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Topical Structure Analysis: The Case of the Essays Written by Cebuano Multilingual Students

1Cris Delatado Barabas and 2Abegail Glynn Jumao-as 1,2University of San Carlos, Cebu City, Philippines

nirvana_cris@yahoo.com

This study attempted to describe and analyze the topical structure of paragraphs

written by the Cebuano multilingual students. Using the framework of Lautamatti (1987) which is the Topical Structure Analysis, the researchers investigated the types of progressions that were commonly used in the paragraphs, described how these progressions were carried out and established the common elements used in the paragraphs.The findings of the study revealed that the majority of the students preferred to use the sequential progression in developing their topics. Parallel progression followed on the rank, while extended parallel progression was least used. The majority of the students could connect their ideas throughout the paragraph by employing parallel and sequential progressions. This would suggest that these students can write good paragraphs but there were some students also that have difficulty in achieving such coherence because of lack of lexical resources which can be attributed to their educational and socio-cultural background. 1. INTRODUCTION

Producing highly coherent writings is one of the major problems of the Filipino students. More often than not, writing is regarded as a difficult task and is often neglected, especially by those students who are not majoring in either journalism or any communication art courses. There has been a common knowledge that in the Philippines, one would find it difficult to find students who would prefer writing over speaking.

In the academe for example, the researchers observed that students have difficulty in writing coherently but are able to express their feelings or ideas better in speaking. The researchers have observed too that there are only a few who would opt to major in writing or take writing elective courses. This manifests how students view writing as a difficult task.

Although some curricula would include Advanced Composition courses (i.e. Architecture, Linguistics, Philosophy), students would still find coherence, as one of the lessons in such course, difficult to grasp. The lack of motivation could probably be one of the factors. Another reason could be the inability of some instructors to introduce frameworks or concepts by modern grammarians or linguists in order to attain coherence in writing. Establishing some frameworks to the students could probably enhance their writing skills.

Almaden (2006) stated that it has been a common observation that students focus more on the lexical and sentence levels rather than on the discourse level. Further, she added that teachers find students using transitional links in their writing without really creating a coherent piece, and that more often than not, students turn out cohesive pieces of writing when they work more on the underlying coherence (i.e. thought progression) in relationship of ideas.

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The researchers agree with these observations. They have noted that students are able to find exact words in their writings but are not able to connect them logically throughout the sentences in the paragraph which causes the problem to occur. Students would have difficulty in putting into paper their thoughts and consequently would lose coherence in their writings.

One of the theories in producing coherent writing that the researchers find interesting is the one proposed by Lautamatti (1987). The concept of Topical Structure Analysis (TSA) is analyzing the types of topic progressions in the paragraphs. However, the researchers observed that in the Philippines, only few researches are conducted and most of these studies are done in the National Capital Region (NCR). The researchers claimed that most of these participants were bilingual, that is, they only spoke English and Filipino ( i.e. standardized Tagalog) languages. These studies ( e.g. Almaden, 2006; Veluz, 1992; Nunez, 2008) had participants that did not represent the entire Filipino students.

Let it be made clear here that the purpose of this study is not to compare the results conducted in the previous studies but simply to establish the common and least type of progressions that are employed in the students’ compositions, and to identify the common and major elements that are present in the students’ paragraphs. 2. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND RELATED STUDIES

In the Philippines, a country where English functions as a second language and is used as a medium of communication in almost, if not, all institutions from the academe, to the corporate worlds and in many sectors, students are expected not only to reasonably write correct sentences but also to be able to write longer pieces, paragraphs and complete texts which are both grammatically correct and well-organized and informative. Almaden (2006) states that:

Writing is a highly complex process for novice and non-novice writers alike since it involves a host of advanced skills that include critical thinking, logical development, and coherence of ideas. Realizing coherence in written discourse is a major challenge confronting writers, since coherence is not just desirable character of a text but a crucial aspect that establishes the oneness of a collection of abstract thoughts. Both novice and non-novice writers can only claim a written text is successful if it is able to found [sic.] a relation between the writer and reader, and between clauses, sentences, and paragraphs.

Watson et al. (1998) posit that among the many possible aspects to assessing writing,

one of the most difficult is coherence. According to them, problems with marking coherence arise because it is by nature subjective. However, the sensible probability of several readers getting a consensus concerning the coherence of a text suggests that it may be possible to allocate relatively reliable marks for coherence.

In addition, Lee (2004) observed that the number of years of education that the students have gone through is not an indication of his ability to write. Accordingly, many university students write incomprehensibly. As the researchers continued “these novice writers take on different writing strategies as opposed to expert writers”. Research provides a profile of the novice writers to facilitate on the understanding on how students should approach the writing task and how the teachers could help them overcome the problem.

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Stallard (1974) in Lee (2004) pointed out that those novice writers do not have the propensity to plan paragraphs or essays as a whole formally or informally. Scardamalia and Bereiter (1986) used the trial-and-error approach to trigger more writing if they get stuck in their writing, they will just start all over again using another word in the topic that they can relate to and tell about. They also spend little time planning and start off writing although they are still confused about the task (Richards, 1990).

In Halliday and Hasan (1976), cohesion is defined as one of the linguistic features which form textuality in a text. They continued that it is different from a mere relation exclusively based on forms which do not involve meaning in it. According to them, cohesion is primarily a semantic relation which can be realized through a system called “lexicogrammatical”.

