 publications

C-Smile, COCA, and BNC: A Focus on Amplifiers and Adjective Collocations

C-Smile, COCA, and BNC: A Focus on Amplifiers and Adjective Collocations

Problems Of Coherence In The Writing Of Vietnamese EFL Students And An Intervention To Improve Students’ Writing Performance

“Adverbial” Anaphora Resistance in Students’ Descriptive Texts

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