In this section, the quantitative results of TPs in different levels of essays are presented in three sections followed by qualitative analysis of the deployment of TP in essays.
Proportion of TP Types
The first section of this chapter addresses the first research question, which is concerning the proportion of various TP types in the expository essays from GEPT writing test. Three aspects of results were investigated and discussed, including (1) overall proportion of TP types, (2) proportion of TP types in higher and lower-rated essays, and (3) the number of TP types employed in each essay. The three sub-questions under research question one are listed below:
1.1 What are the overall proportion of TP types in all essays?
1.2 What are the proportion of TP types in level 3 and level 4 essays?
1.3 What are the variety of TP employed in level 3 and level 4 essays?
While analyzing the proportion of TP, this research also targeted the progression types that could not fall into TP typology, which was termed “breaks” in the present study. The proportion of breaks and TP, therefore, was revealed to understand how frequently breaks appeared in learners’ essays.
Overall Proportion of TP Types
To answer research question 1.1, all the TP types in each essay were identified and calculated to indicate the proportion of each type. The descriptive results were shown in Table 4, in which the number of occurrence of each TP type, proportion of each TP type, and the number of writers who employed each TP type were listed:
43 Table 4
Proportion of TP Types in all essays Number of Occurrence
Proportion
Ranking of Frequency
Number of Writers Using
the Pattern
Constant 408 46.84% 1 96
Linear 212 24.34% 2 84
Derived 51 5.86% 5 22
Split 124 14.24% 3 42
Rhematic 76 8.73% 4 49
Sum. 871 100%
Based on Table 4, it was evident that constant TP appeared most frequently in all essays, which constituted of nearly half (46.84%) of the total TP, followed by linear TP (24.34%). This was in line with some previous studies (Jalilifar, 2010; Mellos, 2004; Rakhman, 2013; Soleymanzadeh & Gholami, 2014) that EFL writers employed more constant TPs than linear TPs. Apart from these two types, split-Rheme TP made up of 14.24% of the TP, followed by Rhematic progression (8.73%) and Derived TP (5.86%). The proportion of each TP type was amplified in the graph in Figure 7:
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Figure 7. Proportion of TP Types in all essays
For constant TP, the item in the Theme of the first clause is selected as the Theme of the subsequent clause. This was the most common type of TP in English learners’ essays since it could be formed simply by reiterating the same Theme from the previous clause (Ebrahimi & Ebrahimi, 2012a; Eggins, 2004; Mellos, 2011, Rakhman, 2013).
For Simple Linear TP (hereafter linear TP), Fries (1995) suggested this type of TP appeared more often in expository writing since the writers usually tend to
elaborate on ideas in this genre (Fries, 1995; Wang, 2004; Yang, Ramírez, & Harman, 2011). A few researchers claimed that these cross-referential connections between the Theme with the Rheme of the preceding clause were usually utilized by successful academic students so as to contribute to cohesion in a text (Mellos, 2011; Wang, 2007). In this study, nevertheless, linear TP only constituted around 24.34% of all TPs, which was not in line with previous findings in expository genre (Fries, 1995).
For the split-Rheme TP and derived TP, the former appeared much more frequently (14.24%) than the latter (5.86%). This corresponded to Ebrahimi and
Constant 47%
Linear 24%
Derived 6%
Split 14%
Rheme 9%
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Ebrahimi’s (2012a) finding that split progression was used more often than TP with a derived progression. However, the percentage of split-rheme TP (7.93%) in the present study was much larger than that in Ebrahimi and Ebrahimi’s (2012a) results (lower than 2% in general). This might result from the difference in genre because the writing in this study were expository essays on a certain topic, while students in their study (Ebrahimi & Ebrahimi, 2012a) were asked to compose a narrative on pictorial stories.
For Rhematic progression, nonetheless, Chao (2002) revealed that this pattern appeared more often than split-rheme TP in all the essays in her data, while the findings of this study revealed that split progression appeared much more frequently than rhematic progressions. Rhematic progression is a TP type that connected
information from one Rheme to the subsequent Rheme of the following clause (Chao, 2002; Crompton, 2004). In this study, rhematic progression only made up 8.73% of all TP types, which appeared less frequently than split progression (14.24%). This was different from Chao’s (2002) finding that rhematic progression appeared up to 13.56%
in lower-rated essays and 9.52% in higher-rated essays.
