An Analysis of the Topical Structure of Essays Written by Fourth-Year English Majors at Naresuan University
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Abstract
This research aimed to study patterns of English writing structures produced by fourth-year undergraduate students in an English major at Naresuan University. The two research questions were 1) what organizational patterns of English writing appeared in the essays produced by the informants? and 2) what patterns of the topical structure based on the Topical Structure Analysis framework (Lautamatti, 1987) were found in the essays produced by the informants? The research design was a case study under the descriptive-qualitative design. The samples of the study were 68 informants who were the fourth-year undergraduate students in an English major at Naresuan University. The instrument of the research was the English essay writing exercise. The duration for the essay writing was 1 hour. In the data analysis, the overall organizational pattern and the topic development were analyzed based on the framework of the Topical Structure Analysis proposed by Lautamatti (1987). The research findings were as followed. 1) Most of the informants organized their essays with the 3-paragraph pattern. It was found that most of them were able to produce their writings following the English conventional rhetorical pattern having introductory, body and concluding paragraphs. 2) Regarding the topic development, the findings showed that 6 from the 68 informants were able to address and fully develop the topic within a paragraph. Most of the informants produced their essay with supporting details that were too general and did not consistently support the topic sentences. Hence, their essays were not effectively developed.
Article Details
บทความที่ได้รับการตีพิมพ์เป็นลิขสิทธิ์ของวารสาร สักทอง : วารสารมนุษยศาสตร์และสังคมศาสตร์ สถาบันวิจัยและพัฒนา มหาวิทยาลับราชภัฏกำแพงเพชร
ข้อคิดเห็นใดๆ ที่ปรากฎในวารสารเป็นวรรณกรรมของผู้เขียนโดยเฉพาะ ซึ่งมหาวิทยาลัยราชภัฏกำแพงเพชรและบรรณาธิการไม่จำเป็นต้องเห็นด้วย
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