CHAPTER ONE
Introduction
1.1 Background
Writing plays an indispensable part in communication and reflects writer’s logical thinking. In Taiwan, an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) context, writing has received increasing attention on the high-stake assessments, such as General Scholastic Aptitude Test (GSAT), Department Required Test (DRT), and General English Proficiency Test (GEPT). As the college entrance exam, GSAT is the test almost every Taiwanese senior high school student takes. Scoring high on the GSAT composition section is thus one of the goals students endeavor to reach. On GSAT, the writing section consists of translations and an essay, which account for eight and twenty points respectively. The topics of the essay range from writing a letter to picture description and the latter is the more common one in recent years.
Picture description, or picture writing, usually comprises a series of picture prompts or a comic strip. Test-takers are required to create a story from the visual stimulus by describing details in the pictures. According to previous research (Chen,
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2012; Lin, 2006; Wright, 1996), the prompts provided storylines to assist unskilled
writers. Familiarizing the senior high students with the frequent topics on GSAT might be the first step to help them excel on the GSAT writing section. Therefore, polishing students’ descriptive skills might be one of the teaching foci in Taiwanese senior high schools.
1.1.1 The Discourse Level Writing Problems
EFL learners, nevertheless, often find writing one of the most difficult skills to develop and sharpen. The problems that learners encounter include word-level problems, such as word usages, sentence-level problems, such as different syntactic structures, and discourse level ones (Chen, 2002). According to Chen (2002), it is the discourse level that challenges a great number of students. For instance, students have to familiarize themselves with different organizations in English writing, unlike traditional Chinese writing structure, i.e. qi, cheng, zhuan, he.
Traditional writing pedagogy in EFL contexts lays considerable emphasis on vocabulary and grammar instruction. Also, comments from teachers often revolve around vocabulary and grammatical errors in traditional methods (Albufalasa, 2013;
Yasuda, 2015). Coherence and organization might not have received sufficient attention from teachers and learners. As a result, students often produce
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grammatically correct sentences but find it difficult to write a coherent and well-organized essay (Liu & Liu, 2013).
1.1.2 Coherence
According to Danes (1974) and Lee (2002), coherence is defined as the use of
coherence-creating devices, including thematic progressions (TPs), connecting devices between the sentences and the transition between the paragraphs. To establish
coherence, it is of crucial importance for writers to order ideas in a logical sequence and connect themes and rhemes, which reflects the continuity of TPs (Danes, 1974).
Moreover, examining the coherence of a text will also investigate the disposition of ideas, i.e. the organization of texts. Coherence and organization are inseparable (Parsons, 1991). Organization is considered the way different parts of a system are arranged and work together. That is, organization refers to how writers present ideas to convey meanings across texts. Researchers have identified the rhetorical actions writers take in well-organized texts and advocated the instruction of rhetorical structures to improve organization and then coherence in student writings (Chen & Su,
2012; Christie & Dreyfus, 2007; Henry & Roseberry, 1998).
1.1.3 Coherence and SFL
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To help learners increase coherence in writings, many researchers have suggested adopting the Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) approach as a comparatively new pedagogical method in writing instruction (Henry & Roseberry,
1998; Liu & Liu, 2013; Mellos, 2011; Wang, 2007). They emphasized the social purposes of texts and how language is linked to contexts systematically. The research focus is on the function of language, which is how languages are put together to communicate meanings.
According to Halliday and Hasan (1976), coherence can be achieved at two levels, i.e. at the discourse level and at the sentence level. First, at the discourse level, writers can produce coherent texts by including the rhetorical structures. SFL theorists
argued that particular patterns of linguistic choices represented a certain type of text
(Brown & Marshall, 2012; Cheng, 2008; Christie & Dreyfus, 2007; Henry &
Roseberry, 2001; Martin, 2003). According to Hyland (2002), Derewianka (2004),
and Crombie and Johnson (2008), the rhetorical actions writers use in similar texts are referred to as genre. Genre-based research has been conducted to describe rhetorical moves in different genres, including narration, commentary, and exposition.
In 1997, Labov and Waletzky identified the six rhetorical moves in narratives, which were Abstract, Orientation, Complication, Evaluation, Resolution, and Coda.
Picture description, which requires students to write a story, belongs to narrative genre.
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Thus, the present study adopted the rhetorical structures and devised a picture writing framework based on Labov and Waletzky (1997). Having identified rhetorical moves in genres, researchers then proposed genre-based instruction with a purpose of raising learners’ awareness to rhetorical structures, grammatical and cohesive choices (Bhatia, 1999; Brown & Marshall, 2012; Christie & Dreyfus, 2007; Derewianka, 2003; Henry
& Roseberry, 1998; Pang, 2002). Adopting genre-based approach in writing instruction has been widely advocated in the field of SFL to help learners improve the rhetorical structures and coherence of texts.
Coherence can also be created through the use of theme and rheme at the sentence level. To examine coherence in texts, researchers employ theme-rheme as the analytical framework. Observing TCs and TPs gives readers an insight into the coherence of texts and how TCs and TPs function in different genres. Over the years, scholars have applied the theme-rheme analytical framework in examining a variety of speeches and writings, such as academic writings (Bloor & Bloor, 1992; Ebrahimi
& Khedri, 2011; Fetzer, 2008; Gao, 2012; Hawes & Thomas, 2012; Jalilifar, 2010;
Lores, 2004; Lovejoy, 1998; Martínez, 2003; North, 2005; Wang, 2007).
One line of SFL research has been exploring theme-rheme in learner writings. To identify problems of thematisations, which may compromise coherence, researchers have designed comparison studies between different groups of writings, including
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non-native learner writings and native-speaker writings, learner writings and proficient writings, together with writings produced by high-proficiency groups and writings of low-proficiency groups (Cheng, 2008; Christie & Dreyfus, 2007; Green, Christopher & Lam, 2000; Hawes & Thomas, 1997). As several scholars have suggested, it is necessary to incorporate SFL into writing pedagogy to increase coherence in learner writings (Green et al., 2000; Hawes & Thomas, 1997; Mellos, 2011; Vande Kopple, 1991).