An application of the thematic structure progression to enhance coherence in writing for in service english majored sciences and humanities in ho chi minh city m a 60 14 10

AN APPLICATION OF THE THEMATIC STRUCTURE PROGRESSION TO ENHANCE COHERENCE IN WRITING FOR IN-SERVICE ENGLISH MAJORED FRESHMEN AT THE UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES IN HO CH

AN APPLICATION OF THE THEMATIC STRUCTURE PROGRESSION TO ENHANCE COHERENCE IN WRITING FOR IN-SERVICE ENGLISH MAJORED FRESHMEN AT THE UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL

SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES

IN HO CHI MINH CITY

Submitted to the Department of English Linguistics and Literature

in partial fulfillment of the Master’s degree in TESOL

By

VƯU TIẾN VĨ

Supervised by

NGUYỄN HOÀNG TUẤN, PHD

HO CHI MINH CITY, MAY 2013

AN APPLICATION OF THE THEMATIC STRUCTURE

PROGRESSION TO ENHANCE COHERENCE IN WRITING FOR SERVICE ENGLISH MAJORED FRESHMEN AT THE UNIVERSITY

IN-OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES IN HO CHI MINH CITY

in terms of the Statements of Requirements for Theses in Master’s Programs issued by the Higher Degree Committee

This thesis has not previously been submitted for the award of any degree or diploma in any other institution

Ho Chi Minh City, April 20th, 2013

retention and use of Master’s Theses deposited in the Library

In terms of these conditions, I agree that the original of my thesis deposited in the library should be accessible for purposes of study and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the Library for care, loan or reproduction of theses

Ho Chi Minh City, April 20th, 2013

encouragement, my thesis would not have been consummated on time Along the odyssey of the completion of the work, his willingness to discuss the concerned issues shed light of hopes unto the route on which I make every effort to advance Furthermore, I am greatly indebted to his generosity and kindness He often offered me valuable feedback, line-by-line comments, insightful discussion and constructive criticisms from the preliminary draft to the completed work Without his insightful suggestions, the thesis would be far from completed

I would like to thank all the lecturers of the TESOL graduate program at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities for their dedication and helpful instruction during the course

I would also like to express my warmest gratitude and appreciation to the first-year English majored students at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities who actively participate in the pilot study in attempts to test the validity of thematic progression in students’ writing Without their participation, the final results of the thesis may not have been satisfactory Last but not least, my wholehearted gratitude also goes to my beloved family who encouraged, supported tremendously in the completion of the study

advanced language learners may have difficulties in creating a well-organized writing paper Among all criteria to assess a good writing, coherence is claimed

to be the most abstract but essential, whose subcomponents and characteristics are difficult to analyze and describe since many learners, even with a good command of grammatical knowledge, still lack the ability to compose well- organized essays They have deficiency in the knowledge of coherence and display limited ability to write effectively and successfully Therefore, it drives the researchers the imperative need to uncover a heuristic tool which could help our learners handle coherence problems such as cohesive devices, conjunction… However, few of them have been examined empirically on their effects so far The study aims to investigate effectiveness of thematic structure progression in improving the students’ writing for English majored freshmen at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Ho Chi Minh City Students’ essays before and after the revision were rated and compared to see which group gain more score in general writing quality as well as in coherence after the revision The experimental group’s essays were analyzed additionally to examine whether they improve coherence and whether they develop their ideas in a more logical way In addition, the group was required

to apply the strategy to their next assignment and it was compared with the first essay written at the beginning of the study, which aimed to examine if our previous instruction was sufficient for the students to apply the strategy independently Besides students’ essays, questionnaires were distributed to survey students’ perspectives on the revising strategy and whether it promoted their awareness of their own idea progressions and of the elements of textual coherence

were better able to modify ill-developed supporting ideas by further providing necessary information to complete the development Furthermore, some ambiguously- connected ideas were pinpointed and the gaps among their meaningful relations were bridged by giving transitional sentences These improvements were reflected in the different patterns of thematic progressions

in students’ two versions of writing In addition, the questionnaire response also revealed students’ general positive perception of the strategy Most students agreed that thematic progression helped them to be better aware of the coherence in their writing and that it gave them a tangible way for self-revision

in which they can approach the coherence problem level by level The

follow-up interviews showed the somewhat different opinions on the technique held

by writers of different writing proficiency

On the grounds of the findings, some recommendations are made to the students, the teachers, the syllabus on teaching and learning writing as well as the teaching methods of writing to improve the students’ coherence in their writing paper

Retention and use of the thesis ii

Acknowledgement iii

Abstract iv

Table of contents vi

List of tables .xiii

List of charts xvi

List of diagrams and figures xvii

Abbreviations xviii

Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale to the study 1

1.2 Background to the study 2

1.3 Purpose of the study 3

1.4 Significance of the study 4

1.5 Limitation of the study 4

1.6 Organization of the study 5

Chapter 2 LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Thematic progression 6

