A Study On The Application Of Topical Structure Analysis As A Revision Strategy In Chinese College English Writing

From contrastive rhetoric point of view, writing in a second language is likely to be influenced to some extent by the linguistic and cultural conventions of the writer's first language. Under the influence of Chinese discourse structures, Chinese ESL students tend to produce the ESL writings that seem incoherent and disuniting in English context. But on account of the limited knowledge of the target language, they are incapable of recognizing the improprieties in discourse level. How to develop the students' awareness to the features of English texts and how to help them figure out the improprieties in their own ESL writings and revise accordingly, become the focus of the present study.Topical structure analysis (TSA), originally developed by the Finnish linguist桳autamatti for describing coherence in texts, provides a way for recognizing the discourse improprieties in ESL writings. It examines how topics repeat, shift and return to earlier topics in a text in three different types of progression: parallel progression, sequential progression and extended parallel progression. By focusing on the semantic relationships between sentence topics and the overall discourse topic, TSA shows its promise in helping ESL learners figure out incoherence and disunity at discourse level.The present study concentrates on the application of TSA as a revision strategy in College English writing. Questions raised for the study are:1. Is TSA as a revision strategy helpful to the students' revision on ESL writings?2. How do Chinese College English students revise their ESL writings under the impact of TSA?3. Compared with common practice, can the revision training and instruction better help College English students improve their ESL writing performances and their perceptions on ESL writing?To testify the effects of applying TSA as a revision strategy, a three-month teaching experiment with both the experimental and the control groups was designed and conducted. The students in this experimental group were instructed and trained to revise their ESL writings in the light of TSA. The statistical analyses were conducted concerning the variations of the overall scores, the t-units and the topical progressions between the 1st and the 2nd drafts produced by the experimental group, the differences in writing achievements between the two groups shortly before and after the experiment, and the post-experiment questionnaire investigation to both groups, as well as the differences in the perceptions on ESL writing revealed by the post-experiment questionnaire investigation to both groups. The results of the experiment prove that:1. TSA is beneficial in facilitating students' revision on their ESL writings.2. The subjects tend to decrease sequential progressions or/and increase parallel progressions to improve the coherence and unity of their writings.3. Specific and well-planned revision training and instruction can better help College English students improve then- ESL writing performances.4. The revision training and instruction positively affect the learners' perceptions on ESL writing, altering their attitudes to ESL writing process in favor of revising and overall consideration of content and organization rather than simply grammar and vocabulary.Besides the discussions of the experimental results, the pedagogical implications as well as the limitations of the present study are also dwelt on. The conclusion drawn from the present study is: the application of TSA as revision strategy of ESL writing can be beneficial for the Chinese College English students.