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

1. 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 trong các bài
luận tiếng Anh của sinh viên năm 4 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

2. 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 trong các bài
luận tiếng Anh của sinh viên năm 4 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

3. i
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

4. ii
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.

5. iii
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.

6. iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS
DECLARATION ........................................................................................................ i
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ....................................................................................... ii
ABSTRACT.............................................................................................................. iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS.......................................................................................... iv
LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES....................................................................... viii
INTRODUCTION.......................................................................................................1
1. Rationale for the research...............................................................................1
2. Aims and objectives of the research .............................................................2
3. Research questions .........................................................................................2
4. Scope of the research......................................................................................3
5. Methods of the study......................................................................................3
6. Significance of the research...........................................................................4
7. Structural organization of the thesis..............................................................4
DEVELOPMENT .......................................................................................................5
CHAPTER 1 - LITERATURE REVIEW................................................................5
1.1 Theoretical background of coherence in written texts...............................5
1.1.1 Overview of coherence........................................................................................5
1.1.2 Approaches to coherence...............................................................................6
1.1.2.1 Cohesion ......................................................................................................6
1.1.2.2 Genre............................................................................................................7
1.1.2.3 Semantic relation.........................................................................................7
1.1.3 Methods for examining coherence in a text.................................................8
1.1.3.1 Latent semantic analysis.............................................................................8
1.1.3.2 Topical structure analysis (TSA)...............................................................9
1.2 Theoretical background of TSA.................................................................9
1.2.1 Topical Structures.........................................................................................10
1.2.2 Topical progressions.....................................................................................11

7. v
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 2 – 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 3 - 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

8. vi
CONCLUSION.........................................................................................................41
REFERENCE............................................................................................................44
APPENDICES……………………………………………………………….............I

9. vii
ABBREVIATIONS
LSA:
TSA:
Topical S:
Mood S:
ISE:
SP(s):
SP(d):
SP(i):
SP(u):
PP(s):
EPP(s):
latent semantic analysis
topical structure analysis
topical subject
mood subject
initial sentence element
sequential progression(s)
directly related sequential progression
indirectly related sequential progression
unrelated sequential progression
parallel progression(s)
extended parallel progression(s)

10. viii
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 high-
rated 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 high-
rated 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

11. 1
INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale for the research
Coherence seems to be a key indicator of the text quality as it deals with the
global and local meanings and the deep organizational logic of the text. The more
coherent the texts are, the higher the text quality achieves. In general, evaluating the
text coherence is supposed as problematic because coherence has been considered
to be a subjective and hazy concept which is hard to learn and teach (Lee, 2002). As
Halliday and Hassan (1976) indicated, the distinction between a text and a
collection of unrelated sentence is a matter of degree; therefore, the holistic
evaluation is quite subjective in measuring text quality because it lacks reliability
and validity for not indicating particular strengths and weaknesses of learner texts.
However, subjective reader‟s evaluation on text is still a dominant method in
evaluating the text in teaching contexts.
Nowadays, a number of investigations have been carried out to examine how
coherence is achieved in learner texts and to help the teachers make sound
judgments on student compositions. One major method is to analyze the topic
development of the high-rated and low-rated essays by applying the Topical
Structure Analysis (TSA) developed by Lautamatii (1978). This method helps to
examine the links between the reader‟s evaluation and the topical developments of
the text to explicitly state the text features for classifying the text quality. Overall,
different patterns (topical progressions) of topical structure appear to provide good
predictors of student writing quality.
In general, this research investigated the relationship between the holistic
evaluation and the TSA of the student essays to find out the differences in topical
structures and the topical progressions used between low-rated and high-rated
essays.

12. 2
2. Aims and objectives of the research
The research population is the collection of forty essays written by forth-year
students at ULIS, VNU. The research aims at investigating the relationship between
holistic evaluation and the TSA of the essays by examining thirteen high-rated and
thirteen low-rated essays for two main objectives. The first objective focuses on the
physical features of the essays including the numbers of t-units (the shortest unit
consisting of one independent clause together with whatever dependent clauses are
attached to it), paragraphs, topical depths as well as the topical structures in the
essays. The research examines the differences between low-rated and high-rated
essays in terms of physical organization and the various combinations of the mood
subjects (mood S), the topical subjects (topical S), and the initial sentence element
(ISE) of the clauses in the essays in order to identify the contribution of these
features to essay quality. The second objective examines the relationship between
the text quality and the topical progressions used in student essays. It focuses on
examining the proportions of topical progression types (sequential, parallel, and
extended parallel) in two group essays. Particularly, it separately investigates the
proportions of progressions used in the introductions, the body paragraphs, and the
conclusions of essays to have a view on the contribution of these progressions in the
essays. To sum up, the research aims to reveal the physical features, topical
structures and progressions that contribute to the quality of the essays.
3. Research questions
In order to achieve two main objectives, the research focuses on answering
two main following research questions:
Research question 1: How do the physical features in terms of lengths and
the topical structures reveal the differences between low-rated and high-rated essays
of Vietnamese students?
Research question 2: What is the relationship between holistic evaluation
and the topical progressions used in essays of Vietnamese students?