2.1.1 Simple linear thematic progression 7

2.1.2 Thematic progression with continuous/ constant theme 8

2.1.3 Thematic progression with derived theme 8

2.2 Coherence in writing 10

2.3 Types of coherence in writing 12

2.6.1 Experiential/Ideational Meanings 16

2.6.1.1 Material process 16

2.6.1.2 Behavioural process 16

2.6.1.3 Mental process 17

2.6.1.4 Verbal process 17

2.6.1.5 Relational process 17

2.6.1.6 Existential process 18

2.6.2 Interpersonal Meanings 18

2.6.3 Textual Meanings 18

2.7 Theme and Rheme 19

2.7.1 Theme 19

2.7.2 Rheme 19

2.7.3 Classification of theme 20

2.7.3.1 With regard to its complexity 20

2.7.3.1.1 Single theme 20

2.7.3.1.2 Re-entry theme (multi-theme) 20

2.7.3.1.3 Sentence entry theme (sentence theme) 20

2.7.3.2 With regard to its meta-function 21

2.7.3.2.1 Topical theme 21

2.7.3.2.2 Interpersonal theme 21

2.7.3.2.3 Textual theme 22

2.7.3.3 With regard to its position 23

2.7.3.3.1 Unmarked theme 23

2.7.3.4.2 Hypernew 24

2.7.3.4.3 Macrotheme 25

2.4 Summary 27

Chapter 3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 3.1 Research questions 28

3.2 Research design 29

3.3 Participants 30

3.3.1 The teacher subjects 30

3.3.2 The student subjects 30

3.3.3 The raters 30

3.3.4 The researcher 31

3.4 Instruments and materials 31

3.4.1 Instruments 31

3.4.1.1 The experimental teaching 32

3.4.1.2 The tests 32

3.4.1.3 The questionnaires 32

3.4.1.3.1 The teachers’ questionnaires 32

3.4.1.3.2 The students’ questionnaires 33

3.4.1.4 Class observations 33

3.4.1.5 Interviews 34

3.4.1.6 Procedure of doing research 34

3.5 Data analyzing method 36

3.6 Data collection procedure 36

3.6.3 Revision stage 40

3.7 Summary 42

Chapter 4 DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS 4.1 Responses to the questionnaires 43

4.1.1 Responses to the students’ questionnaires 43

4.1.1.1 Responses for background information 43

4.1.1.1.1 Students’ years of age 43

4.1.1.1.2 Students’ gender 44

4.1.1.1.3 Where the students studied before entering the USSH 44

4.1.1.1.4 The time the students studied English as a foreign language 45

4.1.1.1.5 Students’ participation in extra-curricular writing activities 46

4.1.1.2 Data on participants’ viewpoints on writing 46

4.1.1.2.1 Role of writing in language acquisition 46

4.1.1.2.2 Students’ opinions on learning writing 47

4.1.1.2.3 Students’ self-evaluation of their writing skill 48

4.1.1.2.4 Summary 49

4.1.1.3 Responses for the learning of writing and knowledge of thematic structure 4.1.1.3.1 Students’ strategies of writing 49

4.1.1.3.2 The difficulties that students may face in writing 50

4.1.1.3.3 Students’ knowledge of thematic progression 51

4.1.1.4 Responses for students’ attitude towards the roles of thematic progression 52

4.1.1.5 Summary 53

4.1.2 Responses to teachers’ questionnaire 53

4.1.2.1 Responses for teachers’ background information 53

4.1.2.2 Responses for teachers’ responses to the criteria in assessing the students’ writing 54

4.1.2.3 Teachers’ opinions on teaching writing 55

4.1.2.4 Teachers’ opinions on coherence in writing 56

4.1.2.5 Teachers’ opinions on the role thematic structure progression in improving the students’ coherence in writing 57

4.1.2.6 Summary 57

4.2 The results of the two tests 58

4.2.1 The comparison of overall writing scores 58

4.2.1.1 The pre-test scores 58

4.2.1.2 The post-test scores 60

4.2.1.3 Difference in the two groups’ pre-test and post-test scores 61

4.2.1.4 Classification of pre-test and post-test of two groups 62

4.2.1.5 Comparison of range of difference between pretest and posttest of the control-group and the experimental group 65