According to Richards et al. (1985), coherence is interpreted as the relations which connect the meanings of utterances in a discourse or of the sentences in a text. Different from cohesion, coherence is not exclusively engendered by grammatical or lexical relations openly externalized in texts but also arises from the paralinguistic factors such as schema and expectations which generally inhabit in reader’s mind. According to Kies (2008):

Coherence is a product of many different factors, which combine to make every paragraph, every sentence, and every phrase contribute to the meaning of the whole piece. Coherence in writing is much more difficult to sustain than coherent speech simply because writers have no nonverbal clues to inform them if their message is clear or not. Coherence itself is the product of two factors — paragraph unity and sentence cohesion. Therefore, writers must make their patterns of coherence much more explicit and much more carefully planned.

Lee (2002) in Almaden (2006) discussed that coherence in writing, specifically in the English language can be more readily achieved through certain strategies (i.e. introductory activities, explicit teaching, awareness-raising tasks, and writing practice).

A method that is employed in measuring the coherence of writing is the one used by Watson et al. (1998) which is the topic-based analysis. As cited from that paper, topic-based analysis involves identifying key concepts in a text, identifying the relationships between these concepts, linking the relationships into a hierarchy, and mapping the text onto the hierarchy. Doing this method allows several different measures of coherence to be generated.

Reflecting the theories of the Prague School linguists, Lautamatti (1987) proposed Topical Structure Analysis (TSA) which is one method writers have adopted to achieve coherence in writing English.

The study of TSA has gained interest among researchers in their desire to determine thematic development in paragraphs and styles of writing of individuals. The use of TSA as device in investigating the progressions in writing has been validated by several researchers as a clear demonstration of style and strategy in linking ideas within paragraphs and reflection of thought progression (Almaden, 2006).

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As continued by Almaden (2006), TSA involves an analysis of the coherence derived by an examination of the internal topical structure of paragraphs by repetition of key words and ideas. Topical structure analysis uses of a plot that renders an objective representation of thematic progression or sequence. In writing, it is expected that sentences are arranged according to a sequence that would make all the ideas in a paragraph related to one another.

Lautamatti (1987) describes the three basic sentence elements that play a role in TSA: the first is the ISE (i.e. initial sentence element) which refers to the initially placed discourse material in sentences, whatever its type of form. ISE comes first in a sentence. The second element is the mood subject, which is the grammatical subject of the sentence. The third, the topical subject, refers to the idea being discussed in the sentence and may or may not be the mood subject. It may come in another lexical form but if it relates directly to the discourse topic, then it is still called the topical subject.

Based on the research on relationship between discourse topic and comment, which was originally made by Prague School linguistic theorists, Lautamatti (1987) discovered a textual principle that governs the semantic content of discourse. It says that the overall meaning of discourse derives from its discourse topic which in turn consists of a sequence of sub-topics hierarchically realized in a chain of sentences. This idea was developed to ‘topical structure analysis’, which was invented initially for the purpose of describing coherence in text (http://homepage3.nifty.com, 2008).

Lautamatti (1987) more closely and thoroughly explains this point by dividing coherence into two sub-categories which are respectively termed as ‘propositional coherence’ and ‘interactional coherence’. The former is engendered both by the organization of information and by the development of semantic content. On the sentence level this type of coherence is realized as textual cohesion. The latter takes place often as verbal interaction even when textual cohesion is absent.

Cheng and Steffenson (1996) in Almaden (2006), did a comparative study of the writing progress of two groups of university-level students in writing, where they compared the significant improvement in compositions between the group that was taught both the process method in writing and meta-discourse elements including topical structure analysis and the group that was taught only the process method. According to Almaden (2006), in this study, coherence was improved through the use of the knowledge of TSA.

In this study, it is notable that students should be taught the process method in writing as well as meta-discourse elements such as the TSA. However, it is observed that in the Philippines, students are not aware of the meta-discourse elements, and are not even aware of the different writing conventions. Not all students in the tertiary level have advanced composition courses. The study of Cheng and Steffenson (1996) in Almaden (2006) manifests that students should not only be taught with what to write but as well as theories to make their writing coherent.

An investigation of ESL writing adopting TSA was conducted by Phuwichit (2004) among Thai university students. He used Lautamatti’s (1987) Topical Structure Analysis in analyzing the students’ writings. His analysis focussed on the sentential and discourse levels. His study revealed that most of the sentences in the essays written by Thai students used personal pronouns especially I, you, and we as sentence subjects and moved the actual subject

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matters to the rheme parts of the sentences. The study further revealed that participants made alternate discussion of the sub-topics being compared and contrasted point by point. He concluded that extended parallel progression has the highest frequency of occurrence and parallel progression has the least.

The usage of pronouns such as I, you, and we by the Thai university students has a parallelism to the local study of Almaden (2004). However, it is clear that cultural background plays an important role in the students’ composition. How these students were raised and educated and how their minds were framed when it comes to paragraph composition, as well as how to achieve coherence in paragraph writing are part of educational and cultural variations.

Phuwichit (2004) found that extended parallel progression has the highest frequency of occurrence and the parallel progression is found least frequently used. The researcher concluded that based on the findings, the participants could write well-organized essays. In Almaden (2006), the Filipino researcher found that parallel progression has the highest frequency of occurrence and concluded that Filipino students can write coherent essays or paragraphs as well. This manifests that there could be different interpretations of each result which we can at the same time be attributed to cultural diversity.

