Schneider, MelanieConnor, Ulla, 1948-2011-08-292011-08-291990Schneider, Melanie and Ulla Connor. "Analyzing Topical Structure in ESL Essays: Not All topics are Equal". Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 12, no. 4 (1990): 411-427.Schneider, Melanie and Ulla Connor. "Analyzing Topical Structure in ESL Essays: Not All topics are Equal". August 29, 2011. Available from IUPUI ScholarWorks. http://hdl.handle.net/1805/2649.0272-2631https://hdl.handle.net/1805/2649This article submitted to IUPUI ScholarWorks as part of the OASIS Project. Article reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Permission granted through posted policies on copyright owner's website or through direct contact with copyright owner.Topical structure analysis (TSA), a text-based approach to the study of topic in discourse, has been useful in identifying text-based features of coherence. It has also been used to distinguish between essays written by groups of native English speakers with varying degrees of writing proficiency (Witte, 1983a, 1983b). More recently, TSA has distinguished between higher and lower rated ESL essays, but with different results from those found with native speakers of English (Connor & Schneider, 1988). The present study replicated the previous ESL study of two groups of essays written for the TOEFL Test of Written English with three groups of essays. Findings indicate that two topical structure variables, proportions of sequential and parallel topics in the essays, differentiate the highest rated group from the two lower rated groups. We offer explanations for the results and propose that all occurrences of a particular type of topic progression do not contribute equally to the coherence of a text.en-USAnalysisESL (English as a Second Language)Reading ComprehensionStatisticsStructureDiscourse analysisSecond language learningArticle