THEMES AND THEMATIC PROGRESSION IN STATEMENT OF PURPOSES FOR PH d SCHOLARSHIP APPLICATION TO THE u s UNIVERSITIES = PHÂN TÍCH đề NGỮ và DIỄN TIẾN đề NGỮ TRONG các bài LUẬN cá NHÂN XIN học BỔNG TIẾN sĩ vào các TRƯỜNG đại học HOA kỳ

ii ABSTRACT This research aims at investigating the frequency of Themes and Thematic Progression TP patterns on three different disciplines Natural Science, Social Science and Design S

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF LINGUISTICS & CULTURES OF ENGLISH-SPEAKING

ĐẠI HỌC QUỐC GIA HÀ NỘI

TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ KHOA NGÔN NGỮ VÀ VĂN HOÁ CÁC NƯỚC NÓI TIẾNG ANH

KHÓA LUẬN TỐT NGHIỆP

PHÂN TÍCH ĐỀ NGỮ VÀ DIỄN TIẾN ĐỀ NGỮ TRONG CÁC BÀI LUẬN CÁ NHÂN XIN HỌC BỔNG TIẾN SĨ VÀO CÁC TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC HOA KỲ

Giáo viên hướng dẫn: Nguyễn Thị Minh Tâm (Ph.D)

Sinh viên: Lê Thu Trang

Khóa: QH2010.F1.E1

HÀ NỘI - 2021

I hereby state that I: Le Thu Trang – Class QH2017.F1.E1, being a candidate for the degree of Bachelor of Arts (B.A Honours Programme) accept the requirements of the University relating to the retention and use of Bachelor's Graduation Paper deposited in the library

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

Signature

Date

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

This thesis becomes a reality with the kind support and help of many individuals I would like to extend my sincere thanks to all of them

First and foremost, I want to offer this endeavor to Ms Nguyen Thi Minh Tam (Ph.D),

my beloved supervisor She was my teacher for “Functional Grammar” course, which laid the foundation for my study Given my first encounter with research in Linguistics, she guided me through every step of conducting this paper with her highly selective and enlightening consultation sessions Moreover, her sense of humor and constant heart-warming encouragement really reduced my worry and boosted my spirit to handle the heavy workload

I would also like to acknowledge the Website from which my corpus was taken Without the availability of such materials, this study would not have taken shape

Besides, I am immensely grateful to other fellow classmates for their sharing and valuable clarification as well as explanation for my misgivings in the process of completing this thesis

Finally, my thanks and appreciation also go to my family because they are always by

my side and offer me the best physical and mental condition, which urged me to forge ahead despite setbacks

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ABSTRACT

This research aims at investigating the frequency of Themes and Thematic Progression (TP) patterns on three different disciplines (Natural Science, Social Science and Design Science) of Statement of Purposes for Ph.D application The data corpus consisting of 12 successfully accepted samples was analyzed using mainly qualitative method with the aid

of quantitative one as well as McCabe’s (1999) model of thematic progression According

to the results of this study, concerning Theme type, Topical Theme is the most frequently used one, followed by Textual and Interpersonal Theme With regards to the frequency of

TP patterns, Simple Linear pattern is the most prevalent in the surveyed data, followed by Split Rheme, Constant, Derived Hypertheme and Split Theme respectively Such order of distribution is generally in line with the existing literature from different genres because the topic of Themes and TP patterns in Statement of Purposes for Ph.D application is under research The analysis reveals that the process of writing a SoP tends to serve the purpose

of a particular discipline rather than putting too much emphasis on the text’s cohesion Such realization also indicates the distinguishing features of SoPs as a genre itself: though SoPs are pieces of academic writing, they are free-style products in terms of theme and thematic pattern choices.

Keywords: Themes, Thematic Progression, Statement of Purposes, Ph.D application,

disciplines

THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND LITERATURE REVIEW 4

1.1 Systemic Functional Linguistics and the Metafunctions 4

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LISTS OF TABLES, FIGURES AND ABBREVIATIONS LIST

OF TABLES

Table 3.2: Proportions of three conjunctions ‘and,but,so’ 26 Table 3.3: Proportions of three types of themes according to disciplines 27 Table 3.4: Proportions of Interpersonal and Textual theme types according

to elements

28 Table 3.5: Proportions of five TP types in the corpus

29 Table 3.6: Proportions of five TP patterns according to disciplines 30

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1.1: The system network of Theme selection and Theme range 9

Figure 3.1: TP pattern of TP pattern of SoP no.24 (T-Units 64-67) 31

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SRP: Split Rheme Pattern

STP: Split Theme Pattern

DHP: Derived Hypertheme Pattern

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PART 1: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale of the Study

Statement of Purposes (SoP) or the graduate school application letter (Ding, 2007), is considered an important academic promotional document required by in graduate application process in most English-speaking universities (Luo, 2020) SoPs are important as they enable applicants to stand out compared to their competitors (Luo, 2020) SoPs introduce applicants’ interests and experience to the admissions committee and provide insights that “may not be covered in the other areas of the application” (Lee et al., 2008, p 170) From a genre perspective, SoPs are considered a highly complex academic genre (Chen, 2017) since they are not used for within-group communication, but “a means of establishing a (credible) claim to a scholarly identity” (Hyland, 2012, p 72) to gain acceptance to their prospective discourse communities As a result, SoPs challenge the newcomers because they “have read few, and written even fewer, documents of this kind” (Brown, 2004, p 243), “have no adequate knowledge of the context” (Ding, 2007, p 387)

