Topical Depth and Writing Quality in Student EFL Compositions

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study tests a method to describe the relationship between coherence and writing quality by using topical structure analysis. Originally the method was used to examine short professional texts written in the mother tongue (L1) but in the present study it is applied to short compositions written in English by students learning this foreign language (EFL). The analyses showed that what characterized good writers was the ability to develop the topics in their compositions more evenly across several topic levels than mid‐quality writers and especially the poor writers. Good writers were more homogeneous (measured by the size of standard deviation) as a group in handling topics at higher levels than mid‐quality and poor writers. The reverse was true of the lowest topical depths. Good writers tended to return to higher topic levels at the end of their compositions more often than the writers in the other categories. Thus there seems to be a certain degree of relationship between topical structure a...