Alptekin (2008), conducted a study which explored the interaction of culture and rhetorical conventions through the examination of expository essays written by American, Turkish, and bilingual (Turkish/English) Turkish university students on the same topic. The study at the same time employed the topical structure analysis in examining the expository discourse in both languages. This study also provided insights into the favoured organizational patterns of thematic progression in writing. It can be noted that in this study the findings were discussed with reference to cultural aspects of writing, and in particular, to the effects of monolingualism and biligualism on writing.

Witte (1983) found that writers of the high quality essays were more capable of both discovering content for the topics they introduced and distinguishing between crucial and non-crucial topics. In this study, he used topical structure analysis to distinguish between the sentences and T-units of 48 college freshman essays evaluated as either low or high quality. Comparing length, syntax, and topical structure, the study found that both low and high quality texts most often used T-units in which the initial elements and topical and grammatical subjects coincided. Also, the research revealed that the poorer essays introduced significantly more topics per T-unit.

His findings suggest that the writers of the high quality essays are more capable of both discovering content for the topics they introduced and distinguishing between crucial and non-crucial topics.

The finding that poorer essays introduced more topics in the paragraphs is also evident in the study of Veluz (1992) with the Filipino students as participants.

To describe the relationship between coherence and writing quality, Makinen (1992) applied Topical Structure Analysis to short compositions written in English by students learning English as a foreign language. The analyses show that good writers have 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 are more homogeneous (i.e.

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measured by the size of standard deviation) as a group in handling topics at higher levels than mid-quality and poor writers. The reverse is true of the lowest topical depths. Good writers tend 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 and writing quality.

In Makinen’s (1992) study, there is a significant difference to the writings of the students learning English as a foreign language from the students that are learning English as a second language. In this case, it is clear that the more exposed the students are to English, such as in the Philippines where English is the medium of instruction in schools since elementary level, the more aware the students are in achieving coherence in their writings. Foreign language learners of English have difficulty in establishing coherence in their writings because they have to do two tasks, to process the language in their minds and how to put it into writings.

Johnson (1992) conducted a comparative study in expository essays written in Malay and in English by native speakers of both languages and in ESL by Malaysian writers. Sample compositions evaluated holistically as "good" or "weak" in quality are submitted by Malaysian teachers of composition in Malay and by American teachers of native and non-native speakers of English. He found no differences in the amount of cohesion between "good" and "weak" compositions written in Malay by native speakers or in English by native and Malay speakers. The researcher added that the development of content in the compositions written in Malay in comparison to those written in English by native speakers indicate a cross-cultural variance in conditions for quality. In addition, compositions in ESL demonstrate a developmental stage in the usage of syntactic cohesive links and the organization of material, reflecting previous writing experience in the Malay language.

The results of this study primarily expostulate that culture plays a vital role on how students play or use the words in their compositions. As one could see, there is a consistency in the different researches stated in earlier part of this paper.

Simpson (2001) examined 40 paragraphs selected from articles published in academic journals in English and Spanish from within the context of cultural differences in writing. An analysis was conducted of 40 paragraphs written by adult academics and published in academic journals, focusing on the physical structure and the topical structure. The physical characteristics of the paragraphs include the number of words, sentences, and clauses. The results of the TSA show that English paragraphs tend to have a high use of internal coherence, while Spanish paragraphs do not generally tend to use immediate progression as a device for coherence. The researchers conclude here that there is a significant difference in determining writing coherence between cultures.

Kuo (1995) investigated how overt surface links contribute to the interpretation and

communicative purpose of a text. The researcher explores the cohesion and coherence at three levels of academic text - lexicon, sentence structure, and organization of information. Lexical cohesive analysis suggests that sentences which are functionally more important to the thematic development of a text usually contain more cohesive ties with other sentences than sentences less important functionally. At the sentence level, equally grammatical sentences can carry different communicative values in a given text. Furthermore, the given information patterns in paragraphs of various rhetorical functions are identified.

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With regard to the organization of information, the students need to develop their pragmatic competence in a number of academic genres and information unit types.

Hoenish (2008) analyzed the topical structure of accomplished essays and compared the results with the topical structure tacitly preferred by assessors in their judgments of student essays. The paper examined whether the same patterns of topical structure that are rewarded by assessors in student writing, as reported by previous studies, are in fact used by professionals writing within a similar genre. The analysis found that the accomplished essays contain similar patterns of topical structure to the high-rated student essays in Schneider and Connor's (1991) study. The accomplished essays, like the high-rated student essays, contain a large proportion of coherence-building sequential progression and a small proportion of parallel progressions.

Carreon (2006) analyzed the informal writing styles of students through a physical and topical structure analysis of randomly selected journal paragraphs. The researcher found that topic repetition techniques and cohesive device used stick on to the subjective nature of journal writing. There is probably a big difference to the approach in journal writing compared to a tight rule in essay writing in the paragraphs of the students.

Almaden (2006) investigated the topical progression in paragraphs written by Filipino ESL students. She used 60 paragraphs written by students taking up English One at De La Salle University- Manila. The researcher employed the topical structure analysis proposed by Lautamatti (1987). She found that parallel progression is most frequently used in the paragraphs, followed by extended and sequential progressions. Although Lautamatti (1987) suggests only three types of progression, Almaden (2006) also found in her own study and applied what Simpson (2001) identified as the fourth type of progression which is the extended sequential progression.

