Analyzing Topical Structure in ESL Essays: Not All Topics are Equal

Show full item record Please use this identifier to Cite or link to this item http://hdl.handle.net/1805/2649 Title: Author: Permanent Link: Analyzing Topical Structure in ESL Essays: Not All Topics are Equal Schneider, Melanie; Connor, Ulla, 1948http://hdl.handle.net/1805/2649

Topical structure analysis (TSA), a text-based approach to the study of topic in discourse, has been useful in identifying text-based features of coherence. It has also been used to distinguish between essays written by groups of native English speakers with varying degrees of writing proficiency (Witte, 1983a, 1983b). More recently, TSA has distinguished between higher and lower rated ESL essays, but with different results from those found with native speakers of English (Connor & Schneider, 1988). The present study Abstract: replicated the previous ESL study of two groups of essays written for the TOEFL Test of Written English with three groups of essays. Findings indicate that two topical structure variables, proportions of sequential and parallel topics in the essays, differentiate the highest rated group from the two lower rated groups. We offer explanations for the results and propose that all occurrences of a particular type of topic progression do not contribute equally to the coherence of a text. Analysis ESL (English as a Second Language) Keywords: Reading Comprehension Statistics Structure Discourse analysis LC Subject: Second language learning Date: 1990 Schneider, Melanie and Ulla Connor. "Analyzing Topical Structure in ESL Cite As: Essays: Not All topics are Equal". August 29, 2011. Available from IUPUI ScholarWorks. http://hdl.handle.net/1805/2649. Schneider, Melanie and Ulla Connor. "Analyzing Topical Structure in ESL Published As: Essays: Not All topics are Equal". Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 12, no. 4 (1990): 411-427. ISSN: Found At: 0272-2631 Copyright Cambridge University Press The original doi for the as-published version of the article is

10.1017/S0272263100009517. To access the doi, open the following DOI site in your browser and cut and paste the doi name where indicated: http://dx.doi.org Access to the original article may require subscription and authorized logon ID/password. IUPUI faculty/staff/students please check University Library resources before purchasing an article. Questions on finding the original article via our databases? Ask a librarian: http://www.ulib.iupui.edu/research/askalibrarian. This article submitted to IUPUI ScholarWorks as part of the OASIS Project. Article reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further Description: reproduction prohibited without permission. Permission granted through posted policies on copyright owner's website or through direct contact with copyright owner. Appears in English Collections: