An Empirical Study Of Coherence In English Argumentative Writing From The Perspective Of Topical Structure Analysis

Topical structure analysis(TSA) was developed by Liisa Lautamatti(1978) as an approach to analyzing coherence. It is built on the study of Theme/ Rheme and Topic/ Comment of the Prague school of Linguistics and Halliday. The approach aims to explore semantic relationships by analyzing “topical development of discourse” which refers to “the way the written sentences in discourse relate to the discourse topic and its subtopics”(Lautamatti, 1978). The present study aims to investigate the impact of teaching TSA as a self-revision strategy in Chinese college ESL/ EFL classrooms. It explores how TSA instruction influences Chinese college ESL/ EFL students’ performance and perception of coherence in their English argumentative writing. There are three reasons that this study focuses on this topic.(1) Writing is notoriously difficult to learn in ESL/ EFL classrooms. While there is a causal relationship between coherence and writing quality and coherence is claimed as an essential element of good writing, coherence is still an abstract and fuzzy concept beyond many ESL/ EFL learners and teachers. Chinese ESL/ EFL learners generally perform poorly in English writing and coherence. According to the Test Taker Performance 2014 for Academic issued by the IELTS British Council, Chinese test takers achieved lowest mean band score of writing among the four evaluated areas—listening(6.0), reading(6.2), writing(5.4), and speaking(5.5), which was even lower than the mean overall band score(5.8). Worse still, test takers whose L1 are Chinese ranked the 35 th in the list of the top 40 first language backgrounds; they achieved a slight higher mean band score of writing than those test takers whose L1 are Arabic(4.9), Japanese(5.3), Kazakh(5.3), Punjabi(5.3), and Uzbek(5.0). Researches also show that Chinese ESL/ EFL learners could hardly produce coherent texts(Li, 2000; Li, 2002; Cheng, 2009; Geng, 2011), which may be a result of the fact that linguistic features such as grammar and vocabulary are overemphasized and rhetorical aspects such as cohesion and coherence are often undervalued in Chinese ESL/ EFL classrooms.(2) The main reason that argumentative writing is chosen to be studied among all types of texts lies in two aspects: it emphasizes logical reasoning and coherent writing; it is widely adopted in China college English tests for both non-English majors(CET-4 and CET-6) and English majors(TEM-4 and TEM-8). In fact, its importance in analyzing Chinese English learners’ abstract thinking has captured interests of domestic researchers(Li, 2005; Wen & Liu, 2006; Luo, 2011), who call for further studies of this writing type.(3) Previous studies do not provide a clear picture of the effect of teaching Topical Structure Analysis(TSA) as a self-revision strategy in Chinese college ESL/ EFL classrooms. As a newly proposed technique used to analyze coherence, TSA is widely employed to explain differences between high-rated and low-rated essays and compare paragraphing patterns among different languages. Although researches have suggested that TSA is an effective self-revision strategy for ESL/ EFL learners, related studies are still rare, especially when it is applied in the context of Chinese college ESL/ EFL classrooms.Given Chinese college students’ poor performance in constructing coherent English texts, researchers’ call for further studies of argumentative writing, and lack of literature on applying TSA as a self-revision strategy in Chinese college ESL/ EFL classrooms, the present study could shed light on coherence in English argumentative writing composed by Chinese college non-English majors.In order to investigate the impact of teaching TSA as a self-revision strategy in Chinese college ESL/ EFL classrooms, the researcher designed four research questions. They are:1. What effect does application of TSA as a revision strategy have on assessing coherence and overall quality of argumentative essays written by Chinese college students?2. What is the distribution of topical progression patterns of Chinese college students’ English argumentative writing?3. What effect does TSA instruction have on Chinese college students’ awareness of coherence of English argumentative writing?4. How do Chinese college students perceive TSA instruction?To answer the research questions, the researcher designed an experimental study that lasted seven weeks and consisted of a pretest questionnaire, a pretest, different teaching treatments for participants, a posttest, and a posttest questionnaire and interview. 60 students from two intact classes in a Chinese college, which were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups, participated in this study. All participants were sophomore marketing majors in a college of Jilin Province of China. They had been enrolled in a required course called English for College Students that was given by an instructor having three years of ESL teaching experience. This experimental study was welcomed by the course instructor who had been searching for effective pedagogical methods to increase her students’ proficiency in English writing, especially coherence of writing and was, coincidentally, very interested in TSA instruction. None of these participants were informed that they were going to participate in a writing study. In order to guarantee that the participants would take the pre- and posttests seriously, they were informed that performance of the writing assignments would be taken as part of the final course score. The two comparison groups shared similar background information, overall English proficiency, writing ability, and learning environment including an experienced ESL instructor and the same classroom. The only difference was that they received different teaching treatments. While the EG students received TSA instruction on their writing, the CG students were given traditional product approach.In the pretest of this study, participants were required to compose an argumentative essay in response to a given topic, whereas in the posttest, they were asked to revise essays written in the pretest. Both drafts and revisions were scored by two raters applying the strategy of mix-up. This study mainly followed Chiang’s(2003) rating scale that assesses writing from four aspects, i.e., coherence, cohesion, syntax, and morphology, and it consists of 20 analytical features-- five for each aspect. According to this rating scale, each analytical feature, each aspect, and the separately evaluated overall quality are scored on a scale of 1 to 5; Quality of each component and the overall quality of the essay are both recognized as Very Poor, Poor, Fair, Good, and Very Good, which corresponds with the scale of 1 to 5, respectively. Drawing on Chiang’s rating scale, the researcher calculated each of the four aspect by summing up its five analytical features and calculated the overall band score by taking the average of the total of the four individual components scores. Therefore, scores of the overall quality and the four aspects range from 5 to 25. Scores of coherence and overall writing were collected for data analysis.The data analysis was conducted from three aspects, i.e., analysis of pretest questionnaires, analysis of drafts and revisions in terms of scores and distribution of TPPs, and analysis of the posttest questionnaire and the interview in terms of participants’ perception of coherence and their perception of TSA. The IBM SPSS 19 software was employed to analyze quantitative data.The following are major findings.Results of data analysis demonstrated that the experimental group achieved significant progress after they received TSA instruction. The progress was mainly reflected in higher overall writing and coherence scores in revisions than their own drafts and the control group’s drafts and revisions. It was also reflected in the more balanced distribution of the three topical progression patterns in revisions. Findings of analysis of posttest questionnaire and interview indicated that TSA instruction had a generally positive impact on participants’ perception of coherence of English argumentative writing.Although the participants had a generally positive attitude toward TSA instruction, findings suggested that students met some difficulties in learning and applying TSA, which might be overcome by more practice. In spite of the difficulties, most participants showed strong willingness to continue to apply TSA as a revision strategy. This implied that they would like to be autonomous English writers actively participating in the writing process rather than passively following their teachers’ comments.Findings of this study suggest two pedagogical implications. Firstly, TSA as a self-revision strategy is applicable in Chinese college ESL/ EFL classrooms. Secondly, it is necessary to integrate TSA into English syllabus of Chinese colleges, which requires a joint effort from designers of instructional materials and teachers.