Topical structure analysis as an assessment tool in student academic writing
In an attempt to establish the validity of Topical Structure Analysis (TSA) as an assessment tool in student academic writing, this study applies TSA in both high- and low-rated comparison-and-contrast essays. Following Simpson’s (2000) model, the study consists of two parts. The first part quanti...
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| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Pusat Pengajian Bahasa dan Linguistik, FSSK, UKM
2015
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| Online Access: | http://journalarticle.ukm.my/8501/1/6627-22964-1-PB.pdf http://journalarticle.ukm.my/8501/ http://ejournal.ukm.my/3l/index |
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| Summary: | In an attempt to establish the validity of Topical Structure Analysis (TSA) as an assessment tool in student
academic writing, this study applies TSA in both high- and low-rated comparison-and-contrast essays.
Following Simpson’s (2000) model, the study consists of two parts. The first part quantitatively describes the
physical structure of freshman college students’ high- and low-quality comparison-and-contrast essays, and the
second part presents how the topical development is carried out in the said essays. Results show that although
there is a remarkable parallel preference of topical progressions between the two groups of data, over 60
percent of independent clauses in the low-quality writing introduce new topics compared to less than 50 percent
in high-quality writing samples. Two-proportion z-test shows that the difference is significant, p=.012 <.05.
Therefore, it may be inferred that low-quality writing tends to introduce more new topics in the independent
clauses than in high-quality writing. |
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