13. 3
4. Scope of the research
The research focuses on investigating the English essays written by
Vietnamese students. Particularly the research explores the essays of the forth year
students at ULIS, VNU written in their American Literature course in the year of
2013. These essays are chosen as the primary data for the research because of three
reasons. Firstly, these essays share many similarities including the same topic which
is about Buck‟s conflict in the story “The Call of the Wild”. Secondly, these essays
are commented and scored by the teacher, and sent back to the students through
email, it brings two advantages for the researcher. One is the convenience for
collecting all the data without difficulty and the other is that the essays had been
scored by the teacher; therefore they were an appropriate set of data for searching
answers for the research questions.
5. Methods of the study
The research applies the TSA framework as developed by Lautamatii (1978)
to identifying the relationship between clauses in the paragraphs. The choice of
topical structure as the focus of this study is motivated by the following
considerations. First, topical structure analysis probes an important aspect of texts,
namely the patterns of maintenance and shifts of topics. Such patterns contribute
considerably to the text coherence, to the identification of what a particular stretch
of discourse is about, and, consequently, to the comprehensibility of texts.
Therefore, this is an objective method for analyzing the student writing. Second,
topical structure analysis allows for the quantification of data which makes the
study more reliable, because the frequency and percentage of t-units, paragraphs,
topical depths, topical structures and topical progression types in student essays are
calculated based on the carefully analyzed of essays. In summary, using TSA as a
tool for analyzing student essays is the most suitable choice for this research.

14. 4
6. Significance of the research
In general, the research is highly significant for the teaching and learning of
English writing in Vietnam. The identification of physical features, topical
structures and the dominant topical progression used in essays of Vietnamese
students supplies understanding on the essay writing features of Vietnamese
students. In addition, comparing the topical progressions of highly rated essays and
low rated essays has pedagogical implications for teaching students how to write a
good essay. Teachers can use topical structure analysis to help orient ESL students'
writing to the underlying structures that build coherence.
7. Structural organization of the thesis
The research consists of three main parts, part one: Introduction, part two:
Development, and part three: Conclusion. Part one briefly describes the rationale for
conducting the research, two objectives of the research and the Topical structure
analysis (TSA) method used. Part two includes three chapters: Literature review,
Research methodology, Findings and Discussions. Chapter one focuses on the
theoretical background as well as the review of previous research with the similar
interest. In the theoretical background section, the overview, approaches as well as
the measurements of coherence are concerned. In addition, it presents the
background information of TSA. In the review of related literature, there are the
reviews of research on the proportions of topical progressions in student essays in
different contexts and their results, and of the studies which examined the difference
between low-rated and high-rated essays in terms of the use of topical progressions.
In chapter 2, research method of the study is in some detail described. It introduces
the population and sample of the research, the data analysis procedure. The third
chapter, Findings and Discussions, focuses on answering two main research
questions using the results from the data analysis. And part three summarizes what
has been found in the research, provides some implications as well as suggestions
for further research.

15. 5
DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER 1 - LITERATURE REVIEW
1.1 Theoretical background of coherence in written texts
1.1.1 Overview of coherence
“There is little consensus on the matter of an overall definition of coherence”
as Grabe and Kaplan (1996: 67) indicated. In general, the understanding of
coherence develops through the time with the focus from text-based features such as
cohesive devices (Halliday and Hassan, 1976) and semantic property of discourse
(Van Dijk, 1977) to the reader-based features (Johnson, 1986).
In the traditional approach, linguists including Halliday and Hassan (1976),
Van Dijk (1977) and Enkvist (1978) focus on the text-based features to explore text
coherence. On one hand, Halliday and Hassan (1976) focus on linguistic features of
the texts. According to them, coherence or texture is the feature of a text, which
identifies the text as a total unit. A text is considered coherent when the various
parts of a paragraph are connected together by cohesive ties. On the other hand,
focusing on the semantic meaning of the text, Van Dijk (1977) and Enkvist (1978)
identified coherence in a text by looking at the semantic relationship between
sentences in the text. Van Dijk (1977) indicated that coherence may be considered
as a “semantic property of discourses, based on the interpretation each individual
sentence relative to the interpretation of other sentences”. In addition, Enkvist
(1990) also defines coherence as “the quality that makes a text conform to a
consistent world picture and is therefore summarizable and interpretable”, and
coherence is primarily related to the nature and property of the text.
The understanding of coherence widens from text-based into reader-based
features by Johnson (1986: 247) who defines coherence in written text is “a
complex concept, involving a multitude of reader- and text-based features”.
According to Johns (1986: 250), coherence is “a feature internal to text, either in