4.2.2 Comparison of coherence scores 67

4.3 Qualitative analysis of students’ samples(using thematic structure progression) 70

4.4 The results of the interview 81

4.4.1 The students’ perception of thematic structure 81

4.4.2 The students’ attitude towards the effect of thematic structure 84

4.4.3 Students’ difficulties in perceiving thematic structure 86

4.5 Summary of the findings 88

Chapter 5 CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS

5.1 Summary of findings 91

5.2 Recommendations 93

5.2.1 To the teachers 93

5.2.2 To the students 94

5.2.3 The syllabus and the coursebook 95

5.3 Stages of teaching writing with thematic structure 95

5.3.1 Pre-teaching writing 95

5.3.1.1 Brainstorming 95

5.3.1.2 Identifying context of situation and culture 95

5.3.1.3 Getting acquaintance with thematic development 96

5.3.2 While-teaching writing 96

5.3.2.1 Write the first draft 96

5.3.2.2 Revise for coherence 96

5.3.2.3 Revise for cohesion 97

5.3.3 Editing 101

5.4 Suggestions for future research 101

5.5 Conclusion 102

BIBLIOGRAPHY 103

APPENDICES 108

APPENDIX 1: STUDENT SAMPLES 108

APPENDIX 2: QUESTIONNAIRE FOR TEACHER 111

APPENDIX 3: QUESTIONNAIRE FOR STUDENTS (BEFORE EXPERIMENTAL TEACHING) 113

APPENDIX 4: QUESTIONNAIRE FOR STUDENTS (VIETNAMESE VERSION) 115

APPENDIX 5: QUESTIONNAIRE FOR STUDENTS

(AFTER EXPERIMENTAL TEACHING) 117

APPENDIX 6: QUESTIONNAIRE FOR STUDENTS (VIETNAMESE VERSION) 119

APPENDIX 7: STUDENTS’ INTERVIEW QUESTIONNAIRE 121

APPENDIX 8: CLASSROOM OBSERVATION REPORT 122

APPENDIX 8A: CLASSROOM OBSERVATION REPORT 1 122

APPENDIX 8B: CLASSROOM OBSERVATION REPORT 2 125

APPENDIX 8C: CLASSROOM OBSERVATION REPORT 3 128

APPENDIX 9: JACOB’S SCORING RATE (2010) 131

APPENDIX 10: LESSON PLAN 1 134

APPENDIX 11: LESSON PLAN 2 137

APPENDIX 12: LESSON PLAN 3 139

APPENDIX 13: LESSON PLAN 4 141

APPENDIX 14: LESSON PLAN 5 144

APPENDIX 15: LESSON PLAN 6 146

APPENDIX 16: LESSON PLAN 7 149

APPENDIX 17: LESSON PLAN 8 152

APPENDIX 18: OVERALL WRITING PROFICIENCY SCORES OF THE CONTROL GROUP AND THE EXPERIMENTAL GROUP 154

APPENDIX 13: COHERENCE SCORES OF THE CONTROL GROUP AND THE EXPERIMENTAL GROUP 156

APPENDIX 14: POST-TEST 158

LIST OF TABLES

Table 4.2 The division of the two sexes

activities

improving learners’ speaking skills

scores

Table 4.18 Comparison of the two groups’ post- test scores

scores

the two groups

second-semester test scores

control group and experimental group

group before and after the treatment

the control group and experimental group after the treatment

curriculum

LIST OF CHARTS

structure progression plays an essential role in improving coherence in their writing”

LIST OF DIAGRAMS AND FIGURES

theme

CD : Communicative Dynamism EFL : English as a Foreign Language ESL : English as a Second Language FFL : Faculty for Foreign Languages FSP : Functional Sentence Perspective L1 : The first language

L2 : The second language SPSS : Statistics Package for Social Sciences TESOL : Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages USSH : University of Social Sciences and Humanities

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY

The chapter begins with the rationale of the study Then comes a background to the teaching of English writing at university in Vietnam Last comes the aim and the significance of the study, along with limitations which are to supply background information for this study at university in Vietnam nowadays

1.1 Rationale to the study

English writing skill is a nightmare for most freshmen at university Most of the students even with a good command of grammatical knowledge still lack the ability

to compose a fluent and well-organized essay In the meantime, teachers also find it hard to assist students in producing pieces of quality academic writing (Synanondh

& Padgate, 2005) Many instructors as well as students believe that it is because of students’ vocabulary deficiency and incapability of writing “perfect and complicated” sentences Under such an assumption, writing classes have been drills

of sentence patterns, substitutions, completion or imitation of sentences and so on (Myles, 2002) It means that a full essay becomes just a collection of various sentence patterns and sophisticated vocabulary items Though grammatical accuracy and vocabulary appropriateness are surely a part of a well-written composition, there is something more important and easier to command - discourse structure, which is mostly ignored

As a lecturer of the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, I have taught English writing for English majored in-sevice students for a long time During my teaching at this university, I have observed that many students face numerous difficulties in learning writing They have no idea of how to write a well-organized English composition What they can do is just write down anything that comes to their minds As a result, their compositions are just unrelated sentences or fragments put together, which make the writing incoherent

The underlying reason of these problems is the lack of the awareness of different preferences at the discourse level (Joe, 2002) Coherence features such as thematic progression and information distribution are largely ignored in the current

mainstream models of L2 competence (Mauranen, 1996) As Lautamatti(1987) claims, students who have problems on discourse level rather than word or sentence level might benefit from exercises which help them to perceive how the theme is developed in discourse and to learn to take advantage of predictability relating to thematic development (p.109)

Accordingly, discourse-oriented teaching explicitly will definitely be of great benefit to solve the problems of their incoherent writing By reviewing related studies, Kaplan (1990) proposed that Functional Sentence Perspective (FSP) is of paramount importance for the study of coherence in writing because it introduces the notion of theme and rheme, connects it to the information structure and addresses its relations to text coherence

In summary, with the hope to help my students to overcome the obstacles in learning English writing, the proposed study for my M A thesis is carefully designed to find out potential difficulties facing freshmen of USSH in dealing with coherence in their writing and then to raise a number of feasible solutions to the problem in question Among the suggested solutions is the instruction of thematic structure progression, a discourse-oriented approach Since there are no related researches conducted with the freshmen at USSH, it must be beneficial to investigate if it is a workable approach to improve students’ coherence by means of explicit instruction of thematic development in teaching and learning English writing skills

1.2 Background to the study

Many native instructors have long noticed that the writing produced by their international students does not match native speakers’ expectations in terms of , for example, what constitutes persuasiveness or coherent organization Even advanced students who have a good command of the syntactic structure and lexicon of English may still write papers that are considered ineffective and inadequate by native instructors (Kaplan, 1990) In order words, non-native writers’ challenges in writing are not necessarily due to limited proficiency in syntax and lexis (Hatch, 1992), and as a result, grammatically correct ESL texts may still violate native

speaker expectation at the discourse level (Martin & Rose, 2003) Kaplan (1990) proposed that writers from different cultural and language backgrounds may have different assumptions about preferred rhetorical organization, and accordingly, may structure and develop their compositions differently