Proportion of TP Types in Level 3 and Level 4 Essays
To address research question 1.2, the proportion of various TP types in higher-rated and lower-higher-rated essays were compared in Table 5:
46 Table 5
The Difference Between Higher-rated and Lower-rated Essays
Higher-rated Essays Lower-rated Essays
Proportion
Ranking of Frequency
Proportion
Ranking of Frequency
Constant 43.27% 1 50.72% 1
Linear 24.50% 2 24.16% 2
Derived 7.73% 5 3.83% 5
Split 14.13% 3 14.35% 3
Rhematic 10.38% 4 6.94% 4
Sum. 100% 100%
Based on Table 5, the comparison between the proportion of TP types in higher-rated and lower-higher-rated essays did not show salient difference. Constant TP appeared most frequently in both level of essays, followed by linear TP and split-rheme TP. The ranking of frequency of the rest TP types in both levels was also the same, so the difference of the number of each TP type was studied independently. Figure 8 showed the results of the comparison of each TP type in graph, and some subtle differences were revealed below:
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Figure 8. The Difference of the Proportion of TP Types Between Higher-rated and Lower-rated Essays
Based on Figure 8, the proportion of constant TP in higher-rated (43.27%) essays was slightly lower than that in lower-rated essays (50.72%), and this was in line with previous studies (Crompton, 2004; Hawes and Thomas, 1997; Soleymanzadeh &
Gholami, 2014). The proportion of constant TP in high-rated and lower-rated essays in the present study were close, both higher-level and lower-level writers preferred constant TP to linear TP. The use of these constant TPs in essays will be exemplified in the qualitative results in the following section.
Both-higher and lower-level students employed constant TP most frequently, but this was different from Chao’s (2002) study on senior high school students’ expository essays, in which the high-level students used linear TP most often instead of constant TP. For lower-level essays, the results of this study corresponded to her finding that constant TP is the most frequent type in lower-level essays, followed by linear TP.
As for linear TP, the frequency of occurrence of the type were nearly the same in higher-level essays (24.50%) than the lower-level counterpart (24.16%), and this was contrary to other studies on expository genre (Chao, 2002; Rakhman, 2013).
43.27%
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For derived TP and rheme TP, Taiwanese EFL learners tended to use split-rheme TP more than derived TP in their writing, while these two types of TP were similar in the sense that the main idea in the first clause was elaborated or explained in the following two, three, or more clauses. These were common TP types in expository essays since writers might use several supporting clauses to complement the main idea (Rakhman, 2013). They might provide examples, reasons,
consequences, or details in the subsequent derived Themes or split Rhemes. The total of both types of TP in higher-level essays (12.53%) exceeded the total in lower-level essays (9.83%), which meant that high-level learners are more likely to employ these two strategies to elaborate on their ideas. For split progression alone, the result of this study was also consistent with Mellos’ (2011) finding that split progression appeared more frequently in higher-rated essays than in lower-rated counterparts.
Aside from the difference in the number of TPs, the difference of the number of writers using each TP type between higher-rated and lower-rated essays were
illustrated in Figure 9:
Figure 9. The Difference of the Number of Writers Using Each TP Types
46 45
49
Between Higher-rated and Lower-rated Essays
From Figure 9, it was observed that all lower-level writers used constant TP in their essays, while four higher-level writers did not use any of them. It was also clear that more higher-level writers employed linear TPs, while as many as 11 lower-level writers did not employ any linear TP in their essays. The results were also in line with Chao’s (2002) findings that more writers from the higher-level group utilized linear TP and fewer of these writers used constant TP. For derived progression, split progression, and rhematic progression, more higher-level writers used these patterns than lower-level writers. It was also found by Chao (2002) that more higher-level writers used rhematic progression than lower-level counterparts.
The Variety of TP Types in Level 3 and Level 4 Essays
Aside from the difference in the proportion of the TP types between higher-rated and lower-rated essays, the present study further targets whether writers of the higher-rated essays employ more types of TP in their texts. Since utilizing TP is a valuable strategy to weave the clauses to achieve better cohesion, it is assumed that using more types of TP manifest the capability, creativity, and better command of varied TP strategies. The number of TP types in higher-rated and lower-rated essays was, therefore, analyzed and calculated to reveal the variety of TP in different levels of essays.