In SoP writing, non-native applicants face more difficulties and stand fewer chances for the next-round selection (Max, Gelfand, Brooks, Beckerly & Segal, 2010) Their mistakes

of word choice, sentence structure and organization are easily detected since most of the decision makers or ‘gatekeepers’ are native speakers (Crimson, 2004) Even when non-native applicants employ correct grammatical structures, it might be considered as ‘awkward’ choices owing to writers’ unfamiliarity with the English language and its culture Furthermore, they are expected from targeted audiences with a SoP “more shaped by local cultural values and national academic traditions than is the case with more technical writing” (Swales & Feak, 1994, p 229)

Besides above-mentioned difficulties, there remains one fact that some U.S universities

limit the word count of a SoP as Crimson (2004) stated in his book titled “50 Successful Harvard Application Essays: what worked for them can help you get into the college of your choice”, in which the word limit is specifically suggested as “500 words” (p 3) This means

the overall organization mainly shown through text cohesion and coherence plays an essential role in writing a SoP

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With its crucial role in creating a cohesive and coherent piece of writing, the researcher investigates in Thematic Progression (hereafter called TP) with the hope to partially assist applicants in SoP writing Regarding limited studies on SoPs TP in this aspect has been under-researched Indeed, there exists a lacuna in the investigation into TP patterns in SoP writing, which the present study aims to address

All of the aforementioned conditions afford the researcher a chance to conduct a study concerning ‘The Realization of Thematic Progression in Statement of Purposes for Ph.D scholarship application to U.S Universities”

2 Aims and Objectives of the Study

This research aims to investigate the realization of themes and TP of SoP for Ph.D Students to top-ranking universities in America To realize this aim, two research objectives are set out, which are: (i) exploring the realization of Themes and TP in Ph.D Statement of Purposes samples

In accordance with these aforementioned aims and objectives, the study seeks the answer to the overarching question:

What is the realization of Themes and Thematic Progression in Statement of Purposes for Ph.D scholarship application to US Universities?

In order to find the answer to this overarching research question, the thesis writer answer these two sub-research questions:

1 How are themes and thematic progression patterns employed in the SoPs?

2 How are the employment of thematic progression different among disciplines?

3 Significance of the study

This study aims at investigating the TP patterns in successful SoPs to U.S high-ranking universities It serves four main purposes of the researcher On a personal level, as a pre-service teacher, the researcher hopes to gain deeper insights into TP - one important aspect of text coherence and cohesion With a considerable amount of time for this research and the knowledge acquired, it is hoped that the findings of this thesis can help students improve their writing texts with proper theme and TP pattern choices to achieve coherent text development, especially when they want to write a SoP for a scholarship On a larger scale, as writing SoPs

is considered a “tough thing” (Barton & Brown, 2004, p 11), this study is expected to assist

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scholarship applicants, especially Ph.D ones, to produce impressive SoPs by understanding how they can arrange and develop their ideas effectively with their choice of TP patterns Thirdly, the findings of this study hopefully becomes a useful source of reference to help later researchers, teachers and applicants with their academic purposes Lastly, despite its limited generalizability, this study is expected to address the current research gap in the literature regarding realization of TP in SoPs

4 Scope of the Study

The chosen data were taken from the book ‘Real Stories: 40 Successful Application Cases to G-School’ This book is a popular source of reference for Vietnamese schofans and is widely shared by famous scholarship fan pages The corpus in this study is 12 SoPs in three different disciplines, namely Natural science, Social science, Design science The writers of these SoPs were selected to be those with TOEFL paper scoring above 600/677 and GRE score above 2000 in total (Including Verbal Reasoning, Quantitative Reasoning and Analytical Reasoning)

5 Organization of the Study

The study is divided into the following parts:

Part 1: Introduction is concerned with research problems and rationale for the research

Moreover, it also presents research aims and objectives, research questions, significance, and the scope

Chapter 1: Theoretical Background and Literature Review provides an overview of the

theories and previous studies related to the research topic

Chapter 2: Research Methodology discusses research methods, data corpus, analytical

framework, data collection and data analysis procedure

Chapter 3: Findings and Discussion presents findings and discussion in accordance with the

research questions

Part 3: Conclusion provides the summary and limitations of the study as well as offers some

suggestions for further studies

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CHAPTER 1 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND LITERATURE REVIEW

1 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

1.1 Systemic Functional Linguistics

Developed by M.A.K Halliday in the 1960s, Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) is a language theory which puts its focus on the notion of language function This approach views language as a social semiotic system or “interrelated sets of options for making meaning” (Halliday, 1994, p.15) Halliday and Matthiessen (2004) state that “when we analyse a text, we show what meaningful choices have been made, each one seen in the context of what might have been meant was not” Hence, the notion of choice here is very essential since language is inherently functional and “creates and expresses meaning” (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004, p 19) SFL concerns how language both acts upon, and is constrained by, a social context In other words, its main emphasis is how and why we use language in our daily lives (Thompson, 2013), therefore, goes opposite to the notion of formal grammar where semantics, syntax or word classes are of more importance In his book, Thompson (2013) summarizes three main functions

of language we use as to:

● represent our experience of the inner and outer worlds, to describe the involved phenomena, states and entities;

● establish and maintain interactions as well as relations with other people, to influence their behavior, to talk about our perspectives of the world, and to elicit or change theirs;

● organize messages in such a way to make them cohere with the surrounding messages and the broader context of interaction

According to Halliday (1975), language has developed in response to three kinds of social-functional ‘needs’, which are labelled into three metafunctions outlined in the table below:

Table 1.1: Three Metafunctions of Language (Adapted from Halliday, 1975)