Kaplan’s theory has appealed to many language teachers’ intuitions and inspired numerous discourse contrastive studies which examine differences and similarities

in writing across culture/ languages, mostly between English and another language Furthermore, in Vietnam, teaching of writing at high school takes place mainly by practising sentences in isolation, matching items, gaps filling, dictation, translation Therefore, the university students encounter a lot of questions when they are asked

to write a complete composition As a result, they do not know what to write, how

to achieve coherence and cohesion at discourse level Coherent issues such as thematic progression and information distribution are largely ignored in the mainstream model of L2 competence (Mauranen, 1996) Its componential elements are said to be obscure and hard to understand, thus posing a great deal of difficulties not only for instructors in designing effective pedagogical techniques but also for learners in developing strategies to improve their writing (Cerniglia & Connor, 1990)

With the hope to help the students to overcome these problems, this thesis attempts

to apply thematic progression to help students realize the relationship between this sentence and the others Therefore, the thesis is intended to deal with coherence in respect of thematic structure as a major contributor to coherence of the whole text Meanwhile, the thesis, in applying thematic structure in analysis of university students’ compositions tries to find out the problems of incoherence and to revise these incoherent compositions, thus provide some pedagogical implications for both teachers and students

1.3 Purpose of the study

The study aims to investigate into the following issues:

 What effects does the teaching of thematic structure progression bring to the students?

 What is the students’ attitude towards the instruction of thematic structure progression after the experimental teaching at USSH?

1.4 Significance of the study

Many studies have indicated that lack of competence in writing proficiently in English is due more to the lack of composing competence than to the lack of linguistic competence (Mauranen, 1996) Many researchers also suggest that the appropriate discourse structure should be taught to L2 learners early because the learners need time to develop their organizational ability However, little instruction

in this respect is actually being done in EFL/ESL teaching classes in Vietnam

In addition, although there are studies exploring ESL/EFL English composition

in the light of discourse analysis in Vietnam, most of the studies focus on error

coherent.What’s more, few studies address how to apply discourse concepts into the actual teaching curriculum Teachers still aren’t provided with enough materials and sources Many college teachers also think it not so workable to teach discourse concepts partly because of students’ limited linguistic proficiency and partly because of the elusive, probabilistic nature of those concepts Yet, many studies have shown that writing demands more than linguistic proficiency and the instruction of discourse structure is feasible and should start as early as possible It

is expected that by providing the instruction of thematic structure, this study will encourage university English teachers to start a discourse-oriented writing class with ease and confidence

1.5 Limitation of the study

There are two major limitations in the study First of all, the subjects of the current study are limited The research design is to examine English majored freshmen at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Ho Chi Minh City who have studied English at college before going to USSH for higher education, and therefore they have the basic understanding of the format of writing English They have higher language proficiency than the remaining freshmen from other departments

1 A conjunction that shows the semantic relation between the element in the text and some other elements that are crucial to the interpretation of it (Halliday and Hasan, 1976)

and are ready to learn and write English compositions immediately when they are asked Secondly, the experimental study was carried out for only eight weeks It took such a short time that the researcher couldn’t count the future effect of thematic progression in their writing as well as the effect of it into applying other skills such as translation and reading…

1.6 Organization of the study

The thesis consists of five main chapters irrespective of the conclusion:

Chapter 1 describes the background to the study, states the rationale for teaching

thematic structure progression for English majored freshmen at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Ho Chi Minh City, sets the aim of the study, and frames the research questions Also included in this chapter are the methodology employed in the study, the significance of the study, a brief overview of the thesis and the study’s limitations and delimitations

Chapter 2 works on the theory about theme and rheme, coherence and thematic

progression in connection with writing teaching Also embraced in this chapter is a brief review of the approaches in teaching writing, some techniques applicable in teaching writing and the prior related studies on learning and teaching writing

Chapter 3 describes the methodology employed in the research including the

research questions, research design, participants, materials and instruments, data collection procedures and assumptions

Chapter 4 analyzes and discusses the results from (1) the student subjects’

responses to the two students’ questionnaires, (2) the teacher subjects’ responses to the teacher’s questionnaire, (3) the results from the listening and writing sections of the two tests, and (4) the students’ recording before and after the experimental teaching The aim of the data analysis is to find out the answers to the research questions mentioned in the previous chapter

Chapter 5 summarizes the findings, answers the research questions and develops

some recommendations to the students, the teachers and the syllabus on teaching and learning writing This chapter also suggests some teaching strategies and acknowledges the contributions the study made to the teaching and learning of writing in the University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Ho Chi Minh City

CHAPTER 2

LITERATURE REVIEW

Chapter II addresses relevant literature published including factors affecting the teaching and learning of English writing, research related to the methods of teaching writing especially in Vietnam, and the effectiveness of thematic structure progression in improving the coherence in student’s writing