The study of Almaden (2006), however, can be concluded as using only of bilingual participants, that is, students who only speak Tagalog and English and does not represent the entire population of Filipino students. There is still a need to further the research of topical structure of the paragraphs to the entire archipelago since cultural background is also a factor.

Another study cited in the work of Almaden (2006) is a research conducted by Veluz (1992) among students at the Southern Luzon Polytechnic College in Quezon Province, Philippines. The study is a description-and-treatment study that used a one-group pre-test post-test design with the self-learning materials as treatment. The findings of the study showed that the students involved in the study showed a tendency to elaborate on a given topic by referring to it through the use of pronouns and repeated words, they learned to equate focusing on the topic with placing the topical subjects at the beginning of sentences, resulting in the construction of sentences in which initial sentence element, grammatical subject and topical subject coincide.

The findings of the two studies however deviate from one another because in the study of Veluz (1992), the paragraphs made use of both parallel progression and extended parallel progression. Almaden (2006) comments that in the study of Veluz (1992), the students had the tendency to increase the number of different topics and to connect ideas across the compositions.

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3. FOCUS OF THE PRESENT STUDY

The purpose of this study was to identify the topical structure of paragraphs written by Cebuano multilingual students. This investigated the types of progressions that are commonly used in the essays written by Cebuano students. Further, this study described and analyzed the topical structure of the paragraphs displayed in the data based on Lautamatti’s (1987) Topical Structure Analysis.

These are the specific research questions: 1. What types of progressions as proposed by Lautamatti (1987) are prevalent in the

paragraphs written by Cebuano students? 1.1 Parallel Progression

1.2 Extended Parallel Progression 1.3 Sequential Progression

2. How are these progressions carried out in the paragraphs? 3. What are the common and major elements used in the paragraphs?

3.1 Nouns 3.2 Noun Phrases 3.3 Pronouns

4. METHOD

This research employed the descriptive-qualitative design. It used Lautamatti’s (1987) concept in analyzing the essays written by the Cebuano multilingual students. 4.1 SELECTION AND TREATMENT OF THE CORPUS

This study used 20 paragraphs written by the Bachelor of Science in Accountancy students taking up English 2 during the second semester of Academic Year 2008-2009, the mandatory English course after passing English 1. The researchers chose an English 2 class with the permission of the subject teacher. The students were asked to write a three-paragraphed definition essay. It was explained to them that definition essay is a writing that explains what a term means. Terms that have definite and concrete meaning were encouraged but abstract terms such as honesty, honor, or love which depend more on a person’s point of view were considered. After the writing activity, they were asked to exchange papers with their seatmates and have their seatmates make necessary corrections in terms of grammar and sentence construction. After the peer editing, the essays were collected by the researchers.

Out of the 50 co-educational accountancy students enrolled in one class, the researchers chose essays written by these students by purposive sampling. The researchers only chose the essays which second paragraphs have more than five sentences. Out of the 50 paragraphs, only 25 paragraphs qualified but 5 were discarded since the writers are international students. The 20 essays were used in analyzing using Lautamatti’s (1987) Topical Structure Analysis. The texts analyzed were the second paragraph of each essay. In this paragraph, the topic has already developed.

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4.2 EXECUTING A TOPICAL STRUCTURE ANALYSIS Lautamatti’s (1987) Topical Structure Analysis was followed by the researchers. The

identified three progressions are: 1. Parallel Progression- the topics are semantically the same 2. Sequential Progression- the topics are always different in each independent

clauses 3. Extended Parallel Progression- a parallel progression is interrupted by a sequential

progression

The independent clauses in each paragraph were numbered, after which the topical subject in each clause were underlined. After finding the topical subjects, these elements were tabulated. The clause number was indicated on the leftmost part of the table. The topical subject in the corresponding clause was written across each clause number and was numbered according to the frequency of occurrence. Each topical subject was indicated as topical depth. All words that have equivalent meaning fall under one topical depth.

The summary of topical development in the student paragraphs was presented for visual presentation in tabular form. The data were treated by finding the frequency of the usage and determining the percentage. 5. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS 5.1 THE TYPES OF PROGRESSIONS PREVALENT IN STUDENT PARAGRAPHS

Using the concept of Lautamatti (1987), the data collected from the essays written by the students described the physical and internal structure of the paragraphs. Total number of clauses and topics was identified. Frequency of the occurrence of parallel, sequential, and extended parallel progressions would be stated, as well as the corresponding percentage. Table 1 Summary of Topical Development in the Student Paragraphs Frequency Percentage Total No. of Clauses 165 ----- Total No. of Topics 83 ----- Parallel Progressions 52 35.86 Sequential Progressions 65 44.83 Extended Parallel Progressions 28 19.31 ___________________________________________________________________________ Total Progressions 145 100 %

Table 1 indicates that there were 165 independent clauses in the students’ second paragraphs. There were also 83 new topics being introduced in 165 clauses. All the student paragraphs manifested the types of progression identified by Lautamatti (1987).

The table above also shows that of the three progressions, sequential progression was prevalent in the paragraphs written by the students. Sequential progression is when the rheme element of a clause becomes the theme element of the consecutive clause. In a study conducted by Schneider and Connor (1991, in Carreon, 2006) it was revealed that highly

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rated essays were those that show a high proportion of sequential progression and an extended parallel progression.