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Interpersonal Language is used to interact with the social world by negotiating

social roles and attitudes

Textual Language is used to create messages with which we can package our

meanings in terms of what is New or Given Among these metafunctions, Textual metafunction, whose major system is formed by the choice of Theme and Rheme, as claimed by Forey (2002), is the main focus of this study However, the two other metafunctions will be still considered as the choice in textual metafunction is closely linked to those of ideational and interpersonal ones in that it makes speakers’ expression of experience and relation understood (Matthiessen, 1995)

1.2 Theme - Rheme System

1.2.1 Theme and Rheme definition

The Theme-Rheme structure is considered as “the basic form of the organization of the clause as message” (Halliday, 1985: 53) It can be divided in two ways: Theme, and Rheme (Li, 2011) or Theme-transitional zone-Rheme (Erdmann, 1990)

There are various ways to define Theme (McCabe, 1999) For example, from a broad scale, Theme is defined as the signal of “the relationship between the thought in the speaker’s mind and its expression in discourse” (Vasconcellos, 1992:147), which is, in other words, considered as Topic or “what the sentence is about” (Witte, 1983, p 338) This is not supported

by Halliday (1994, cited in McCabe, 1999) as he points out that “The label ‘Topic’ usually

refers to only one particular type of Theme” Meanwhile, Salih (2008) views Theme as “what

is known or grasped from the text”, which accords with Erdmann (1990) and Babby (1980, as cited in Kopple, 1991) Firbas (2004), however, shares a different way of giving Theme a definition: “the sentence element or elements, carrying the lowest degree of Communicative Dynamism (CD) within the sentence” Nevertheless, this study chooses to adopt the definition

of Halliday and Matthiessen (2013) This definition posits that Theme is “the point of departure

of message” (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2013, p 89)

In accordance with this definition, Theme is positioned to be always in the first place of the clause (Eggins, 2004; Halliday, 1994; Halliday & Mathiessen, 2004), “up to and including the first Topical constituent” (Thompson, 2013, p 165) Although this definition appears to

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give Theme a strict position, it is chosen as the working definition in this research because the

“point of departure” offers more than just starting a sentence (Davies, 1997, cited in Wei, 2015; Fries, 1983; Green et al., 200; Halliday, 1994; Hoey, 2012; Martin, 1992) To be specific, Halliday (1994) highlights that this initial position gives Theme a ‘special status’ as it provides the context for the rest of the message In addition, the “point of departure” also acts as a means

by which the clause is organised as a message or initiates “the semantic journey” (McCabe,

1999, p 62) Hence, “a wrong scent” and “a sort of correction and partial change of concept” will be noticed (Bentham, 1839, p 268) whenever a word is misplaced to express an original idea

Similar to Theme, Rheme is also defined in a variety of ways It can be termed as “the remainder of the message” (Halliday, 2004, p 64) or “the rest of message” (Bloor & Bloor,

2004, p 71) There is one agreement that its existence serves one main function: the carrier of

a clause’s message (Mulatsih, 2010) as “the part in which Theme is developed” (Halliday

& Matthiessen, 2014, p 89) If Theme is understood as “what is known or given in the text”, Rheme is known as “what the clause has to say about the theme” (Paltridge, 2006, p 146) Once the Theme of a clause is identified, then the rest of the clause is considered as the Rheme (Thompson, 2006) In many stances, Rheme can typically contain unfamiliar or New information (Eggins, 2004), while Theme is related to Given Information (Halliday, 1994:37)

1.2.2 Categorisation of Theme

In accordance with three metafunctions, Halliday (1994) divides the Theme into three types, namely Topical (Experiential) Theme, Interpersonal Theme and Textual Theme

1.2.2.1 Functional categorization of theme

● Topical (Experiential) Theme

The Theme of a clause must include Topical or Experiential Theme and may also include optional elements namely Textual and Interpersonal Themes The table below illustrates three types of Topical Theme:

Table 1.2: Types of Topical Theme (Adapted from Halliday, 2014)

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process any activity which is done - an equivalent of verb in

traditional terminology

are, give, is reported

participant a person or thing involved in a process they, this, I

circumstance a situation or surrounding in which the process occurs - an

equivalent of adverb

in Vietnam, recently

As illustrated in the Table 1.2, Topical Theme is a component in a clause which can be

a participant, circumstance or process (Halliday, 1994; Halliday & Mathiessen, 2004) It represents human experience, inner world or conceptions

● Interpersonal Theme

Interpersonal Theme refers to a vocative, a modal adjunct, or a finite verbal operator (Eggins, 1994; Halliday & Mathiessen, 2004, p 79) that exists before the topical theme

Table 1.3: Types of Interpersonal Themes (Adapted from Halliday, 2014)

vocative any item, typically (but not necessarily) a personal

name, being used to address

surprisingly, frankly, certainly

Table 1.4: Types of Textual Themes (Adapted from Halliday, 2014)

continuative a small set of words that signal a move in a response or

dialogue, or a new move to the next point of the discourse

yes, no, well, oh, now

conjunction a word or group that either hypotically or paratactically

links one clause to another

and, or, but

conjunctive

adjunct

an adverbial group or prepositional phrase that relates a clause to the preceding sentence, signaling how the clause fits with the text

As a result, Alternatively

Textual themes in clauses are typically thematic since they support a text’s structure by relating the clause to the preceding text and thus usually come first in order to realize this linking role Hence, they assist as a signal of the text’s coherence because they relate the meaning expressed in one clause to that in another, and are thus textual in nature