2.1 Thematic structure progression

The notion of thematic structure progression is one of the most important key terms

in the theory of Danes Thematic progression analysis is a method based on the fundamental concepts of Theme and Rheme It investigates the contribution that thematic organization makes to cohesive development of the text and helps demonstrate the manner in which paragraphs are organized across sentence boundaries by exploring the way in which Themes and Rhemes of successive sentences are linked and merge into a text macro structure (McCarthy, 1991) Theme and Rheme are defined differently by different schools of thought For example, according to the Prague School theory, the Theme is the information that

“is known or at least obvious in the given situation and from which the speaker proceeds” (Fries, 1983, p.116) In systemic functional theory, on the other hand, the Theme is the element that serves as “the point of departure of the message” (Halliday, 2004) Berry (1996) has defined Theme as a grammatical means of prioritizing meaning She discovers the importance in the position of Theme and Rheme in contribution to the whole text coherence In the other word, order plays a very important role inimplying that the sentence’s semantic and pragmatic meanings as intended by the speaker, especially in English and Vietnamese For example, although English sentences such as “She slowly turns towards him, gun in hand,” “Slowly, she turns towards him, gun in hand” and “Gun in hand, she slowly turns towards him” all appear to convey the same basic meaning, a different Theme

is foregrounded in each case, resulting in subtle differences in intended meaning This works similarly for Vietnamese counterparts of the English examples Specifically, "Cô chầm chậm quay sang phía anh, súng trong tay" [She slowly turns

towards him, gun in hand], "Chầm chậm, cô quay sang phía anh, súng trong tay" [Slowly, she turns towards him, gun in hand], and "Súng trong tay, cô chầm chậm quay sang phía anh" [Gun in hand, she slowly turns towards him], all share the same core meaning but with a different nuance in emphasis

According to Danes, Theme plays an important role in constructing a organized framework (Danes, 1974, p.113) He proposes three patterns of thematic progression:

well- Simple linear thematic progression

 Thematic progression with a continuous / constant Theme

 Thematic progression with derived theme

In addition to these patterns of thematic progression, he also points out another typical modification of Simple Linear thematic progression That is thematic progression with a thematic jump (Danes, p.118)

2.1.1 Simple Linear Thematic progression

In the simple linear thematic progression, the previous Rhem (R1) will become the Theme of the second sentence (T2) This kind of progression helps to connect the given and the new information anaphorically in the comment preceding (Weissberg, 1984)

T2 (=R1) R2

T3 (=R2) R3

Figure 2.1: Danes’s Simple Linear Thematic progression

This is illustrated with an example from the history textbook corpus

So combination of assertiveness by males and acquiescence by females may have

pointed toward social divisions based by gender One result of such social divisions has been a comparative lack of information about the role of women in history The

reconstruction of this role, the restoring of women to history has been a leading

theme of historical research in the present generation

In this example, the Rheme is “social divisions” which becomes Theme 2 in the next sentence The Rheme 2 is “the role of women” which becomes theme 3 in the last sentence

2.1.2 Thematic progression with continuous/ constant theme

In the thematic progression with constant Theme, the Themes of all sentences remain the same

Here is an example from the story “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” by Irving

Some years ago, a man named Ichabod Crane lived is Sleepy Hollow Crane was

tall and very thin; the local schoolmaster and the most learned person in the area

He was fir to his students, a source of gossip for the village wives, and above all, a

collector of ghost stories During the day, he would sit before the fire and listen to

tales of ghosts and evils

(The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Irving)

In this example, the Theme 1 “a man named Ichabod Crane” become Crane in the next sentence and “he” in the third and forth sentence Thus it forms a thematic progression with a constant/ continuous Theme

2.1.3 Thematic progression with derived Theme

In the thematic progression with derived theme, “the topics of each sentences are individually different but can still be considered “given” since they are all derived from the same overriding theme” (Weissberg, 1984, p.488)

T T1 R1

T2 R2 T3 R3

Figure 2.3: Danes’s Thematic progression with derived Theme

Here is the example This is my new road bike The wheel rims are carbon fiber The handle bars are also carbon fiber But the gears are steels

In this example, Theme 1 The wheel, Theme 2 The handle bars and Theme 3 The

gear are individual different Themes but they refer back to the bicycle as a whole,

which the reader knows about Therefore, the different topics are considered as

“given” as opposed to “new” information

Sometimes the Rheme can be split into different parts containing different ideas in subsequent clause Therefore, it is also called Split Rheme Progression

T1 R1

T2 R2 T4 R4 T3 R3

Figure 2.4: Danes’s Thematic progression with derived Rheme

This is an example:

All substances can be divided into two classes: elementary substances and compounds An elementary substance is a substance which consists of atoms of only one kind A compound is a substance which consists of atoms of two or more different kinds (Danes, p.121)

In this example, the Rheme two classes is divided into two different Rhemes:

elementary substances and compounds which develop into Theme 1 an elementary

substance and Theme 2 a compound respectively in the subsequent sentences

Regarding to thematic progression, Fries (1983) argued thatthematic progression and thematic content corelatedvwith the structure and method of development of a text He demonstrated that the destruction of the paragraph’s thematic progression could tủn a reasonably well-organized text into a rather incoherent one Eggins