This topical development manifested that students were able to show a logical succession of their ideas and were able to pull back to the main theme. However, in the data presented, it can be noted that there is a small percentage of employing the extended parallel progression in the students’ paragraphs. The researchers, however, observed, that the majority of the students’ paragraphs contained topics that are sequentially and logically presented in each succeeding clauses and the main topic presented in the initial clause was pulled back to the closing sentences. The researchers also observed that extended parallel progressions were prevalent in the closing clauses. That is, students were able to go back from their established topic in concluding their paragraphs.

It can also be gleaned from Table 1 that students mostly made use of sequential progression, however, extended parallel progression was least used because the majority of the appearance of this progression was on the concluding part. That is, students introduced a topical subject in the initial clause, then sequentially moved or introduced other ideas, but in the concluding clause, they were able to pull back to their main idea. This is a manifestation of Makinen’s (1992) theory that good writers tended to return to higher topic levels at the end of their compositions.

Table 1 also shows that the higher occurrence of sequential progression, in which topics of successive sentences are always different, as the comment of one sentence becomes, or is used to derive, the topic of the next means that the majority of the students were able to relate back to their main topic.

5.2 HOW THE PROGRESSIONS ARE CARRIED OUT IN THE PARAGRAPHS

The following sample paragraph from the students’ essay exemplifies different types of progression: Paragraph 2 of Essay No. 12

(1) Going back in the past, life was simple. (2) Children were laughing all around. (3) They experienced freedom. (4) There were no boundaries. (5) They could freely explore things by themselves because there’s no sign of great harm or danger. (6) The mother earth was still unscathed at that moment until such time that advance technologies come to exist.

The elements of the second paragraph of Essay No. 12 are shown in Figure 1 as a

representation of the types of progressions used. The paragraph employs the three types of progression. The figure shows that there is one parallel progression, three sequential progressions, and one extended parallel progression.

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Figure 1 Topical Structure Analysis of Paragraph No. 12 Clause Topical Depth Topic No. 1 2 3 4 No. 1 life 1 2 children 2 3 they 2 4 no boundaries 3 5 they 2 6 the mother earth 4

Figure 1 shows that there is an occurrence of one parallel progression, three sequential progressions and one extended parallel progression.

The first clause of the paragraph talked about the “life” which serves as the main topic. However, in the second clause, the writer talked about “children”. This illustrates sequential progression. The third clause talked about “they”, which referred to the topic in Clause 2, “children”. Thus, this illustrates parallel progression. The fourth clause of the paragraph talked about “no boundaries”. This was another topic from the preceding clause. So, there was a sequential progression. In the fifth clause, the author goes back to the topic in Clauses 2 and 3 which was “they”. Thus, this is an illustration of extended parallel progression, where clause 4 intervened. There was another sequential progression when the novice writer talked about “the mother earth” in the last clause.

What is problematic in this paragraph, however, is that the writer was not able to go back to the main topic in the concluding clause of the paragraph. Instead of going back to “life” which was the topic in Clause 1, the writer introduced another topic in Clause 6 which is “mother earth”. Thus, there was no closure of the paragraph.

This could probably be due to what Kietlinska (2008) said that L2 composing is more constrained, more difficult, and less effective. According to this researcher, L2 writers did less planning, that is global and local, and that these writers have more difficulty with setting goals and generating and organizing material. The students’ writing is more laborious, less fluent, and less productive because of a lack of lexical resources. In this study however, only a small number of essays have incoherent succession of topics that were not able to go back to its topical subject in the initial clause.

It has also been noted by the researchers that only two paragraph employed one topical progression. These are shown in the succeeding paragraphs and figures: Paragraph 2 of Essay No. 11

(1) Primarily, our bestfriends are always there whenever we encounter problems. (2) They are somewhat guardians who support the lives of every person. (3) Aside from our parents, they cheer in every success we commit. (4) They can be trusted persons whenever we have secrets and approaches. (5) However, they are not perfect people. (6) They can also be our enemies but then enemies can be turned back into friends.

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Figure 2 Topical Structure Analysis of Paragraph No. 11 ___________________________________________________________________________ Clause Topical Depth Topic No. 1 2 3 No. 1 bestfriends 1 2 they 1 3 they 1 4 they 1 5 they 1 6 they 1

An analysis of Paragraph No. 11 shows that the student writer only used a parallel

progression in all the main topics introduced in each independent clause. Clause 1 has a topic “bestfriends” which was carried through Clause 2 until Clause 6 using the pronoun “they”. Paragraph 2 of Essay No. 39

(1) The trees are valued by people because of its many uses and the important role it plays in our ecosystem. (2) Trees bear fruits, serve as shelter to animals and gives us shade from the scorching heat of the sun. (3) Some trees produces important substances like cork and rubber. (4) Others are sources of organic medicines while others can also be turned into lumber. (5) Their strong roots help prevent soil erosion and floods. (6) It also helps in keeping the air clean and our surroundings cool.

In this paragraph, the author introduced “the trees” as the topical subject of Clause 1.