16. 6
terms of the linking of sentences (cohesion) or as the relationships among
propositions in the text (sticking to the point)”. Text-based coherence refers to an
inherent feature of the text, which has been discussed in the preceding paragraph.
Reader-based coherence, in contrast, requires successful interaction between the
reader and the text. Following Johnson‟s point of view, many linguists also defines
coherence in terms of reader-based features.
In summary, coherence includes two main sides: text-based and reader based
features. These sides co-exist and create the writing coherence.
1.1.2 Approaches to coherence
Coherence is an abstract concept. It is, therefore, defined differently by
different linguists. In this section, three aspects of coherence including cohesion,
genres, and semantic relation are focused to enlighten the scopes in which
coherence has been studied.
1.1.2.1 Cohesion
According to Halliday and Hasan (1976), cohesion is the major characteristic
of coherence. Cohesion occurs where the interpretation of some elements in the
discourse is dependent on that of another (Halliday&Hasan, 1976). Cohesion
depicts how meaning-based relationship is set up by lexical and syntactic features.
These explicit lexical and syntactic features are known as cohesive devices,
signaling the relationship in sentences and paragraphs. Halliday and Hasan (1976)
introduced five different types of cohesive devices in order to provide a guideline
for studying and judging the cohesion and coherence of writing: reference,
substitution, ellipsis, conjunction and lexical cohesion. They contended that through
analyzing the use of cohesive devices, one could evaluate or assess writing quality
from the perspective of coherence.
However, the cohesive theory proposed by Halliday and Hasan (1976) was
challenged by Carrell (1982) and Johns (1986) who argued for the importance of

17. 7
readers‟ background knowledge. In other words, both the structure and content of
the text and the readers‟ operation on the text should be taken into consideration.
This leads to the second approach to coherence which is genre approach.
1.1.2.2 Genre
According to Hinkel (2004), coherence is defined as “the organization of
discourse with all elements present and fitting together logically”. This denotes that
a coherent essay consists of an introduction, a thesis statement, rhetorical support,
and a conclusion. In addition, Kaplan (1987); Ostler (1987); and Connor (1996)
have demonstrated that language and writing are cultural phenomena and
consequently each language tends to have its own rhetorical conventions which are
unique to it. In particular, the situation is the same when Vietnamese students write
their essays in English. On one hand, regarding the structural patterns that would
characterize Vietnamese discourse, Vietnamese writings enjoy their own sense of
“literatedness” which Kaplan (1966) has considered as an approach by indirection.
On the other hand, Farrel (1997a, 1997b) argues that school literacy in most English
countries is a highly specialized discourse that “giving directly to the point” or
being linear in its development. Therefore, the relevant patterns in Vietnamese
writing may be seen as digressive by some English readers. When conducting an
English essay, Vietnamese students need to pay attention to the rhetorical patterns
of English language. However, 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
current study approach to analyze the essay components separately to have deep
view on the ways ideas organized in each part.
1.1.2.3 Semantic relation
In identifying the coherence in writing, most researchers focus on the semantic
relations in the text. For example, Beaugrande and Dressler (1981:85) claimed that
“continuity of sense is the foundation of coherence, being the mutual access and

18. 8
relevance within the configuration of concepts and relations”. Without the
continuity, any piece of writing is just plain writing, without making much sense to
the reader about the points it makes. In addition, Celce-Murcia and Olshtain (2000)
stated that the overall coherence of a longer text depends on the coherence within
each paragraph or section of the text. This textual relationship is partially a result of
coherent organization of the propositions and ideas presented in writing.
In particular, the study of „topic‟ in discourse becomes a promising branch of
research in examining the semantic relation of essays. Prague School linguists such
as Danes (1974), Firbas, (1974), and Mathesius (1975) have contributed to the
analysis of extended texts, emphasizing the role of sentences in the context of whole
texts, rather than any individual units of discourse. Following the Prague School,
Lautamatii (1987) developed TSA to examine the topic development in the
discourse. Obviously, there are many methods for identifying the semantic relation
between sentences in a text. However, two most promising methods are Latent
Semantic Analysis (LSA) and TSA. In the following part, brief reviews on these
two methods are carried out, and the reasons for choosing TSA as the primary
method in this research are stated.
1.1.3 Methods for examining coherence in a text
Researchers have proposed various techniques by which teachers can measure
coherence. Most of these techniques are based either on statistical analysis, such as
the LSA proposed by Foltz, Kintsch, and Landauer, (1998), and Lautamatti‟sTSA.
1.1.3.1 Latent semantic analysis
LSA is a method for measuring textual coherence. LSA is a fully automatic
statistical technique for extracting and inferring relations of expected contextual
usage of words in passages of discourse. Word, sentence and passage meeting
representation derived by LSA have been found capable of simulating a variety of
human cognitive phenomena, ranging from developmental acquisition of