1.2.2.2 Structural categorization of theme

Another categorization is that Theme can be divided depending on its composition Among three theme types, only Topical Theme is obligatory and may be preceded by either Interpersonal or Textual Theme or even both (Halliday, 2004) Theme is called “Simple Theme” if it is constructed by only one element among those three, which always includes a Topical element (Halliday, 1985) Within the “Simple Theme”, the Topical Theme might be either unmarked or marked Simple marked Theme refers to the case when a topical element is chosen for foregrounding while simple unmarked Theme refers to that which is most usual

“Multiple Theme” refers to the case in which a clause has more than one element of Theme If

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Interpersonal and/or Textual Themes occur before Topical Theme, it is also part of Theme and

is labelled as “Multiple Theme” (Thompson, 2013) There are three possible combinations of

‘Multiple Theme”, which are: (i) the combination of a Textual theme and a Topical theme; (ii) the combination of an Interpersonal theme and a Topical theme; and (iii) the combination of a Textual theme, an Interpersonal Theme and a Topical theme Concerning Theme range, it can either include a single Theme which consists of a topical (ideational) Theme or a multiple Theme The last case is “Clausal Theme” when a clause functions as the Theme Figure 1 below

is the system network of Theme selection and Theme range (Thompson, 2014)

Figure 1.1: The system network of Theme selection and Theme range (Thompson, 2014)

From Figure 1 above, and as affirmed by Halliday and Matthiessen (2014), Theme can consist of only one of three the three elements In other words, Theme and Rheme will be distinguished right behind the first constituent that is either participant, circumstances or process Figure 1.2 illustrates 2 combination of themes in clauses with Multiple themes

Figure 1.2: Examples of multiple Theme

in 1974 Marfuaty (2015) regards TP as a notable aspect in the study of Systemic Functional Linguistics for its function as a cohesive tie which plays a crucial role in tracing the focus and the flow of information in a text (Carter-Thomas, 1999; Paltridge, 2006; Sade, 2007) Moreover,

TP also gives “the clause its character as a message” (Halliday, 1994, p 37; Halliday & Mathiessen, 2004) and indicates the distribution of information as well as the incorporation of these organizational patterns in a text (Kuo, 1995; Lee, 2002a)

Regarding TP definition, Daneš (1974) proposes the term ‘Thematic Progression’ as:

…the choice and ordering of utterance Themes, their mutual concatenation and hierarchy, as well as their relationship to the hyperThemes of the superior text units (such as the paragraph, chapter…), to the whole text and to the situation Thematic progression might be viewed as the skeleton of the plot (p.114)

However, this study adopts the simplified definition of TP introduced by Paltridge (2006), which refers to “the way in which the Theme of a clause may pick up, or repeat, the meaning from a preceding Theme or Rheme” (Paltridge, 2006, p.148)

1.3.2 Categorization of Thematic Progression

Since TP has been the interest of many scholars, many ways of categorisation schemes for TP have been proposed in the existing literature For instance, Danes (1974) classifies TP

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into three main types: (1) simple linear theme (TP with linear thematization of rhemes), (2) constant/continuous theme, and (3) multiple theme or split rheme (TP with Derived T’s) (Rørvik, 2003; Paltridge, 2006) Meanwhile, Dubois (1987) reduces Daneš’ three types to two main ones, including themic and rhemic, each of which may be simple or multiple, contiguous

or gapped Eggins (2004) labels three patterns of TP as Re-iteration pattern, Zig-zag pattern and Multiple-Theme pattern

This study employs McCabe’s (1999) model of thematicity and definition of TP, which

is a revised version of Daneš’s (1974) model These patterns include: Simple Linear, Constant Theme, Derived Hypertheme, Split Rheme and Split Theme “The rationale for the selection of the above classifications was that they are more plausible, attestable, and complete than the other categorizations used for analyzing theme and TP patterns in texts” (Martínez, 2003, p 108) Below is the definition and example of 5 types of TP adopted in this study:

(i) Simple Linear Progression (SLP): The Rheme of the previous clause becomes the theme

of the following clause

Example:

Children may work for many reasons The most important and common reason of children’s work is poverty (Official IELTS practice material, 2009)

(ii) Constant Progression (CP): The theme of the previous clause is the same as the theme of

the following clause In other words, the theme of the first clause is selected as the theme of the subsequent clauses as well

Example:

In many countries children are engaged in some kind of paid work Most of these children work because they don’t have any other choice (Official IELTS practice material, 2009)

(iii) Derived Hypertheme Progression (DHP): The Themes in subsequent clauses are derived

from a hypertheme or from the same overriding Theme in the previous clause

Example:

Children’s education is a more important way to achieve their goals in their life We understand that working is an obstacle to education and spoils their opportunities This attitude does not pay attention to children’s moral standards and also overlooks their capacity of working (Official IELTS practice material, 2009)

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(iv) Split Rheme Progression (SRP): The Rheme of a clause contains two or more ideas which

are picked up in following clauses In other words, the Rheme of the first clause is split into two items which in turn become the Theme of the subsequent clauses

Example:

I myself do agree with this idea because of two main reasons: taking responsibility, and standing on their own feet The first reason for doing paid work for children is that they should take responsibility in their life The second one that persuaded me to agree with the idea of doing paid work by children is standing on their own feet (Official IELTS practice material, 2009)

(v) Split Theme Progression (STP): The theme of the first clause is composed of two or more

items, each of which is considered a theme in the following clause

(See more in 2.4)