In this study, a total of five TP types were identified in each essay. These five TPs included: (1) Simple linear TP, (2) TP with a constant Theme, (3) TP with a derived Theme, (4) Exposition of split Rheme, and (5) Rhematic Progression. Based on the calculation, the average number of TP types in higher-rated essays is 3.04, which indicates that writers of the higher-rated essays employed 3.04 out of the five kinds of TPs in their essays on average; as for the lower-rated group, the average
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number of TP types in higher-rated essays is 2.78, which indicates that writers of the lower-rated essays employed 2.78 kinds of TP in their essays on a whole. It can be observed that the number of TP types in higher-rated essays is higher than the lower-rated counterparts by 0.26, which in turn suggested that higher level writers can establish more kinds of TP in their texts.
Table 8 below presents the results of the summary of the number of essays and the number of TP types they contain respectively:
Table 6
The Variety of TP Types in Each Essay
Higher-rated Essays Lower-rated Essays TP type(s)
Note. These five TPs included: (1) Simple linear TP, (2) TP with a constant Theme, (3) TP with a derived Theme, (4) Exposition of split Rheme, and (5) Rhematic Progression.
Table 8 shows that the majority of essays contain three types of TP, with 44% of higher-rated essays and 38% of lower-rated essays respectively. For both groups, the essays which contain two TP types rank number two (26% for high-rated essays and 28% for lower-rated essays), and those containing four TP types rank the third (22%
for both group). This may suggest that most writers of level 3 and level 4 employ
51 three or two types of TP types in their essays.
Nonetheless, it can be observed from the above table that 72% of higher-rated essays manifested over three types of different TPs, but only 62% of lower-rated essays showed more than three types of TPs. This indicates that a larger number of higher level writers were capable of using different types of links in their expository essays. Furthermore, for essays which contained all five TP types appeared more in higher-rated group (6%) compared to that in lower-rated essays (3%); contrarily, the proportion of essays with only one TP type is smaller in higher-rated group (2%) than the number in lower-rated essays (10%). This revealed that writers of the higher-rated essays might be capable of using a variety of TP types to link their clauses, while some writers of lower-rated essays could only use one TP strategy in their essays, limiting the creativity and flexibility of their texts.
In the past, researchers on TP usually paid attention to the proportion of TP types used by different levels of writers. Hawes and Thomas (1997), for instance,
indicated that lower-level learners could only employ very limited TP strategies in their writings, such as linear or constant TP, while higher-level learners more often connect their text cohesively with derived pattern or other TPs. In the present study, the number of TP types in each essay was studied if more advanced learners are capable of using a larger number of TP types in texts. Although the two groups did not manifest salient difference, but it was also found that higher-level writers can control the development of information with various cohesive links in their essays. The varied strategies used by higher-level writers might help connect information tightly and cohesively, and essays including such complex and sophisticated strategies might not often be seen in lower-rated essays. This finding will be exemplified with samples in the next section of this chapter.
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Although TP accounts for the way to establish link between clauses, not every clause consists of Theme or Rheme that is associated with the preceding or following clause in the way described by TP theorists. That is, some links in a text cannot be explained through the existing TP typology, namely the five TP types above.
Crompton (2004), for example, verified that not all clauses fit into a certain TP type;
Hawes and Thomas (1997) discovered that “breaks” constituted around 30% in students’ essays. Therefore, apart from the five types of TPs adopted in this study, these “breaks” in essays were also investigated to see if their appearance is a distinctive feature of Taiwanese writers.
In Table 7, the proportion of breaks in all essays are presented, and those in higher-rated essays and lower-rated essays were presented respectively:
Table 7
Proportion of Breaks in all essays
Overall Higher-rated Lower-rated
Number % Number % Number %
TP 871 55.7% 453 57.34% 418 54.71%
Breaks 692 44.3% 337 42.66% 355 45.92%
According to Table 7, both high-rated and lower-rated essays manifested a large proportion of this TP, with those in lower-rated essays (45.92%) slightly more than those in high-rated counterparts (42.66%). This was in line with Hawes and Thomas’s (1997) finding that slightly more breaks appeared in lower level learners’ essays (33.7%) than advanced learners’ essays (27.3%). As for the overall proportion, nonetheless, the essays from this corpus manifested higher proportion of breaks (44.3%) than those in their study (30%).