19. 9
recognition vocabulary to word-categorization, sentence-word semantic priming,
and judgments of essay quality and discourse comprehension (Landauer, 1998). The
method is proved to be automatic and fast, permitting quick measurements of the
semantic similarity between pieces of textual information. However, this method is
quite complicated and it requires much information about computers, the
application of this method for teaching practice is not favored. This technique is
unlikely to be employed by teachers or students because it is time-consuming and
require a considerable amount of training.
1.1.3.2 Topical structure analysis (TSA)
Besides LSA, drawing on Prague School research, Lautamatti (1987)
developed what she called TSA as a tool for analyzing the coherence of writing.
The use of TSA as a device in investigating the progressions in writing has been
validated by several researchers as a clear demonstration of style and strategy in
linking ideas within paragraphs and reflection of thought progression. In general,
the study of TSA has gained interest among researchers in their desire to determine
thematic development in paragraphs and styles of writing of individuals. The detail
information about TSA will be stated in the next part, which covers all the issues
related. Because it is the method which is applied to identify the relationship
between holistic evaluation on the quality of the essays and the topical progressions
used.
1.2 Theoretical background of TSA
TSA refers to the analyzing of coherence derived by examining the internal
topical structure of the paragraph as reflected by the repetition of key words and
phrases. In TSA, two important terms are topical structures and topical
progressions.

20. 10
1.2.1 Topical structures
Topical structures are the combinations of the mood subject (mood S), topical
subject (topical S), and initial sentence element (ISE) of the t-units in the discourse.
Firstly, mood S is the structural subject of the clause. Its position is before the main
verb or auxiliary verb in the clause. And topical S is the lexical mood S which is
directly related to the discourse topic. In structural dummies such as there-sentence
or empty-it, the topical subjects are the noun phrases at the predicate, and these
structural dummies are non-topical subjects. In addition, non-topical subjects are
also the lexical mood S which are not directly related to the discourse topic. Non-
topical linguistic materials include discourse connectives, illocution markers,
modality markers, attitude markers, metatextual and commentary markers.
Discourse connectives are linguistic items indicating order and logical connectors
like consequently, however…Illocution markers are used to make explicit the
illocutionary force of the statement concerned such as for example, to illustrate the
point. Modality markers illustrate the truth value of the information discussed
including it seems probably, obviously, somebody suggests, I doubt whether.
Attitude markers such as I would like to, it seems futile to… are used to make
explicit the writer own attitude. Metatextual and commentary markers such as next,
we shall discuss, in later chapter, we will attempt to, are used to comment on the
discourse itself, language of the text or the organization of the text. Finally, ISE
refers to the initially placed discourse material in sentence, whatever its form or
type. It may be the topical S, mood S or non-topical subject.
In general, there are five possible combinations of the mood subject, topical
subject, and the ISE in a clause, and they are abbreviated as T1, T2, T3, T4, and T5.
Type 1 (T1): ISE = mood S = topical S
Type 2 (T2): ISE ≠ mood S = topical S
Type 3 (T3): ISE = mood S ≠ topical S
Type 4 (T4): ISE = topical S ≠ mood S
Type 5 (T5): ISE ≠ mood S ≠ topical S

21. 11
The clause belongs to T1 type if the ISE, mood S, and topical S coincide. One
example is the t-unit “The call of the wild (T1) was the best seller book which
brought fame to Jack London in 1903”. In this t-unit, the noun phrase “The call of
the wild” is the ISE, the mood S as well as the topical S of the clause, so the noun
phrase “The call of the wild” is bolded and marked (T1) after it. The “T2” type is
put after the topical S if the ISE is separated from mood and topical S, which
coincide. The t-unit “In order to live in a wild life, Buck (T2) has an external
conflict with Spitz- another sled-dog during their trip to go to Northland” is an
example. The ISE of the t-unit is the adverbial phrase “In order to live in a wild
life”, and the noun phrase “Buck” is both mood S and topical S of the clause. The
topical structure of the t-unit is marked T3 if ISE and mood S coincide while topical
S separate. There are two subtypes in type 3; in one variant, the mood S of the
initial main clause is a dummy, with the noun phrase in the predicate representing
the topical S, as in the t-unit “it is the moment (T3) that Buck aware of the law of
wild life”. The other variant, the initial main clause is non-topical subject, while the
topical S appears in a following sub-clause. For example, it is the t-unit “It seems
that Thornton’s Death (T3) releases Buck from the fragment bond with
civilization” in one essay in the sample. The topical S belongs to T4 if ISE and
topical S coincide, while mood S is separate. T4 often occurs in the t-unit which
consist of the topical S in an initial sub-clause and a cohesive anaphoric pronoun as
the mood S in the main clause, the clause “When Buck becomes a sled-dog with a
struggle for survival, he (T4) must be used to the law of club and fang day by day,
lesson after lesson” is an example. The last type, T5 occurs in the clause in which
the ISE, mood S, and topical S are all separate. For example, the clause “In
addition, it is also the moment (T5) that Buck recognizes the wildness, cold, and
ruthless in Spitz’s face”, the connective “in addition” is the ISE, empty-it is the
mood S, and “the moment” is the topical S. In summary, this part has made a brief
explanation on the topical structures and its types.

