Topic Maintenance

In the evaluation of topic maintenance, whether the utterances in the story writings were centered on a specific topic without irrelevant information, shifts in topics, poor transitions or abrupt endings was examined.

4.2.1.1 Result

Table 4.7 summarizes the distribution of the levels of topic maintenance in the pretest and the six story writings.

Table 4.7. The Distribution of the Levels of Topic Maintenance in the Story Writings

Levels Appropriate Variable Inappropriate

Pretest D. E. K. H A. B. C. V. W

Story writing 1 A. B. C. D. E. H. K.

V. W

Story writing 2 D. E. H. K A. B. C. V. W Story writing 3 A. D. E. H. K B. C. V. W Story writing 4 A. B. D. E. H. K. W C. V Story writing 5 A. B. D. E. H. K. W C. V Story writing 6 A. B. C. D. E. H. K.

V. W

The result shown in Table 4.7 indicates that the participants’ topic maintenance in their writings was greatly enhanced with the use of wordless picture books. In the

pretest most of the participants included much irrelevant information in their story writings, and even some of their writings were dominated by off-topic associations,

resulting in no clear topics in utterances as indicated in the following excerpt.

Amy is a very very nice elephant. her Nick is a very very strong elephant. Amy has three cute little baby. So some people give Amy’s baby’s presend….Amy is very happy, beacouse. some people give My babys persend. but three little baby is angry. beacouse three little baby like quite, What about you? You like happy or quite? Nick and Amy like happy. Amy’s baby like quite. is a cool…! (Angel, pretest)

In this excerpt, Angel seemed to establish a topic on a celebration party. She then gave some brief descriptions of the celebration. However, the topic was not well-maintained in the later part of the writing. There was a shift in topic without proper transitions. She then started to write about tangential utterances and personal opinions irrelevant to the topic. Besides, the story was ended abruptly with little relevance to

the established topic, which led to poor topic maintenance.

After the wordless picture book writing program began, the participants started to successfully establish a topic in their first story writings, and most of their utterances were centered on the topic. Although some problems remained, such as tangential sentences, poor transitions in utterances, rapid shifts in topics, and abrupt or irrelevant endings, the occurrences of these problems gradually decreased and the participants demonstrated more competence in maintaining the topic in the story writings toward the end of the writing program.

First, the participants became more able to sustain topic maintenance by gradually deleting tangential utterances in their story writings. Initially in the pretest, most of the participants tended to include some irrelevant information in the story as indicated

in the following excerpt from Claire.

Elephant quen briersday, elephant cow ……, walk elephant quen big house, elephant quen very buetful, He very Love 生 氣 and no love taking a shor, student elephant no love elephant quen, elephant quen have three elephant babys, elephant babys mothr very 可愛 大家 love her, She is homwmaker and very fat and short, father and mother big house 城堡 very 高上, she averday happy, averday she 會帶 babys goes walk。(Claire, pretest)

In this excerpt, Claire established the topic on Elephant Queen’s birthday. However, she included plenty of irrelevant information about the queen’s likes and dislikes, other people’s opinions about her, her daily routines and so on. Topic maintenance

was flawed due to too many tangential utterances.

The inclusion of off-topic utterances was still observed in many of the participants’

first story writings, including Claire. As indicated below, while she was writing about the baby bear running back to her mother and telling her what had happened, she

added an irrelevant utterance “They are happy every day “ in between.

One day baby bear look at big house, He’s walk to the house, He’s scared….He runs away, Baby bear runs to mother bear at their home. They are happy every day. He’s tell mother that is a house in a ghost. Baby bear doesn’t want to go out alone. (Claire, first story writing)

However, the frequency of including irrelevant information decreased in the participants’ later story writings. As indicated in the following excerpts, the utterances

in Claire’s later story writings were more centered on the topic instead of being

tangential.

The time is eight o’clock. There is a turtle. He looks at the sky, and he sees the frogs. The turtle is so scared. Then the frogs fly to town and in the street they see some crows are on the wire. The crows say, “Oh, my!” Soon, the frogs fly higher and higher. (Claire, fifth story writing)

In the descriptions of the frogs flying to the town, Claire included episodes that the turtle and the crows witnessed this surprising event. She successfully maintained all the utterances on the topic while describing different scenes without adding irrelevant

information in between.

Besides, it was also found that the occurrences of rapid shifts in topics without proper transitions gradually decreased in the participants’ story writings. In the previous story writings, the participants tended to shift the topic without proper

transitions as indicated in the following excerpt from Brian.

He look around he see the three bed. First he went on the father’s bed. He think is too hart, he didn’t like it, and he went on the mother’s bed…. Finally he went on girl’s bed and he went to slept. Suddenly the people in the house is every angry. Because they see There bowl was broke. (Brian, first story writing)

In the excerpt above, Brian was writing about the bear trying the beds in the bedroom. However, he shifted the topic to the people in the house being angry at the sight of the mess in the house without any transitions or reference to who the people

were. Similar result could be found in Brian’s third story writing below.

When she at home, she see everysome fall down, she is not happy, Suddenly she smell something good, she see a husband and a wife, and she going, and she eat the pancakes, she is happy, she goes home to sleep. (Brian, third story writing)

In this excerpt, the topic abruptly shifted from the old lady being unhappy about having nothing to eat to her seeing a husband and a wife without further information

about whom or where they were.

However, abrupt shifts in topic were seldom seen in Brian’s later writings. Like many other participants, he started to connect the events with proper transitions as

indicated below.