(2005) also proposes a similar system of three thematic progression patterns that can be used to examine the method of development in the text She differentiates between the Theme- Reiteration pattern (similar to Daneš’ Repeated-Theme), the Zig-Zag pattern (similar to Daneš’ Rheme-Theme) and the Multiple-Rheme pattern,

in which "the Theme of one clause introduces a number of different pieces of information, each of which is then picked up and made Theme in subsequent clauses" (p 325) Eggins argues that the Theme-Reiteration pattern continues to keep the same participant as Theme and provides the text with a clear focus The Zig-Zag pattern, on the other hand, gives the text a sense of cumulative development by building on newly introduced information The last pattern, commonly found in longer expository texts, helps establish the underlying principle

of organization for a text, "with both the zig-zag and theme reiteration strategies being used for elaborating on each of the main thematic points" (p 326) Therefore,

it is necessary for the teacher to help the students to recognize different pattern of thematic structure and apply these patterns into the appropriate discourse of the composition

2.2 Coherence in writing

Coherence is an important indicator of a good writing which has a strong organization, cohesion, logical sequencing and clear progression as well as the smooth connection of ideas (Hugh, 2003) According to Cook (1989: 40), coherence is the “quality of being meaningful and unified” It is dependent on how sentences fit together to form a whole (Bardovi – Harlig, 1990:39) It indicates the relationship of connection among ideas, the continuity of sense boundary the sentence level, grammatical unit (McCarthy) and focuses on communicative purposes of the discourse, thematic development and information organization Coherence, a prominent rhetorical feature of effective Halliday (2000) was defined

to be a set of the following components: “(a) having an overall discourse topic, (b) comprising a set of relevant assertions relating logically among themselves by means of subordination, coordination and/or super-ordination, and (c) being organized by information structure”

However, it is a rather complex concept and a variety of definitions have been given

by linguists or researchers from different points of view, each trying to answer the question of what makes a text coherent These diverse views on coherence have thus caused extensive controversy Johns (1986), for example, reviews relevant literature and then defines coherence as a feature consisting of two constructs which are cohesion and unity To be more concrete, unity is determined by how propositions stick to the topic sentence in paragraph while cohesion is the means available in the surface forms of the text to signal relationships that exist between sentences or clausal units in the text (Grabe & Kaplan, 1996: 56) As Gallo and Rink (1985) put it:

“Unity is achieved by relating the main part of each supporting sentence directly to the controlling idea of the topic sentence” (p.25) These devices and many more help to link ideas within a paragraph (Kies, 2004) Tannen (1984) defined coherence as the underlying organizational structure which unifies and the words and sentences in discourse and which makes these words and sentences significant for the reader William (2003) considered coherence as “the experience of recognizing what all the sentences in a piece of writing add up to” (p.83) Richard & Schimidt (2002) defined coherence as “the relationship which links the meaning of utterances in a discourse or

of the sentences in a text (p.85) In addition, unlike other linguists, Fitzgerald and Spiegel (1986) separated the two concepts in defining cohesion as “specific linguistic links creating connections between sentences” and coherence as “the overall discourse level property of unit or how well a text held together” (p.263) In favor of this view, Lim (2000) also stated that there was a correlation between

‘idea’ and ‘form’ in the writing which reflect a significant relationship between two levels of language: discourse semantic and grammar

To use language effectively, the students must ensure that the language holds together into a coherent, intelligible whole In a paragraph, every sentence and every phrase contribute to the meaning of the whole piece, and thus creating a logical argument that makes sense from one idea to another ((Van Dijk,1992) The unity and relatedness of a text is in part a result of a recognizable pattern for the propositions and ideas in the passage, but it is also a function of the grammatical devices that strengthen the global unity and create local connectedness (Celce-

Murcia & Olshtain 2000) In addition, students should be trained to construct language at sentence level to meet the goal of discourse and create a unified text at discourse level One important way to create a unified whole in a text is through the construction of cohesion and coherence

2.3 Types of coherence in writing

Johns (1986) proposed two types of coherence: text-based coherence and

reader-based coherence Text-reader-based coherence refers to lexical and grammatical structures

which contribute to the connection of sentences Coherence can be achieved with the help of the application of cohesive devices between sentences and paragraphs

“repetition of key words, synonyms, and pronouns” or “using transition words and phrases” as well as cohesive ties (reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction and lexical cohesion) help to make the ideas of the text logically and smoothly connected together (Smalley, 2001:294-95) However, this text-based coherence just put great emphasis on sentence-level coherence rather than coherence in broader aspects It is unarguably necessary condition of a coherent text but it is not

sufficient for well-organized writing text (Hatch, 1992) While text-based

coherence just focuses on the surface feature of cohesion and unity at sentence level, reader-based coherence concerns about coherence in terms of discourse-level features It examines the studies of information organization, thematic development and communicative purpose of a discourse from which “the theme and the intent of the author” are inferred (Grabe & Kaplan, 1996:71) By analyzing the information structure such as topic-comment, theme and rheme, given and new information, reader can take a grasp of the intended meaning of the writer

Therefore, writing should be viewed as not only an interpretive process but also an interactive process in which both writers and speaker should take the presence of their audience into consideration to achieve the coherence, the relationship which

links the meaning of utterances in a discourse or of the sentences in a text 2.4

Coherence and cohesion

Coherence and cohesion are two important aspects in a proficient writing These two discourse features are considered important indicators of writing quality by both native and non-native raters Cohesion, as Halliday and Hasan (1976) put it, is