22. 12
1.2.2 Topical progressions
In general, discourse topic is the main idea discussed in the whole essay or
text. Subtopics are the subordinate ideas to support for the discourse topic, and they
are directly related to the discourse topic. The hierarchically arrangement of
subtopics expresses the development of ideas to contribute to the discourse topic.
According to Lautamatii (1978), the way the written sentences in discourse relate to
the discourse topic and its subtopics is called topical development of discourse.
Topical progressions which show the topical development is the sequence of
developing one sub-topic, adding new information about it in the predicate of that
subtopic, and then proceeding to develop another sub-topic in order to contribute to
the development of the discourse topic. In general, Lautimatti (Ibid.) proposed three
types of topical progressions including parallel (PP), sequential (SP), and extended
parallel (EPP). PP consists of two consecutive clauses with the same topical subject.
The use of PP is perceived by the readers as repetition of the same topics in the
essay and reinforcement of the ideas, but, if used over-extensively and at the
expense of EPP, may produce the impression of redundancy. The second type is SP,
in which the topic of the next sentence is the comment of the previous sentence, or a
new different topic. And, the use of SP is perceived by the readers as development
of individual topic by adding details to an idea. If used sensibly and in good balance
with other types of progression, it may add to an overall good quality, whereas too
much development for a sentence topic may distract the readers from the main
ideas. Thirdly, the topic in EPP is the same as the topic of the previous sentence but
is interrupted by some SP. The use of EPP is perceived by the readers as good focus
and explicitness of expression. Absence or sparse use of EPP may produce an
overall impression of an unfocused text which lack global meaning.
In this research, three types of progressions in the paragraphs of the essays
were identified using the TSA method. In addition, based on research of Schneider

23. 13
and Connor (1991), three subtypes of SPs also examined for further research on the
differences between low-rated and high-rated essays.
1.3 Review of the related studies
In general, TSA is considered as an objective method to check coherence and
proportions of topical progression in students‟ texts (Gao,2012; Almaden, 2006;
Barabas&Jumao-a, 2009; Carreon, 2006; Phuwichit (2004), Simpson, 2000;
Lautamatti, 1987; Witte &Faigley, 1981). In this part, the research on how TSA
identified the proportions of topical progressions in student texts as well as the use
of TSA as a tool for classification between low-rated and high-rated essays would
be reviewed.
1.3.1 The findings of prominent studies
This section briefly presents the findings of previous studies that investigated
the relationship between the progressions of topical structure and the assessors'
judgments of essay‟s quality. The two most prominent studies are the studies of
Schneider and Connor (1991) and Witte (1983a, 1983b). In general, both of the
research indicated that there are significant differences between the low-rated and
high-rated essays in the frequency of the three topical progressions. However, the
findings of two studies on the progressions which distinguish between low-rated
and high-rated essays are contradictory. While Witte found that low-rated essays
contained more SPs than high-rated essays, Schneider and Connor (Ibid.) found that
highly rated essays contained a high proportion of coherence-building SPs and an
EPP that helps return the essay to its main theme.
According to Schneider and Connor (Ibid.), the differences in criteria for
coding progressions led to the differences in the findings in the studies of Schneider
and Connor (1991) and Witte (1983a, 1983b). And Schneider and Connor
(1991:422) believed that "Not all sequential topics contribute equally to the
coherence of a text". It is clear that “directly related” SP which the topic of a