Then the frogs fly into an old woman’s house. They turn on the TV. They are happy because they are first time watch TV. Soon, it is 4:38. One frog goes out and bumps a dog. The dog is angry, so the dog wants to catch the frog. (Brian, fifth story writing)

The excerpt above included two events. In the previous part, Brian described that the frogs watched TV in an old lady’s house. Then he demonstrated the ability to shift the topic smoothly by specifically signaling the change of the time and scene with the sentences “Soon, it is 4:38. One frog goes out and bumps a dog” to start another event. Moreover, he also used proper transitional words to signal the changes of

events as indicated below.

Suddenly, the boy sees the snowman is moving. He takes the snowman home.

The little boy shows the snowman his house. First, they go to the little boy’s parents’ bedroom….Second, they go to the garage....Finally, they go to the dining room and eat a candlelit dinner. (Brian, sixth story writing)

Shared by many other participants, Brian began to connect different episodes with transitional words, like first, second, and finally to signal the changes in scenes. The participants developed their ability to sustain the topic and avoid abrupt topic shifts

throughout the writing program.

Moreover, the participants were also found to pay attention to the topic continuity in the ending of the story. The following excerpt showed that before the writing program the topic maintenance in many of the participant’s story writing was problematic because they, including Hank, failed to connect the ending to the story topic on the celebration of new babies and the ending was tangential and not fully

relevant to the topic of the story.

One day, elephant father and elephant mother 生了 three babys. Any anlmose are went to the them home. Chken Tom gave them eggs....Elephant father and elephant mother are very happy. Any anlmose are very happy too. Because this thing 令人 very happy. Finoly, elephant babys was happy 長大. Any anlmose is 過得 very happy too. (Hank, pretest)

Irrelevant ending was also found in Hank’s first story writing below. The topic was about the adventure of a bear in a wooden house in the forest. However, the ending of

the grandmother finding the baby bear seemed less relevant to the topic.

Baby bear saw a old wooden house and went to the house....Then the people hit baby bear. But baby bear ran out. He went to the grandmother. His grandmother said “Oh! I find you! You are here. “(Hank, first story writing)

However, the participants, including Hank, then began to be aware of the topic maintenance in the ending. As indicated in the following excerpt, the topic was on the zookeeper’s plan to save the animals. The ending was that the zookeeper’s wife ruined his plan, so he finally gave it up and then went to bed. The ending was more on-topic and relevant.

Joe liked animals. When he saw animals in the cage, he was sad. So he lets the

Jack took his key chain. And Jack could help the other animals out of the cage….Finally, Joe failed because his wife took the other animals to the cage.

Jack wants to give up. So he went to sleep. At that time, Jack fall asleep...

(Hank, second story writing)

The ability to maintain the topic in the endings was found to sustain throughout the

writing program as indicated in the following excerpts from Hank.

Judy had a baby. She wanted to let her baby eat pancakes because she hoped her baby could grow up soon. She made the pancakes food right away....The people gave Judy pancakes. So finally they were full and she know her baby could grow up soon. So she was happy. (Hank, third story writing)

One weekend in the winter, I got up and saw it’s snowy outside. I decided to make a snowman to be my friend....I went out to looked at the snowman. But the snowman melted into water….But I think I had a good friend and I hoped the snowman could play with me again. (Hank, sixth story writing)

In the excerpts above, the endings included the resolution of the actions and the character’s reflections on the event. Like the other participants, Hank demonstrated consistent ability to maintain the topic continuity in the endings by coherently and

logically connecting the endings to the topic of the story.

In summary, the use of wordless picture books for writing enhanced the topic maintenance for the EFL young learners. It was possibly because the pictures in the wordless picture books focused their attention on the main storyline as indicated in

the following excerpt.

R: What do you pay attention to during writing the wordless picture books?

﹝在創作這些無字書的時候，你會注意些什麼？﹞

B: The things and character that appeared frequently.

﹝就是裡面比較常出現的東西和人吧。﹞

R: Do you mean the main character?

﹝你是說主角嗎？﹞

B: Yes. I would write about him from the beginning to the end. I would describe his personality first and then focused on describing what he did in the story.

(Brian, third interview)

﹝對，就是從頭到尾都講他，一開始也先描述他的個性，然後就一直描述他 在書中做的事情，就這樣。﹞

From the excerpt above, it could be inferred that the participants would decide on the main character from the pictures and focused on the description of the actions taken by the main character or the events that happened to him/her. In other words, the pictures in the wordless picture books guided the participants to describe the story based on a basic storyline with a central topic.

4.2.1.2 Discussion

It was found that topic maintenance in the participants’ story writings gradually and significantly improved with the use of wordless picture books for writing. The findings are consistent with the previous research indicating that the wordless picture books are beneficial in “developing in stages from an ability to produce single words and phrases to the production of one complete statement, followed by writing two or more complete statements in logical order about the same topic” (D’Angelo, 1979, p.

813). In the present study, before the implementation of the writing program, the participants only wrote a series of unrelated phrases or sentences mostly without a central topic. However, gradually with more experiences in writing a story about the

pictures in the wordless picture books, the participants included less tangential or irrelevant utterances, poor transitions, shifts in topics, and abrupt endings. They were able to produce a story with all of the utterances centered on a topic, with proper transitions to connect one topic with another, and with an appropriate ending to wrap

up the whole story toward the end of the writing program.

From the results above, it is clear that the use of wordless picture books enhances students’ narrative skills in topic maintenance. The possible reason that writing about wordless picture books facilitates the development of topic maintenance may be that the pictures in wordless picture books already contain a central topic in a clear storyline for students to follow. They are able to narrate the events based on the storyline without being distracted. As a result, they are gradually able to connect all the utterances to a main storyline with proper transitions and remove those irrelevant and off-topic utterances with the use of wordless picture books for writing.