A STUDY OF COHESION IN VIETNAMESE EFL STUDENTS' ARGUMENTATIVE ESSAYS THROUGH THEMATIC PROGRESSION ANALYSIS (TPA)

Abstract

To a large number of ESL/EFL learners, cohesion is an important element they need to improve in English academic writing. The purpose of this research is to investigate cohesion in the Vietnamese ESL argumentative writings by means of Thematic Progression Analysis (TPA). Subjects of the research are twenty second-year students at the Essay Writing 2 course in the English Department, Hanoi University. Two main research questions of this study were formulated as follows: (1) At the beginning of the course, to what extend are the Vietnamese EFL students’ argumentative writing cohesive? At the end of the course, are the students’ writing less or more cohesive after the teaching and learning of thematic progression? (2) What thematic progression patterns are found in the Vietnamese EFL students’ argumentative writings before and after the teaching and learning of thematic progression? The research subjects were given two writing tasks under two different topics at the beginning (pretest) and at the end of the course (posttest). Theories and practices of cohesion and theme-rheme framework were introduced to the students between the pretest and the posttest. Collected data were then analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively by comparing the scores of the students in the pretest and the posttest, and applying thematic progression framework to analyze the students pretest and posttest writing texts. The quantitative results reveal that the students improved significantly in terms of overall scores as well as the tested component scores (cohesion & coherence), and the change in the tested component scores lead to the change in the overall scores. Regarding qualitative analysis, the findings show important points of thematic progression patterns that contribute to the success of the ESL learners in creating written cohesion. Higher-scoring essays tend to include all four TP patterns, and these patterns are located flexibly throughout the text so as to create a smooth cohesion to the whole text. Besides TP patterns, the research also show the students’ enhancement in selecting theme types, which results in their progress in producing the TP problems, hence the improvement in textual cohesion. Based on the research results, implications on the application of thematic progression framework in the teaching and learning ESL/EFL writing are concluded. In order to do so, further studies should be conducted focusing on the development of materials as well as pedagogical methodologies that can incorporate the framework into classroom activities.