24. 14
sentence is related to the comment of the previous sentence and indirectly related
SP which the topic of the new sentence is partly related to the comment of the
previous sentence (indirectly related topics) build coherence in the essays. And the
subtopics which are not directly related to the discourse topic (unrelated SPs) are
not likely to contribute to create coherence in the paragraphs. Therefore, deep
investigations to the SP by examining three subtypes of SP contribute to the
coherence of the essays especially in introductory and concluding parts.
1.3.2 Findings of other research
Besides the research of Schneider and Connor (1991) and Witte (1983a,
1983b), there are other research which focused on searching the differences
between low-rated and high-rated writings such as Connor and Farmer (1990),
Makinen (1992), Burneikaite&Zabiliute (2003)Liangprayoon, Chaya&Thep-
ackraphong (2013).
As Connor and Farmer (1990) indicated, if a writer logically makes use of SP
and make good balance with the other types of topical progression, it may add to the
overall good quality. Additionally, 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 (Burneikaite&Zabiliute, 2003). And the texts are considered as poor quality
essays when PP is over-extensive and EPP is insufficient.
Moreover, by applying TSA to short compositions written in English,
Makinen (1992) concluded that good writers have the ability to develop the topics
in their compositions more evenly across several topic levels than mid-quality
writers and especially the poor writers. The reverse is true of the lowest topical
depths. Good writers tend to return to higher topic levels at the end of their
compositions more often than the writers in the other categories. In addition, the
research on the effectiveness of TSA instruction of Liangprayoon, Chaya&Thep-
ackraphong (2013) found that the proportions of topical progressions used in the
highly-rated essays were not different from those used in the low-rated ones.

25. 15
Further, both successful and less successful students employed the SP the most in
the essays.
1.4 Summary
This chapter focuses on theoretical background and literature review of the
research. The theoretical background discusses the term coherence and the TSA
framework to approach to analyze the texts. On one hand, text coherence is
expressed through text quality based on reader‟s evaluation. On the other hand,
TSA includes the analysis of topical structures and topical progressions. Therefore,
this research examines the relationship between reader‟s evaluation and TSA of the
essays. Through the literature review, there are many differences in the level of
topical depths, the proportions of topical progressions, and the balance between
topical progressions to the level of coherence in an essay, so this research aims to
identify the differences between low-rated and high-rated essays by using TSA.

26. 16
CHAPTER 2 – RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
2.1 Research methodology
2.1.1 Restatement of research questions
The two research questions raised on pages are repeated here for exploration:
Research question 1: How do the physical features in terms of lengths and the
topical structures reveal the differences between low-rated and high-rated essays of
Vietnamese students?
Research question 2: What is the relationship between holistic evaluation and
the topical progressions used in essays of Vietnamese students?
2.1.2 Research approach
The research approach is quantitative, because it is an objective approach to
achieve the research aim. For the first research question, quantitative approach helps
to identify the physical lengths and topical structures in essays written by
Vietnamese students. After analyzing the student essays, the numerical data
including the numbers of t-units, paragraphs, topical depths, the topical structures
and topical progressions of the paragraphs are collected for findings and
discussions. In particular, these data are classified into low-rated and high-rated
groups for comparing and contrasting. After that the standard deviation of the
numerical statistics are counted to examine the tendency of these features in student
essays. For research question two, the topical progressions of each group are
identified, counted, and then compared to explore the differences between the two
groups by constructing statistical models and figures. In summary, this study bases
on the statistics to investigate the differences between low-rated and high-rated
essays.

27. 17
2.1.3 Principles/Criteria for intended data collection and data analysis
The research population is the collection of 40 essays from two classes
E11QH2009 and E12QH2009 in ULIS, VNU. These essays were written in their 8th
semester in their Literature in English course in the year of 2013.
These essays are taken as the primary data for the research for two reasons.
Firstly, all these essays are written to complete the task of writing a 400 word essay
about Buck‟s conflict in the story “The Call of the Wild”. Therefore, all these
essays will show the way each student organized their ideas to develop the
discourse topic. Secondly, student essays in each class were collected into a folder
by the class monitor, and essay collections of two classes were sent to their teacher
by email for scoring. Then the teacher sent the results back to the students through
email too. It brings two advantages for the researcher. One is the convenience for
collecting all the data without difficulty and the other is that the essays were scored
by the teacher; therefore it is an appropriate set of data for searching findings for the
research questions.
2.2 Research methods
2.2.1 Topical Structure Analysis method
The choice of TSA as the research focus is motivated by the following
considerations. First, TSA probes an important aspect of texts, namely the patterns
of maintenance and shifts of topics. Such patterns contribute considerably to the
coherence of texts, to the identification of what a particular stretch of discourse is
about, and, consequently, to the comprehensibility of texts. Therefore, this is an
objective method for analyzing the student writing. Second, TSA allows for the
quantification of data which makes the study more reliable. In summary, using TSA
as a tool for analyzing student essays is carefully considered for the research
purposes.