1.3.3 The role of TP in a text

TP plays a significant role in text quality, particularly in terms of cohesion and coherence To be specific, Danes (1974) states that the organization of a text’s information is determined by the progression in the sequence of utterance of themes and their corresponding rhemes He implies that TP represents the coherence and cohesion between different parts of a text as it shows the “concatenation and hierarchy” of themes in relation to the previous one, to the text as a whole or to the surrounding circumstances Halliday (1985) shares the same idea when he regards TP as an essential method of discourse organization This can be explained by the fact that TP is actually a main aspect of “how speakers construct their messages in a way which makes them fit smoothly into the unfolding language event” and it “propels the text to develop forward and provide continuity in discourse” (Kang, 2016, p.1) His view is also agreed

by Ma (2001), Mellos (2011), Naderi and Koohestanian (2014, in Nguyen and Nguyen, 2018), Ren et al (2009, as cited in Rakhman, 2013), Rakhman (2013) and Wang (2010) Ebrahimi and Ebrahimi (2014) emphasize the role of TP patterns as a guide for readers throughout a text which is logically constructed by the choice and ordering of Themes For all the aforementioned reasons, it is likely that writings with TP employment reach a higher level of cohesion and coherence For instance, in a research of Wang (2010) on the application of TP in low-, middle- and high-scoring essays of students, he finds out that the effectiveness of TP use is closely

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related to the coherence of a writing The more effectively TP patterns are employed, the more coherent the writing is, hence the higher score Ho (2009)’s study shows the same result as writings composed after training sessions about TP achieve a considerably higher degree of text coherence and cohesion compared to the pre-training ones

In contrast, the insufficient or inappropriate use of TP in writings also leads to certain problems, which have been researched in many studies such as Jing (2013), Khedri and Ebrahimi (2012), Wang (2007) and Wei (2015) For example, in a research on a university student’s writing, Wang (2007) finds out the lack in the TP patterns with only 4 cross-referential links overall This lack is then claimed to be a contributor to the problematic coherence and cohesion of the writing itself

1.4 Statement of Purposes as a genre

Several studies on the SoP genre have attempted to reduce its opaqueness by interviewing graduate admission committee members (Brown, 2004; Samraj & Monk, 2008; Chiu, 2015) Two continuous questions emerge from the reported interviews The first one is whether the construction of ‘personal-self’ should be paid special attention Though some disciplines related to humanistic epistemology might follow this advice, others such as psychology and electronic engineering have a preference toward scientific epistemology without much excessive personal details Another question refers to what extent a SoP decides the success of a scholarship application document Through the interviews with 19 faculty members in education, Chiu (2015) finds that the evaluative processes of SoPs has a broad association with the epistemological assumptions and the bureaucratic admission procedures of specific discourse communities

Despite different findings offered by the previous studies on SoP genre, they still have two main limitations Firstly, the data sets, with only 20 to 35 samples from few disciplines, are insufficient for the generalizability of the findings Secondly, these studies have put their emphasis on the SoP genre’s macro features such as functional move structure and generic structure, meanwhile, the micro ones like Theme and Thematic Progression have been largely neglected

1.4.2 Structure of SoPs

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Due to the lack of knowledge or familiarity with the SoP format (Brown, 2004; Swales, 1996; Swales et al., 2004), applicants may find it challenging to produce a cohesive text in each section Hence, the researcher decides to investigate its generic structure in accordance with the

TP patterns’ allocation One typical framework is proposed by Chiu (2016), which contains five moves and 22 steps This is also viewed as a suggested structure or flow for a SoP From the perspective of Systemic Functional Grammar, the term ‘move’ will be adopted but understood and replaced as ‘generic element’, which is henceforth employed in this research

Table 1.5: Generic element framework (Adapted from Chiu, 2016)

Element Content

1 Applicants’ introduction: personal background, research interest or generalization

about the discipline

2 Introduction of relevant background: academic achievements and experiences,

work experiences, research interests, language and cultural proficiency and background (travel, family and personality)

3 Reasons for application: consists of five steps, namely gap in applicant background,

personal ambition, programme and university attributes/understanding, reflection, and disciplinary or research reasons

self-4 Extra-curricular information

5 Conclusion: future success prediction, self-promotion, expression of proposed

study’s understanding, praise for the institution, possible contribution to the course

The understanding the overall structure and main focus of a SoP through this based analysis is important to the study of TP as “the need to conflate GS (Generic Structure) with Theme seems even more pressing when one considers the role that is played by Theme in organizing discourse and method of development of text” (Farrokhi, Ansarin & Khalili, 2016) Plus, the structural manipulation or corrections also heavily influence the patterns’ continuity, often “linking back up a sequence of T-units disrupted by inappropriate lexico-grammatical

genre-15

choices” in a text (Farrokhi, Ansarin & Khalili, 2016) Hence, the researcher decides to adopt the Move-step Framework by Chiu (2016) to categorize the generic elements of SoPs in the corpus for the convenience and systematic purpose

1.5 Review of the previous studies

1.5.1 Previous research on instructions in SoP writing

There is a consensus among researchers regarding the role of Theme and Thematic Progression in text cohesion and coherence (Halliday, 1994; Ma, 2001; Mellos, 2011; Naderi

& Koohestanian, 2014; Rakhman, 2013; Ren et al., 2009; Wang, 2010) From the perspective

of Hallidayan Functional Grammar, TP is crucial in creating a cohesive and coherent piece of writing To be more specific, TP patterns help “enhance connectivity between ideas” and “guide readers through the logical paths constructed by the writers” (Ebrahimi & Ebrahimi, 2014) In the case of SoP writing, the writers ultimately aim at persuading the admission committee to accept them as a scholar (Dejica & Superceanu, 2004) by inherently presenting their points and supporting ideas using many techniques, among which is the choice and positioning of sentence parts Different parts in a SoP can successfully form a coherent section if the information is structured in a way that preserves consistency with the topic and the logical links between the items (Dejica & Superceanu, 2004) Therefore, the study of Theme and TP is worthwhile as it analyses the contributing factors to the making, and persuasive import of a text (Rørvik, 2003) Accordingly, the analysis of TP in these SoPs can highlight certain features related to Theme and TP choices that can influence and be adopted in SoP writing

