Topical Structure and Writing Quality: Some Possible Text-Based Explanations of Readers' Judgments o

Abstract

The argumentative essays of 48 freshmen were used to form two groups of essays, rated holistically for overall quality by experienced readers of student writing. One group had been judged "high" in overall quality; one group had been judged "low." The two groups were compared with respect to several text features—length, syntax, and topical structure—to determine those features readers may have associated with quality in student writing. The topical structure variables, which were based on work growing out of Prague School Linguistic theory, were found useful in explaining the quality scores readers assigned to the texts. Particularly significant were the percentages of Type 3 and Type 5 sentences; percentages of t-units in parallel, extended parallel, and sequential progressions; averages number of t-units in parallel, extended parallel, and sequential progressions; mean number of t-units per topic, and mean number of words per topic. The limitations of the study are discussed, and its implications for research are suggested.