28. 18
2.2.2 Data collection techniques
The data are essays collected from the student written products of two classes
at ULIS, VNU. They include the essay final drafts, and all of these written products
were rated by their lecturer of Literature in English. The rater is lecture Lê Thành
Trung who has great knowledge on English in general and on American Literature
in particular.
In the population of forty essays, twenty-six essays consisting of thirteen high-
rated and thirteen low-rated ones are taken as a primary source for data analysis. In
the following part, I would explain how the samples of the research are selected.
For the research objectives, it is
necessary to take the equal numbers of
high-rated and low-rated essays. By having
a glance to the essay score description
(Table 1), it could be seen that half the
essays in population are the essays with the
scores of A and A-, the other are the essays
of A+, B+, B, B-, C+, D-, and F.
number Percent
Essays 40
A+ 2 5
A 11 27.5
A- 11 27.5
B+ 2 5
B 2 5
B- 2 5
C+ 1 2.5
D- 3 7.5
F 6 15
Table 1: Essays’ score description
While the total of A+ and A essays is 13 essays and the number of low-rated
essays (B, B-, C+, D-, F) is 14 essays. Therefore, to have a good balance of low-
rated and high-rate essays for analysis, one essay mark B is taken out. Therefore,
two groups are selected, one group contains thirteen high-rated essays including two
A+ and eleven A essays, and the other group is made up by thirteen low-rated
essays including six F, three D-, one C+, two B-, and one B essays.
In summary, the numbers of essays which are chosen for analyzing the
difference between low-rated and high-rated essays in this research are thirteen
good quality and thirteen low quality essays.

29. 19
2.2.3 Data analysis procedure
This research follows the coding guidelines for TSA proposed by Schneider
and Connor (1990) (See in the Appendix 1, page II) to investigate the essays. To
analyze the essays, four steps are implemented. The first step is to divide the essays
into t-units. The second step is to identify and mark all the topical subjects in the
essays, and the third step is to define the topical structures of the topics in the
clauses. The last step is to construct a diagram corresponding to the topical structure
of the essay to identify the topical progressions of the clauses in the essays.
The following examples will illustrate the way 26 essays are analyzed. The
examples are two first paragraphs of the essay written by a Vietnamese student.
Identifying t-units and topical subjects in the essays
In general, the length of the essays will be measured in terms of t-units. In
other words, t-unit can be defined as the shortest unit which a sentence can be
reduced to, and consisting of one independent clause together with whatever
dependent clauses are attached to it. Compound and compound-complex sentences
which consists of two clauses connecting by the conjunctions and, or, but, for, nor,
yet would be viewed as containing two t-units. Predicates that share the same
subject are taken as one unit with the subject omitted. The first step in conducting
TSA is to number the clauses in the paragraph. As in the examples, the first
paragraph consists of three clauses, and they were numbered from 1 to 3.
Paragraph 1:
(1) The call of the wild (T1) was the best seller book which brought fame to Jack London in
1903. (2) The book (T1) tells a trip of a dog in his life going through a lot of happiness, hardships
and challenges. (3) When Buck becomes a sled-dog with a struggle for survival, he (T4) must be
used to the law of club and fang day by day, lesson after lesson.
And the second paragraph has 10 clauses, and they continue to be marked
from 4 to 13 at the beginning of the clause.

30. 20
Paragraph 2:
(4) In order to live in a wild life, Buck (T2) has an external conflict with Spitz- another
sled-dog during their trip to go to Northland. (5) The first reason (T1) leads to conflict is when
Buck saw the violent fight between Curly and a husky dog, (6) it is the moment (T3) that Buck
aware of the law of wild life: you must be a winner or you must die. (7) In addition, it is also the
moment (T5) that Buck recognizes the wildness, cold, and ruthless in Spitz‟s face- “ Spitz run
out his scarlet tongue in a way he had of laughing” (8) and Buck (T2) hate him with “bitter and
deathless hatred” (Source). (9) The second cause (T1) is that Spitz is very domineering; (10) he
(T1) always “growled sharp reproof now and again or cunningly threw his weight in the traces to
jerk Buck into the way he should go”. (11) The next and the most crucial reason (T1) leads to the
long fight between Buck and Spitz is that his nest was occupied by Spitz after he had a meal (12)
and “till now, Buck (T2) had avoided trouble with his enemy, (13) but this (T2) was too much”.
Identify the topical structures of the clauses in the essays
The second step is to identify the topical structures or the combinations of ISE,
mood S, and topical S of the t-units in the paragraphs. The ISE, topical S and mood
subject of each t-unit in the paragraphs are identified and then the topical structure
of each clause are defined by adding T1, T2, T3, T4 or T5 after the bolded topical S
of that t-unit. Following are the examples of two paragraphs above after they are
analyzed.
Paragraph 1:
(1) The call of the wild (T1) was the best seller book which brought fame to Jack London in 1903.
(2) The book (T1) tells a trip of a dog in his life going through a lot of happiness, hardships and
challenges. (3) When Buck becomes a sled-dog with a struggle for survival, he (T4) must be used
to the law of club and fang day by day, lesson after lesson.
Paragraph 2:
(4) In order to live in a wild life, Buck (T2) has an external conflict with Spitz- another sled-
dog during their trip to go to Northland. (5) The first reason (T1) leads to conflict is when Buck
saw the violent fight between Curly and a husky dog, (6) it is the moment (T3) that Buck aware of
the law of wild life: you must be a winner or you must die. (7) In addition, it is also the moment
(T5) that Buck recognizes the wildness, cold, and ruthless in Spitz‟s face- “ Spitz run out his scarlet
tongue in a way he had of laughing” (8) and Buck (T2) hate him with “bitter and deathless hatred”
(Source). (9) The second cause (T1) is that Spitz is very domineering; (10) he (T1) always
“growled sharp reproof now and again or cunningly threw his weight in the traces to jerk Buck into
the way he should go”. (11) The next and the most crucial reason (T1) leads to the long fight
between Buck and Spitz is that his nest was occupied by Spitz after he had a meal (12) and “till
now, Buck (T2) had avoided trouble with his enemy, (13) but this (T2) was too much”.
After all the topical structures of the clauses are identified, the frequency and
proportions of T1, T2, T3, T4, and T5 are calculated for further analysis.