Despite its significance, White (2015) states that non-native English speakers show difficulties in selecting appropriate themes to the culture of a particular academic field Zhang (2004) and Cheng (2002) point out one typical problem of this group regarding using Themes which is not connected to the preceding or following themes, leading to a lack of cohesion They are found to often have to contend with language transfer from their mother tongue when trying to select themes and build TP (Melios, 2011) Thus, to succeed in constructing a coherent and cohesive text by using Theme and Rheme, they need to be introduced both which types of Themes are most common to a particular discipline and be able to apply these in certain disciplinary-specific patterns of TP

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As the chosen SoPs belong to three different categories, with each of them containing different disciplines, the study of previous research on Theme application in disciplinary differences may play an important role in predicting the future findings A comparative research

on article abstracts in Engineering and Applied Linguistics carried out by Ebrahimi and Khedri (2011) shows that abstracts of the former employ both interpersonal (14% to 5%) and textual (27% to 23%) more than the latter’s The study also finds that SLP and CP are more used in the Chemical Engineering abstracts After comparing different article abstracts from 30 different disciplines, Ghadessy (1999) notes that Geography articles use more simple Themes than Finance (84.6% to 47.4%), while Finance applies more multiple Themes than Plant Pathology (52,6% to 10%) and Sociology employs more unmarked Themes than Film and Cinema Studies (100% to 70.6%) Regarding the genre textbook, Taylor (1983) and Lovejoy (1998) both find out that Topical Themes are more common in history textbooks, and in case of Lovejoy (1998) also Psychology textbooks, as compared to those of Natural Sciences This is also the findings

of North (2005) as she sees a higher employment of Topical Themes in Arts writings in comparison to Natural Sciences’ This is explained as the former has “a greater tendency to present knowledge as constructed and contested, rather than as a plain matter of fact” (Ibid., p 449) North concludes that “variation in disciplinary culture is reflected in academic writing, leaving its trace in the linguistic and rhetorical features of disciplinary texts” (North, 2005, p 431)

Considering all aforementioned findings above, the researcher decides to work on an under-research field to contribute to SoP writing process, which is analyzing TP in SoP writing based on Systemic Functional Linguistics approach

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CHAPTER 2 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 2.1 Data corpus

The data corpus consists of 12 Statement of Purposes by Ph.D students to U.S universities samples taken from the book ‘Real Stories: 40 Successful Application Cases to G-School’, which is a popular reference book among scholarship applicants The matter of word limit is not counted in this study due to different requirements of different universities

2.2 Research Methods

This study employs a case study - qualitative method Specifically, the different types

of themes and TP was identified using the qualitative method After that, a more in-depth textual analysis was conducted to find out the effects of different TP patterns on SoPs’ organization This choice adapts the claim of Sandelowski (2000) that “all inquiries entail description, and all description entail interpretation” (p 335) Besides, quantitative analysis will also be utilized

as a minor method to assist this study

2.3 Data collection and Sampling

Because all 40 SoPs are real successful ones to high-ranking universities from different disciplines, it is difficult for the researcher just to select the sampling randomly, which may lead to the lack of diversity in disciplines, backgrounds and writing styles The researcher downloads the book ‘Real Stories: 40 Successful Application Cases to G-School’ on a Facebook page called ‘Scholarship for Vietnamese Students’ before sorting the SoPs as presented in the table below:

Table 2.1: Sorting SoPs based on disciplines

Discipline Branch No of SOPs Overall

Environmental Science 1 Biomedical Science 1

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Engineering Electrical Engineering 3 6

Nuclear Engineering 1 Organic Engineering 1 Mechanical Engineering 1

Physical Chemistry 1

Table 2.2: Criteria for sorting SoPs based on types (Adapted from Hegenberg, 1969; March

and Smith, 1995, Simon, 1996; and Denyer, Transfield and Van Aken, 2007)

Characteristic Natural Science Social Science Design Science

Areas or fields of

study

Physics, chemistry, biology

Anthropology, economics, politics, sociology, history

Medicine, engineering, management

Research

purposes

Understand complex phenomena Discover how things are and justify why they are this way

Describe, understand and reflect in the human being and its actions

Design Produce systems that do not yet exist Modify existing situations to achieve better results Focus on solving

Research aims

conducted under

this paradigm

Explore, describe, explain and predict when possible

Explore, describe, explain and predict when possible

Design and prescribe Research is oriented to problem solving

The result of SoP categorization according to types of science is that there are 16 texts

of Natural Science, 13 texts of Social Science and 11 texts of Design Science

Since only 12 texts are chosen to ensure the quality of the study under time constraint, the researcher then opts 4 SoPs out of each type based on the applied school ranking and randomly selects applicants’ major in each category As few reports on rankings with a large scale of universities back to the applied time of all applicants are found, this study employs a

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report of the website Public University Honors on “U.S News Rankings for 57 Leading Universities, 1983 - 2007” for SoP selection The chosen year is 2000 because the applying duration of 40 authors is from 1998 to 2002 Specifically, for Natural science:

Table 2.3: Chosen SoPs in Natural Sciences Category

23th

For Social Science, there are two exceptional cases which are SoP no.32 and SoP no.17 This can be explained by the fact that as the researcher’s major is English Language Teacher Education in University of Languages and International Studies, the two chosen SoPs are more meaningful to the researcher’s and faculty’s background