“a semantic relation between an element in the text and some other element that is crucial to the interpretation of it” (p.8) It is constructed by cohesive ties and lexical cohesion The cohesive relations were divided into five major categories: reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction, and lexical cohesion Referential ties usually include pronominal ties, demonstrative ties, and comparative ties Substitution, as well as ellipsis, was divided into nominal, verbal, and clausal substitution (ellipsis) When it comes to conjunction, Halliday and Husan further classified it into four types: additive, adversative, causal, and temporal Finally, there are still two types

of lexical cohesion: reiteration (repeating the same word) and collocation (regular co-occur lexical items)

Categories of

Reference

Substitution and ellipsis

they got sunburn

Lexical cohesion

desk

ripped off and the pages were torn

Table 2.1: Cohesive devices (Nunan, 1999: 19)

Regarding the studies focusing on the relationship between cohesion and overall discourse coherence, different results were reported By examining the relationship between the use of cohesive markers and writing quality, some researchers claimed that better use of different types and frequency of cohesive features can contribute

to better writing quality and result in more coherent information organization (Nunan, 1999) In contrast, other researchers reported that there was no significant relationship between the number of cohesive devices and the writing quality Robert and Kreuz (1993) provided a good example in explaining the relationship between coherence and cohesion by stating four possible combinations between coherence and coherence mechanism (cohesion)

 Coherence mechanisms are present in the discourse and the

discourse is judged as coherent

 No coherence mechanisms are present in the discourse and the

discourse is judged as non-coherent

 A discourse is judged as coherent even though no coherence

mechanisms are present

 A discourse is judged as non-coherent when there are coherence

2.5 Rhetorical pattern in English written discourse

The construction of the ideas of the text not only relies on the writers’ command of grammar and lexical resources but also the creation of the well-formed sentences

One difficulty EFL learners confronted in the process of learning to write was the rhetoric styles which were different from culture to culture (Lim, 2000) For instance, the criteria for good writing might be significantly different in many ways

In Western society, a highly argumentative tone and straight forwardness in rhetoric were encouraged and taught as regular component for writing However, that might not be the criteria for good writing in some Asian countries (Ramanathan & Atkinson, 1999) Kaplan (1966) explored that students in Eastern countries used spiral pattern in conducting their EFL writing, while native English speaker preferred linear pattern when writing Scollon and Scollon (1997) in their book Intercultural communication offered a very distinct example concerning the difference between Western and Asian rhetoric Based on the Scollons, the Western speaker tended to open a discourse by introducing the main point before he/ she expounded the reasons or arguments in supporting the main topic In other words, Westerners preferred deductive approach, but Asian people usually used inductive approach The disparity between them can be originated from the diversity of the cultural, linguistic and rhetorical conventions (Leki, 1991) Western essay strictly follows the thesis statement and topic sentence The following ideas are well-organized and support to topic sentence Vietnamese essay, however, is circular Students don’t go directly to their topic but approach to indirectly (Vi Tran- A

http://castle.eiu.edu/~manifest/Issue2/pedagogy.htm)

In conclusion, most Vietnamese learners tend to adopt the rhetoric pattern in their mother language to conduct their English paragraphs Therefore, the researcher should put great emphasis on the need to guide the students to arrange the ideas in the writing piece with a central focus on discourse level (Matsuda,1997) In order

to produce written work easily comprehensible to L1 readers, attention needs to be given to patterns of rhetoric preferred in English written discourse

2.6 Metafunction of language

According to Thompson (1996:28), there are three metafunctions of language: the experiential/ideational, the interpersonal, and the textual metafunction

2.6.1 Experiential/Ideational Meanings

Ideational metafunction consists of two sub functions: the experiential and the logical The experiential function is concerned with the context or ideas, while the logical function is concerned with the relationships between ideas

The experiential or representational function of language is realized by the transitivity of language They are meanings about phenomena, about things (living and non-living, abstract and concrete), about goings on (what the things are or do) and the circumstances surrounding these happenings and doings by the field of discourse

Halliday (1994:107-109) classified these various processes into six principle processes types: Material, Behavioural, Mental, Verbal, Relational, Existential and Meteorological Process

2.6.1.1 Material process: is process of material doing or happening physically, in

which involve some other participant or entity They are actor, the entity or which

does something and Goal, the entity which may be done

For example:

She was waiting me for so long

Table 2.2: Example of Material Process (Halliday, 1994)

2.6.1.2 Behavioural process: is process of physiological and psychological

behaviour, like breathing, dreaming, snoring, smiling, hiccupping, looking,

watching, listening, and pondering The main participant, the Behaver, is a

conscious being

For example:

He is watching television

Table 2.3: Example of Behavioural Process (Halliday, 1994)

2.6.1.3 Mental process: is one of sensing: feeling, thinking, perceiving There are

three types: affective or reactive (feeling); cognitive (thinking), and perceptive (perceiving through the five senses) The participant roles in Mental processes are

Senser and Phenomenon

For example: John saw an airplane in the sky

Table 2.4: Example of Mental Process (Halliday, 1994)

2.6.1.4 Verbal process: are processes of saying, or more accurately, of

symbolically signaling The participant responsible for verbal process is Sayer, the one to whom the verbal process is directed is Receiver

For example: He told the truth to the police

Table 2.5: Example of Verbal Process (Halliday, 1994)