The preliminary results revealed a distinctive characteristic of Taiwanese
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learners’ writings which showed that a larger number of clauses are not linked to one another or connected in an unusual way that do not fall into any TP category. This may shed light on the importance of teaching TP to writers so as to help them establish effective links between clauses. In order to understand how these breaks contribute to or impair the cohesion in these essays, concrete samples will be presented and qualitatively analyzed and discussed in the following section.
Marked Theme in level 3 and level 4 essays
To respond to research question two, which aims at understanding how often learners deployed marked Themes and unmarked Themes in the essays, marked Themes and unmarked Themes in higher-rated essays and lower-rated essays were thus investigated and discussed. The quantitative results are presented in this section.
The use of marked Themes can help shift the information flow to a new topic in the essay (Martin & Rose, 2003), or writers can employ marked Theme to connect the elements in previous clauses so as to improve cohesion. Using marked Themes has usually been considered as a feature of essays written by learners with higher
language proficiency (Hewing, 2004; Mellos, 2011; Mustaffa & Aman, 2007; North, 2005). The proportion of marked Themes and unmarked Themes in higher-rated and lower-rated essays were shown in Table 8 below:
54 Table 8
The Proportion of Marked Themes and Unmarked Themes in Higher-rated and Lower-rated Essays
Higher-rated Essays Lower-rated Essays
Number % Number %
Unmarked 367 43.69% 329 39.98%
Marked 473 56.31% 494 60.02%
Sum 840 100% 823 100%
The figures in Table 8 surprisingly revealed that the marked Theme (60.02%) occurred much more frequently than unmarked Theme (39.98%) in lower-level essays; in higher-level essays, similarly, marked Themes (56.31%) were still used more frequently than unmarked Themes (43.69%) in higher-level essays.
This finding was contradictory to all previous studies which claimed that marked Themes did not occur so frequently (Ebrahimi & Ebrahimi, 2012b; Hawes & Thomas 1997; Mellos, 2011; Mustaffa & Aman, 2007; North, 2005). In Ebrahimi and
Ebrahimi’s (2012b) research, for example, marked Theme only occurred in around 10% of all clauses in students’ writing.
Even though employing marked Themes is considered a strategy adopted more often by higher level writers, a larger proportion of marked Themes even appeared in lower-rated essays (60.02%) compared to higher-level essays (56.31%) in the present study. This discrepancy is clearly shown in Figure 10 below:
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Figure 10. The Proportion of Marked Themes and Unmarked Themes in Higher-rated and Lower-rated Essays
This finding indicated that using marked Themes in clauses was a relatively more dominant feature of expository essays written by lower level learners. This contradicted to Hawes and Thomas’s (1997) finding that higher level ESL learners used twice as many as marked Themes than lower level counterparts, and the Themes used by lower level learners were mostly “unmarked participant Themes.” Similarly, Mellos (2011) also pointed out that higher level EFL students used more marked Theme than lower level students, which was contrary to this study. Nonetheless, the proportion of the marked Theme does not equal the quality or the property of the marked Theme. Some previous researchers (e.g., Hewing, 2004; North, 2005) did found qualitative difference between learners’ use of marked Theme in their essay. In order to understand how marked Themes were actually deployed in both levels of essays, some samples will be provided and discussed in the qualitative section below.
The Analysis of TP from a Qualitative Perspective
In the previous section, the descriptive data of the quantity of TP types and marked Themes were presented, while a qualitative analysis was needed to provide a
43.69%
56
data-driven insight into how TPs were actually deployed to contribute to cohesive development. Therefore, in order to respond to research question three, which is about how TP were employed in learners’ essays from a qualitative perspective, all 106 essays were analyzed in order to address the second research question on how TP were deployed in both levels of essays qualitatively. The results of the analysis indicated a few distinctive features of TP and cohesion in learners’ essays, and they are shown below with examples
Repetitive pattern of constant TP
The above section indicated that using TP is a favorable feature of writing since using a number of TPs may contribute to the development of ideas and establishment cohesive link of text, but using a certain type of TP across a long stretch of text might sometimes be considered as a problem. According to Hawes & Thomas (1997):
A long sequence of Simple Linear TP can appear rather pedestrian and degenerate into “That means... That means... That means...” (etc). Too many
A long sequence of Simple Linear TP can appear rather pedestrian and degenerate into “That means... That means... That means...” (etc). Too many