Table 2.4: Chosen SoPs in Social Sciences Category

No.19 East Asia Language &

Literature

No.18 Logic and Philosophy Carnegie Mellon University 23th

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For Design Science, the classification of the SoPs can be summarized in Table 2.5:

Table 2.5: Chosen SoPs in Design Sciences Category

No.23 Chemical Engineering Massachusetts Institute of

2.4 Analytical Framework

To explore the thematic progressions, this study adopts McCabe’s (1999) model of TP, which is elaborated in 1.3.2, with five patterns as illustrated by the following figure:

Figure 2.1: Analytical Framework of TP patterns

(Adapted from McCabe, 1999)

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The unit of analysis in this study is “T-units”, which consists of “an independent clause together with all hypotactically related clauses and words that are independent on that independent clause” (Fries, 1995, p.49) In accordance with this, if a dependent clause precedes

an independent one, the former is taken as the Theme while the latter functions as Rheme Whereas, when the independent clause comes first, the Theme of that clause functions as the Theme for the whole complex clause Lastly, if a sentence has more than one independent clause, it follows that there will be two T-units consisting of Theme and Rheme of their own T-unit analysis, according to many studies, is viewed as the most useful unit for analyzing themes in a text (Herriman, 2011; Jalilifar, 2010; Nguyen & Nguyen, 2018)

The thematic pattern will be explored in different generic elements of the SoPs The analytical framework for generic elements of the SoPs is adapted from Chiu (2016) The elements are named as in Table 1.5:

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generic elements

1 Applicants’ introduction: personal background, research interest or

generalization about the discipline

Applicant’s profile

2 Introduction of relevant background: academic achievements and

experiences, work experiences, research interests, language and

cultural proficiency and background (travel, family and personality)

Relevant background

3 Reasons for application: consists of five steps, namely gap in applicant

background, personal ambition, programme and university

attributes/understanding, self-reflection, and disciplinary or research

reasons

Application reason

Extra-curricular activities

5 Conclusion: future success prediction, self-promotion, expression of

proposed study’s understanding, praise for the institution, possible

contribution to the course

Conclusion

2.5 Data analysis procedure

The data analysis process consists of two major phases with specific steps as mentioned below:

a Phase 1: Theme and TP identification and categorisation

1) In each SoPs, “T-units” were identified

2) Within each T-unit, the boundary between Theme and Rheme was drawn in accordance with Halliday’s (2014) model of thematicity

3) Themes were then labelled into Topical, Interpersonal and Textual

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4) The total numbers of all Theme and of each type were then calculated and converted into percentage terms

5) Based on the identification of Theme-Rheme from the previous stage, a diagram illustrating

TP for each essay was drawn In case of Multiple Theme, only Topical Theme was considered

in drawing the theme-rheme relation In case of paratactic and hypotactic clauses, the identification scheme followed that of Fries (1995)

6) From this diagram, the total numbers of all TP and each pattern were counted

7) These numbers were also converted into percentage terms

8) The statistics were subsequently presented in tables

b Phase 2: Identification of effects of TP choice on texts

9) Based on the significant statistics from the two previous main stages, interpretation of the effects of TP on the cohesion of the texts was attempted along with the analysis of examples from the corpus

10) The relation between those statistics and the genres was then drawn to examine the similarity and deviation compared to the existing literature

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CHAPTER 3

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

The following part reports and discusses this study results The sequence is the findings

of Theme and TP being introduced first, followed by the specific distributions of separate patterns The potential effects of such realization on the text quality will also be analyzed and reported with specific examples from the corpus provided

3.1 Findings

3.1.1 Distribution of themes

The following table shows the distribution of the total number of themes found in the data corpus

Table 3.1: Proportions of three types of themes

Type Topical Interpersonal Textual Sum

Percentage 75.13% 8.33% 16.54% 100%

As can be seen from the table, a total of 720 themes are found in the 12 SoPs Among these, 541 themes belong to the category of Topical Theme, accounting for the highest percentage of 75.13% This proportion is followed by Textual Theme with 119 items (16.54%) while the lowest figure can be noticed in Interpersonal Theme standing at 60, constituting 8.33% This result accords with the findings of other studies on writing texts by Wei (2015) (sample IELTS task 2 Writing in books), Gunbawan and Aziza (2017), Nguyen and Nguyen (2018)

It is notable that Topical Theme, which has the highest frequency, appears in every single surveyed clause This realization of Topical Theme guarantees the fact that this type is a compulsory element in any T-unit (Halliday, 2014)

Being the second common type, Textual Theme appears in all the SoPs of the study It

is used quite stably and consistently across the texts with a narrow range of appearance from

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3% (SoPs no.21 of Design Science) to 25.8% (SoPs no.17 of Social Science) This prevalence

of Textual Theme can be explained by its potential and significant contribution to the coherence and cohesion of a text Among three sub-types, conjunctive adjuncts and conjunctions occupy

a larger proportion They are used to link a clause or an idea to the previous one, indicating the relation between them and also to the whole text

To be specific, conjunctions are used the most with the high frequency of three conjunctions ‘and, but, so’, which holds 59.67% of the overall type of Textual Theme used

Table 3.2: Proportions of three conjunctions ‘and, but, so’

Percentage 33.87% 18.54% 0.72% 59.67%

Note: N= 124

According to the above table, ‘And’ is the most prevalent conjunction with 33.87% and

exists in every text of all three disciplines Although the frequency of ‘so’ is fairly notable, it does not even appear in any text of Design Science discipline