In Clause 2, “trees” served as the topical subject which is still in reference to the topical subject of Clause 2. In Clause 3, “some trees” served as the topical subject which is parallel to the topical subjects in Clause 2 and 3. The “others” in Clause 4 also refers back to the topical subjects of the preceding clauses. In Clause 5, “their strong roots” which serves as the topical subject still has a parallelism to the topical subjects in Clause 1 to 4. Finally, in Clause 6, the author uses “it” as the topical subject which still refers to the topical subjects of the preceding clauses. Thus, the convention of this paragraph follows the parallel progression.

There is only a small difference in the percentage of usage between sequential progression and parallel progression. This shows that some students also employed parallel progression in their paragraphs. Veluz (1992) posited that employing parallel progression in the paragraph is advantageous because this results in strong topic focus. In Almaden (2006), this indicates that much of the thematic development was done more through repetition of key words and phrases.

The researchers observed also that a typical paragraph introduces the topical subject in the first independent clause in the initial position. This topical subject is carried through to the succeeding clauses by repetition of such subject. It has also been noted that students used nouns, pronouns, and noun phrases in referring to their topical subject introduced in the initial clause.

A sample paragraph below exhibits a typical student composition and how the progressions are carried out in the paragraph.

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Paragraph 2 of Essay No. 26

(1) Some leaves are vital to us as our source of living. (2) It gives us food so that we may live to fulfill our everyday responsibilities. (3) Others tend to be “parasites” in nature, living in other organisms for their own benefits. (4) People can sometimes be compared to leaves. (5) There are those who inspire others to be the best they can be while some destroy other peole’s lives. (6) Even our everyday experiences can be associated with the leaves hanging in trees. (7) Those that had fallen are the past memories that we had. (8) While those that remain alive are the present situations that we are in. (9) For short, leaves are of great importance to our lives. (10) We may not notice it but it creates a masterpiece of life itself.

Figure 3 Topical Structure Analysis of Paragraph No. 26 Clause Topical Depth Topic No. 1 2 3 No. 1 some leaves 1 2 it gives us food 1 3 others 1 4 people 2 5 those who inspire others 2 6 everyday experiences 3 7 those that had fallen 2 8 those that remain alive 2 9 leaves 1 10 it 1

An analysis of Figure 3 shows that the Cebuano student writer introduced “some leaves” as the topical subject of Clause 1. In Clause 2, “it gives us food”, which is the topical subject, refers back to the topical subject in Clause 1. The “it” in Clause 2 is a demonstrative pronoun. In Clause 3, the writer uses “others” as a topical subject with reference to the topical subjects in Clause 1 and 2. Clauses 1 until 3, therefore, illustrates parallel progression of topical subjects. In Clause 4, the writer uses “people” as the topical subject. Thus, there is a sequential progression because the writer introduces another topical subject. Clause 5 has a topical subject “those who inspire” which refers back to the “people” in Clause 4. This result illustrates another parallel progression.

In Clause 6, the writer uses “everyday experiences” which is what being talked about in the sentence. Hence, this functions as the topical subject. There is a sequential progression from Clause 5 to Clause 6. Clause 7 exhibits extended parallel progression with the writer’s usage of “those that had fallen” which refers back to the topical subject “people” in Clause 4. In Clause 9, the writer goes back to the topical subject in Clause 1 which is “some leaves”. In Clause 10, “it” also refers back to the topical subject in Clause 1. The second paragraph of Essay No. 26 has 10 independent clauses and has 3 topics introduced. 5.3 THE COMMON AND MAJOR ELEMENTS USED IN THE PARAGRAPHS

Established researchers posit that the elements used in the students’ writings are nouns, noun phrases, and pronouns (Almaden, 2006; Carreon, 2006). In fact, the researchers

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observed that the Cebuano multilingual students, as the participants of this study, used more of the identified elements (i.e. nouns, noun phrases, and pronouns) in their writings. Table 2 Summary of Elements Used in Parallel Progressions Category Frequency Percentage Nouns 148 81.48% Noun Phrases 4 .78% Pronouns 91 17.74%

The table above shows that students used nouns or single words in connecting their ideas in parallel progression. The single words used by the student writers have reference to the noun being introduced as a topical subject in the initial independent clause of the majority of the paragraph. This has a parallelism in Almaden’s (2006) study where students preferred to join ideas by using single terms rather than phrases which have a very minimal usage as indicated in the table above. However, in this study, the students preferred to use nouns and pronouns than noun phrases in connecting their ideas. This is because the students find it easier to use single words in connecting their ideas.

The succeeding paragraph is a manifestation of the constant usage of nouns and repetition of these nouns in the student’s writing. It is evident that the topical subject usually occurs in the initial position of each independent clause. Paragraph No. 02

(1) A friend is someone who will be there whenever you need them. (2) A person who’ll stick around no matter what happens and who will accept you for who you are and what you are. (3) A friend is a person who knows how to comfort and make you special. (4) But there are also times when a person is unsure whether a certain person is a true friend or just someone he knows. (5) The only thing to know if she’s a friend is if she is real to you. (6) That person should have the values, trust and honesty in order to keep your friendship and make it last. (7) Friends are our little treasures who’ll continue to be with us even if distance prevents us from staying close. (8) When all else leaves us, when we’re so down and depressed and when we’re in a stage of losing ourselves, friends are there to bring us back together.