2.6.1.5 Relational process: is processes that relate a participant to its identity or

description Thus, there are two main types: Identifying Process and Atributive Process

 Identifying Process: relate a participant to its identity, role of meaning The

participant roles are Token and Value Token stands for what is being defined, while Value defines

For example: He was very smart

Table 2.6: Example of Identifying Process (Halliday, 1994)

 Attributive Process: relate a participant to its general characteristics or

description The participant carrying the characteristics is known as the carrier and the characteristic is known as attribute

For example: The weather becomes warmer

The weather becomes Warmer

Table 2.7: Example of Attributive Process (Halliday, 1994)

2.6.1.6 Existential process: is process of existence They are expressed by verbs of

existing: ‘be’, ‘exist’, ‘arise’, and the participant function as Existent

For example:

There are forty- five students

Table 2.8: Example of Existential Process (Halliday, 1994)

This involves looking at what kinds of role relations are established talk, what attitudes interactants express to and about each other, what kind of things they find funny and how they negotiate to take turns, etc

2.7.3 Textual Meanings

Textual metafunction uses language to organize our experiential, logical and interpersonal meanings into a coherent and, in the case of written and spoken language, linear whole It expresses the relation of language to its environment, including both the verbal environment what has been said or written before (co-text) and nonverbal, situational environment (context) These meanings are realized through patterns of Theme and cohesion

Textual meanings are most centrally influenced by mode of discourse They are realized by Theme and Rheme Theme and Rheme are two major elements that

make up a clause in English The theme can be identified as that element which appears first in the clause; the rest is being the Rheme This identification in terms of position, however, is not the way a Theme is defined In Systemic Functional Linguistics, all aspects of grammar are defined in terms of their functions

2.8 Theme and Rheme

Theme and Rheme are two important notions in the theory of Functional Sentence perspective which originated from the Prague School of linguistics as early as 1939 The concept of theme has been developed significantly by Prague School since then Some other equal terms to Theme and Rheme such as topic and comment (used principally by American linguist) or Given and New Information are often used interchangeably to express identical concept

2.8.1 Theme

Halliday (1994) defines theme as “the element which serves as the point of department of the message It is that with which the clause is concerned” (p.38) Theme is the starting point of a message It is usually placed at the initial position of

a clause It is the topic that you are talking about, the given information of the sentence

2.8.2 Rheme

Rheme, on the other hand, is what the speaker says about the theme” (Mathesius,

1939, p.234) it is “the remainder of the message, the part in which the theme is developed” (Halliday) While the Theme is at the initial position of the sentence, the Rheme is the rest of the sentence and usually after the Theme (Hockett, 1958) The notion of Theme and Rheme as a binary division of a sentence has been introduce with different perspectives with regard to its communicative functions Mathesius names these two parts of a sentence as the basis and the nucleus The basis is what the speaker is talking about, the nucleus is what the speaker is talking about the basis Erteschik-Shirk, (1988) defines the Theme-Rheme as topic–comment The topic is what the rest of the sentence is about and the comment is what the speaker says about the topic

The arrangement of theme and rheme plays an essential part in contributing to the comprehensibility of a written text The information in a text should be distributed

in a suitable sequence to achieve the comprehension of the whole text (Weissberg,

1988, p.488)

2.9 Classification of Theme 2.9.1 With regard to its complexity

Halliday (2004) classified the theme into three different categories on the basis of its complexity

2.9.1.1 Single theme

If the theme is an independent entity, cannot be subdivided into smaller functional units, this theme is called single theme According to Halliday (Halliday 2004:39), the main form of single theme are a noun phrase, adverb phrase or prepositional phrase

For example:

John (T) // was playing football with his friends (R)

2.9.1.2 Re-entry theme (multi-theme): is a combination of functional ingredients

of the theme It always contains a sense that the concept of the topic of composition (topical element) and textual element (textual elements) or interpersonal components (interpersonal elements)

Textual elements consist of three kinds: continuative (yes, no, oh, well),structural (so, even, if, however, yet), conjunctive (therefore, in other hands, so far)

Interpersonal components include: certainly, to be frank, surely, unfortunately, broadly speaking

For example:

But (text component) I (topic component) //lost the map But (text component) unfortunately (interpersonal component) I (topic component) // lost the map

2.9.1.3 Sentence entry theme (sentence theme): means that when a sentence

contains two or more of the small clause, the first constitutes a theme throughout the small clause, which is called the sentence entry theme

For example:

If you give me a hand, (T)// I will finish it on time (R) Before leaving his hometown, (T)// he said goodbye to everybody (R) According to Halliday, the Theme must always occupy the initial position in the sentence However, Halliday’s adherence to systemic theory is demonstrated by his observation that it is not obligatory for the speaker to follow these roles but depending on the speaker’s intention or communicative purpose

2.9.2 With regard to its meta-function

According to Halliday (1994), theme can be divided into three different types on the basis of its metafunction

2.9.2.1 Topical Theme: is the first constituent of a meaningful structure of a clause

which represents a participant, circumstance and process Because it often appears

at the beginning of the clause and functions as the topic of the sentence, it is also called topical theme

2.9.2.2 Interpersonal Theme: is a form of action, the speaker or writer does

something to the listener or reader by means of language (Halliday: 53) It is any combination of:

Vocative: personal name or a term of affection used to address the listener

Modal: expresses the speakers’ judgment regarding the relevance of the message