The least common theme type to be reported is Interpersonal Theme, whose frequency

in most texts being between 4.40% and 14.75% Like two other themes, Interpersonal Theme appears in every text, but with a smaller number of items SoPs no.19 and 25 have the most items of 9, whereas, the figure is only 2 in SoPs no.32, no.22 and no.33 The use of Interpersonal Theme in every text can be counted for the fact that it allows writers to explicitly express their own standpoint and set a personal tone due to the requirement of a SoPs served as “a means of establishing a (credible) claim to a scholarly identity” (Hyland, 2012, p 72)

It is striking to note that comment/modal adjunct is applied on a wider scale than vocative and finite verbal operator with 58 items at 96.67% Among comment/modal adjuncts

used, ‘I realize’, ‘I believe’, ‘I hope’, ‘I know’, ‘I feel’, I understand’, ‘I think’ are widely employed at 50%, whose major percentage go for ‘I believe’ and ‘I know’ with 11.67% for

each

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3.1.1.1 Distribution of Themes according to disciplines

Some significant notes on how themes are distributed in three disciplines are described

in the following table:

Table 3.3: Proportions of three types of themes according to disciplines

Topical % Interpersonal % Textual % SUM % Natural

27, closely higher than Social Science Meanwhile, only 10 items are found in Design Science The same pattern is reported for Textual Theme with the highest percentage of employment belonging to Social Science (58 items), followed by Natural Science (49 items) and finally Design Science (17 items)

3.1.1.2 Distribution of Theme according to five generic elements

Because Topical Theme appears in every sentence of the whole data corpus, the number

of Topical Theme depends on the number of sentences and T-units, which is actually not a valid finding in this study Hence, this part only focuses on the allocation of Interpersonal and Textual Theme based on five suggested structure elements adapted from Chiu (2016)

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The table below describes the allocation of those two theme types in each element and their percentage compared to the number of Interpersonal and Textual Theme of the whole corpus

Table 3.4: Proportions of Interpersonal and Textual theme types according to elements

It is clearly shown that element ‘Conclusion’ has the highest rate of Interpersonal Theme

application, accounting for 35% of the overall 60 items found in 12 texts The same result is also reported in the separated case of Social Science (33.33% with 8 items) and Natural Science (40.74% with 11 items) Design Science is an exception Among 4 surveyed SoPs, only element

‘Application reason’ and ‘Conclusion’ contain Interpersonal Theme, being 6 items for the

former and 3 items for the latter

The finding shows that despite variation in the theme distribution of 5 elements,

Interpersonal theme type exists in element ‘Conclusion’ with a significant, not to mention the

highest, frequency

Regarding Textual Theme, it is the most prevalent in element 3 (27.73% with 33 items)

and element ‘Relevant background’ (31.09% with 37 items) Specifically, Element ‘Relevant Background’ of Social Science and Natural Science employ the highest number of Textual

Theme with 20 items (35.08%) and 15 items (30.61%) respectively In contrast, in Design

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Science, this type is most frequently used in element ‘Application reason’ with 7 items (41.17%), meanwhile, only 2 items (11.76%) are applied in element ‘Relevant Background’

3.1.2 Distribution of Thematic Progression

There are a total of 118 TP items out of 5072 T-units in the 12 surveyed texts Accordingly, on average, each SoPs contains roughly 9.83 TP patterns Among the data, SoPs no.17 and no.24 possess the highest number of Thematic Progression, which share the same figures of 17 patterns On the other hand, the analysis shows that text no.3, no.12, no.16, no.32 apply the lowest numbers of patterns, narrowly ranging from 5 to 6 patterns each

The table below illustrates the summary of the specific proportion of each TP pattern’s realization in the surveyed data (For specific figures, see Appendix 7)

Table 3.5: Proportions of five TP types in the corpus

3.1.2.1 Distribution of Thematic Progression according to different disciplines

The table below provides a brief description of how five theme types are distributed across three surveyed fields

Table 3.6: Proportions of five TP patterns according to disciplines

CP % SLP % DHP % STP % SRP % SUM Social

Science

3.1.2.2 Split Linear Progression

It can be seen by the tables summarizing thematic analysis in Appendix 7, SLP is the most frequently used in every text with the number of this pattern from SoP no.32, no.12, no.21 far exceeding others For instance, in text 21, there are 7 patterns of this type found, accounting for 87.5% of the total text For most part of the remaining SoPs, the percentage of this pattern

is higher than 50%, except for text no.33 (27.27%), no.3 (40%), no.24 (35.30%), no.25 (41.67%)

This percentage is in agreement with the findings of most studies related to text analysis, for example Babaii et al (2016), Hawes (2015) and Wei (2015) In the research on TP choices

of research articles carried out by Babaii et al (2016), it is reported that the proportion of SLP dominates the four others with over a half of the total number of patterns

Concerning structure distribution, some researchers find that this pattern is mostly realized in the body part of a text This accords with the finding of Nguyen (2020) on IELTS writing task 2 and the claim by Jalilifar (2014) that the writer uses SLP to unfold and develop the key ideas presented in the topic sentence of each paragraph

Contrary to previous findings, the analysis shows that the employment of this TP pattern mostly does not rely on structure element, topic sentence or discipline Instead, it is based on

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the ideas expressed in the text to apply SLP for the text cohesion Furthermore, one notable feature of SLP application is that a chain of two continuative SLP is not popular, especially in Natural Science and Design Science

Below are two typical illustrations of how SLP is being used among the data corpus

Figure 3.1: TP pattern of SoP no.24 (T-Units 64-67)

Figure 3.2: TP pattern of SoP no.21 (T- Units13-18)

As can be seen from the two figures, SLP is used to link separated ideas with random continuation, not the whole paragraph from the topic sentence, which is generally found in other text types such as IELTS writing or research articles