31. 21
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 1 (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.
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
No Topical depth TD
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
1 The call of the wild 1
2 The book 1
3 Buck 2
4 Buck 2
5 The first reason 3
6 The moment 4
7 The moment 4
8 Buck 2
9 The second cause 3
10 He 5
11 The next and the most crucial reason 3
12 Buck 2
13 This 6
Paragraph 1
Paragraph 2

32. 22
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.
From the diagram, it can be seen that paragraph one above contains one PP
(from clause 1to 2), and one SP (from clause 2 to 3). Paragraph two is more
No Topical depth TD
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
1 The call of the wild 1
2 The book 1
3 Buck 2
4 Buck 2
5 The first reason 3
6 The moment 4
7 The moment 4
8 Buck 2
9 The second cause 3
10 He 5
11 The next and the most crucial reason 3
12 Buck 2
13 This 6
Paragraph 1
Paragraph 2

33. 23
complicated, it consists of one PP (from clause 6 to 7), five SPs (from clause 4 to 5,
5 to 6, 8 to 9, 9 to 10, and 12 to 13), and three EPPs (from clause 4 to 8, 8 to 12, and
9 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.

34. 24
CHAPTER 3 - 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 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

35. 25
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

36. 26
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

37. 27
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

38. 28
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.
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.

39. 29
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.
Figure 2: The difference on the portions of each type of topical progression in Low-rated and
high-rated essays
Figure 2 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 high-
rated 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%.
27,8
13,9
58,3
High-rated essays
Parallel Extended Parallel Sequential
38,3
12,8
43,9
Low-rated essays

40. 30
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 3 indicates the
proportions of types of progressions
in the development paragraphs of
student essays. Overall, differences
between low-rated and high-rated
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.
41,8
14,8
43,4
27
16
57
0 20 40 60
Parallel
Extended parallel
Sequential
high-rated
essays
Low-rated
essays

41. 31
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 do 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
Figure 4: The proportions of different types of
progression in the introductions of two groups of
essays
Figure 4 describes the percentage of
topical progression types in the
introductory parts of essays.
Overall, the good-essay
introductions have the same
tendency in the use of progressions
in all paragraphs. They contain
more SP, and less PP than the bad
essays.
Particularly, there is no use of EPP in the introductory paragraphs in high-
rated 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.
37,5
2,5
60
24
0
76
0 20 40 60 80
P
EP
S
high-rated
essays
Low-rated
essays

42. 32
Table 4 illustrates the uses of
three subtypes of SP in introductory
paragraphs of two group essays.
According to statistics in Table 4,
there is a significant difference in the
percentage of three subtypes of SP in
the introductions.
Introduction
low-
rated
high-
rated
low-
rated
high-
rated
S 21 19 100 100
S(d) 2 9 9.5 47.4
S(i) 8 8 38.1 42.1
S(u) 11 2 52.4 10.5
frequency percentage (%)
Table 4: The subtypes of sequential in 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
Figure 5: The proportions of different
progression types in the concluding paragraphs
Figure 5 describes the portions of
progressions in the concluding parts of
essays. In general, there is a slightly
difference in the progression
proportions in low-rated and high-rated
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
34,4
9,4
56,2
40
10
50
0 20 40 60
P
EP
S
high-rated
essays
Low-rated
essays

43. 33
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 5 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-
rated
high-
rated
S 14 8
S(d) 2 3
S(i) 1 1
S(u) 11 4
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 sub-
types of SP contribute to classify the introductions of different essay quality. High-
rated 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 high-
rated essays.
Like the finding of the study of Liangprayoon, Chaya&Thep-ackraphong
(2013), the research finds that both successful and less successful students
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44. 34
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 high-
rated 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.
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 1 and body paragraph 2 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”.
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For example, paragraph 1 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 7. 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 1 of essay 1
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 2 of essay 1
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).
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