Figure 4 Topical Structure Analysis of Paragraph No. 02 Clause Topical Depth Topic No. 1 2 3 No. 1 a friend 1 2 a person 1 3 a friend is a person 1 4 times 2 5 the only thing 3 6 that person 1 7 friends 1 8 friends are there 1

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Figure 4 above shows how the student writer preferred to connect their clauses by repetition and by the use of nouns. Evidently, in Clause 1, the author used “a friend” as a topical subject. In Clause 2, another reference the topical subject in Clause 1, which is “a person”, was used. In Clause 3, the writer used the two nouns as a topical subject that is “a friend is a person”. These are repeated until Clause 8 except the sequential progression in Clauses 4 and 5. Table 3 Summary of Elements Used in Sequential Progressions Category Frequency Percentage Nouns 157 60.38% Noun Phrases 7 2.70% Pronouns 96 36.92%

Table 3 above shows that in sequential progression, the students still preferred to use

nouns in their compositions. This result still implies that student writers preferred to repeat their topical subjects in their compositions. It can also be noted that there is a higher number of elements used in sequential progression than in parallel progression. Hence, it is conspicuous that there is a consistency in the data since there is also a high occurrence of sequential progressions in the paragraphs that were analyzed. Most of the pronouns used by the student writers were they, it, he, she and we. The constant repetition of pronoun used in the student composition is manifested in the paragraph below. Paragraph No. 2 of Essay No. 11

(1) Primarily, our bestfriends are always there whenever we encounter problems. (2) They are somewhat guardians who support the lives of every person. (3) Aside from our parents, they cheer in every success we commit. (4) They can be trusted persons whenever we have secrets and approaches. (5) However, they are not perfect people. (6) They can also be our enemies but then enemies can be turned back into friends.

Figure 5 Topical Structure Analysis of Paragraph No. 11 Clause Topical Depth Topic No. 1 2 3 No. 1 bestfriends 1 2 they 1 3 they 1 4 they 1 5 they 1 6 they 1

In this paragraph, the student writer introduced the topical subject “bestfriends” in the initial clause of the composition. In Clause 2, the author gave similar reference to the topical subject in Clause 1 which was “they”. Starting from this clause until Clause 6, the author constantly used the pronoun “they” as the topical subject. This observation is similar to the findings of the study of Koch (1983) in Aljamhoor (2001). Most of the learners made heavy use of devices such as repetition of important words and phrases.

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Table 4 Summary of Elements Used in Extended Parallel Progressions Category Frequency Percentage Nouns 67 57.26% Noun Phrases 1 .85% Pronouns 49 41.88%

The table above shows that in sequential progression, nouns are used to connect the

students’ ideas on the parts of the paragraphs that employ parallel progressions. Pronouns followed on the rank while there was only an instance where a noun phrase was used. As inferred from the paragraph below, the use of nouns and pronouns to connect the student’s ideas in employing extended parallel progression is exhibited: Paragraph No. 2 of Essay No. 31

(1) Sometimes, we have to bring up walls around us not to be protected from any harm but this way we see the people who cares enough to break them. (2) Destruction doesn’t mean that they are tresspassing the safety that we should need to maintain and indulge, but destruction as a courage that they was us to know that they are more capable than a wall itself. (3) Nevertheless, people, no matter how good they are will always trample us in the end. (4) Moreover, walls do not, and that makes walls better than people. (5) Walls are everywhere, and that makes us confident no to worry so much about things. (6) There are times that we need someone to lean on and least have the chance of having someone so we lean against walls instead. (7) Walls could be alternatives of a crying shoulder, another choice of a helping hand. (8) Whatever you say to it, or no matter how you press and release your madness against it, anxiety is not an assurance because for a certain, walls won’t answer back. (9) It gives us a relief that we will not face a problem in the future.

Figure 6 Topical Structure Analysis of Paragraph No. 31 Clause Topical Depth Topic No. 1 2 3 4 5 No. 1 walls 1 2 destruction 2 3 people 3 4 walls 1 5 walls 1 6 there are times 4 7 walls 1 8 anxiety 5 9 it 1

Figure 6 shows that the student introduced “walls” as the topical subject in the initial clause of this paragraph. The writer followed the convention of sequential progression from Clause 1 until Clause 3 when introducing different topical subjects (i.e. walls, destruction, people, respectively). In Clause 4, he went back to his original topical subject in Clause 1. Thus, there is an extended parallel progression in this case. “Walls” here is a noun and is

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repeated in Clause 7 which was an extended parallel progression. In the concluding clause, the author used the pronoun “it” as the topical subject, still with reference to the “walls”.

There was a constant repetition of words used from the initial clause until the concluding clauses of the students’ paragraphs. They employed this technique in parallel progression, sequential progression, and extended parallel progression. 6. SUMMARY OF FINDINGS

In answering the first sub-problem which was to identify the type of progressions that are commonly used by the students, the researchers found that The most preferred type of progression employed in the students’ compositions is the sequential progression. This means that the students increased topic in their writings. However, the researchers observed that the low percentage of the use of the extended parallel progression is because the students employed this progression in the concluding clause of the paragraph. Parallel progression is the second most preferred while extended parallel progression is least used.

In describing how these progressions (i.e. parallel, sequential, and extended parallel) were carried out in the students’ composition, findings reveal that in the parallel progression, the majority of the students who employed this type of progression introduced their topical subject in the initial part of the sentence, making the word not only the topical subject but the grammatical subject and the initial sentence element. The students repeated this word or the reference of this word to the next sentence and moved to the next clause by introducing another topical subject. The students involved in this study elaborated a given topic by using nouns and by repeating the words. In most cases, the students who employed sequential progression in their paragraph tended to increase the topics in their paragraphs. On the other hand, the majority of the students who employed extended parallel progression in their writings used such progression in the concluding clause of their paragraph. That is, they employed parallel progression in the initial clauses of their writings, then tended to increase their topics by the use of sequential progression then went back to their topical subject in clause 1 by referring to it again in the concluding clause. In this way, the students were able to employ the extended parallel progression.

The findings of the third sub-problem of the study which aimed to identify the common and major elements (i.e. nouns, pronouns, noun phrases) of the students’ compositions were that nouns, noun phrases, and pronouns were observed to be the most common elements used throughout the paragraphs. In the parallel progression, the students commonly used nouns in connecting their ideas. They usually repeat their words throughout their writings. In the sequential progression, the progression most preferred by the students, nouns were also used to connect their ideas. This is followed by pronouns and the least used noun phrases. In the extended parallel progression, (the least used progression) the students preferred to connect their ideas again by the usage of nouns, and then pronouns, and noun phrases as the least preferred. In general, the researchers found that, the majority of the students used nouns in their composition, and repeated these words to connect their ideas from one clause to the other. This answered the third sub-problem pronouns also ranked second with a very close percentage to nouns while noun phrases were least used. This result was evident in all the progressions.

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7. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS Based on the findings of the sample essays selected through purposive sampling and

analyzed using Lautamatti’s (1987) framework, several conclusions were formulated. Although the students’ compositions employed high frequency of sequential progression, this is not an assurance that their writings can be determined as high quality because there is a tendency to lose coherence in their composition. At the same time, employing parallel progression is not a determiner either since it can be observed that the students repeated only the topical subject from the initial clause down to the concluding clause.

For the communication to be successful, coherence must be maintained. If a student writer would not be able to logically present the idea and the subject, there would be an ambiguity in the composition and the message it entails to present. It can be understood that in writing coherently, an idea should be presented from the initial sentence of the paragraph and should flow smoothly from one independent clause until the concluding sentence.

This also study also supports Carreon (2004) that some students are skilled in utilizing in their metalinguistic awareness. There were students that had the skill of employing topic repetition strategies and devices to improve coherence in their paragraphs while others did not have. In the study, the students tend to employ cohesive devices by employing repetition of topical subject, employing sequential progression and trying to go back to their main topic in the latter part of their composition. However, some students had difficulty in achieving such coherence because the students are second language learners and have difficulty in finding the right words and organizing their ideas in the paragraph. Writers that are second language learners who have the same sociocultural backgrounds have similar linguistic resources when they write, and this reflected the interrelationships of culture and language.

Some studies are conflicting. The study of Almaden (2006) reveals that students used parallel progressions in their paragraphs and rated as high quality essays. The study of Phuwichit (2004) showed that there is a high frequency of occurence of extended parallel progression. Parallel progression was found least frequently used. The researcher’s analysis is that the participants could write well-developed organized essays. This is where the idea of sociocultural and educational background of the students comes in. There are students who are exposed to writing paragraphs during their high school and there are students who are not really interested in writing. This can be attributed to their personal attitude towards this skill. Some students’ training in high school when it comes to composition writing could probably be low standard which can be attributed to their school and the teachers’ training as well. The researchers also concluded that the varying result of the study could probably be due to different interpretations and ideas towards writing coherently.

It is highly recommended that Topical Structure Analysis will be introduced as one of the approaches in teaching advanced composition courses. The students should be familiarized with this framework in order to increase coherence in their writing. The teaching of coherence in students’ compositions should be introduced as a relevant contribution to their fields. In teaching coherence, the teachers should ask students to write something about themselves. Contrary to academic writings, the students can comfortably write about themselves and about their experiences. This can help them develop their writing skills in achieving coherence in their writings.

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Student compositions can also be a good way of checking the students’ knowledge in grammar. It is an acceptable fact that even some college students have difficulty in acquiring excellent grammar skills. Thus, a recommendation to the teachers is that, students should be encouraged to write compositions in order to practice their abilities and consequently acquire necessary basic grammar skills.

A number of researches show that Topical Structure Analysis is a good revision strategy. Thus, teachers of composition courses, especially those whose students are Cebuanos, are encouraged to present to the students this theory with continuous aid. At the same time, students should be asked to interact with each other, sharing each other’s ideas on how to make one’s writing coherent.

In addition to checking the semantic level, future researchers who are interested in the topic could also delve into the vocabulary, spelling, pronunciation marks, sentence structures, and tenses in order to check the writers’ proficiency and should make the writers more conscious to make their writings intelligible.

It is also recommended that in the corporate arena, those people who are involved should maintain coherence in their writing with their exposure to this study. The researchers also recommend that the same study will be conducted with the use of expository type of essay as instrument. The future research may use of English 1 (ComArts 1), English 2 (ComArts2) or English 101 (Advanced Composition) classes as participants.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We are greatly indebted to our research professor, Dr. Rowanne Marie Maxilom for her valuable inputs about the intricacies of linguistic research. Many thanks also to Prof. Avelino Guatno and Prof. Easter Londelyn Mendoza for their comments and suggestions for the improvement of this paper.

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