Abstract
This article examines the claim of Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST) that violations of RST diagram formation principles indicate coherence breaks. In doing so, this article makes a significant contribution to the testing of RST. More broadly, it indicates that examining the coherence-break identification potential of coherence theories could help specify each theory’s purview and, in the long term, lead to the creation of hybrid models of coherence. Moreover, it paves the way for the development of training resources on discourse (in)coherence for language teachers, exam markers and language learners. 84 paragraphs written by Taiwanese learners of English were analysed according to RST and coherence measures were calculated on the basis of this analysis. The results suggest that the violation of any diagram-formation principle indicates coherence breaks, thus corroborating this RST claim. Inter- and intrajudge agreement in terms of both RST coding and coherence measures calculated on the basis of coherence breaks are reported and discussed. The kinds of coherence breaks which are and are not located by RST analysis are discussed and exemplified. The paper concludes with a discussion of implications for pedagogy and future research.
About the author
Sophia Skoufaki is a Lecturer at the University of Essex. She specialises in vocabulary studies and discourse coherence. Her current research examines academic vocabulary teaching and learning, figurative language processing, and the application of Rhetorical Structure Theory to language teaching.
References
Ahmadi, Alireza & Salma Parhizgar. 2017. Coherence errors in Iranian EFL learners’ writing: A Rhetorical Structure Theory approach. Journal of Language Horizons 1(1). 9–37.Search in Google Scholar
Azar, Moshe. 1999. Argumentative text as rhetorical structure: An application of Rhetorical Structure Theory. Argumentation 13(1). 97–114.10.1023/A:1007794409860Search in Google Scholar
Barzilay, Regina & Mirella Lapata. 2008. Modeling local coherence: An entity-based approach. Computational Linguistics 34(1). 1–34.10.1162/coli.2008.34.1.1Search in Google Scholar
Bechtel, William. 1988. Philosophy of science: An overview for cognitive science. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Search in Google Scholar
Behnam, Biook, Fathemeh Mirzapour & Mohammad Amin Mozaheb. 2014. Writer’s presence in English native and non-native speaker research articles. Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences 98(6). 369–374.10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.03.428Search in Google Scholar
Burstein, Jill, Karen Kukich, Susanne Wolff, Lu Chi, Martin Chodorow, Lisa Braden-Harder & Mary D. Harris. 1998. Automated essay scoring using a hybrid feature identification technique. In Proceedings of the 36th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics and 17th International Conference on Computational Linguistics - Volume 1, Montreal, Canada, 10–14 August 1998, 206–210. Stroudsburg, PA: Association for Computational Linguistics.10.3115/980845.980879Search in Google Scholar
Burstein, Jill, Joel Tetrault & Martin Chodorow. 2013. Holistic annotation of discourse coherence quality in noisy essay writing. Dialogue and Discourse 4(2). 34–52.10.5087/dad.2013.202Search in Google Scholar
Byrt, Ted, Janet Bishop & John B. Carlin. 1993. Bias, prevalence, and kappa. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology 46(5). 423–429.10.1016/0895-4356(93)90018-VSearch in Google Scholar
Carlson, Lynn & Daniel Marcu. 2001. Discourse tagging manual. ISI Tech Report ISI-TR-545.Search in Google Scholar
Carlson, Lynn, Daniel Marcu & Mary E. Okurowski. 2001. Building a discourse-tagged corpus in the framework of Rhetorical Structure Theory. In Proceedings of the Second SIGdial Workshop on Discourse and Dialogue – Volume 16, Aalborg, Denmark 1–2 September 2001, 1–10. Stroudsburg, PA: Association for Computational Linguistics.10.3115/1118078.1118083Search in Google Scholar
Cheung, Hintat, Jessica Wu, Zhao-ming Gao & Siaw Fong Chung. 2011. The construction of the LTTC English Learner Corpus: Progress report of NTU-LTTC Joint Research Project on Language Teaching and Language Testing.Search in Google Scholar
Cotton, Fiona & Kate Wilson. 2011. An investigation of examiner rating of coherence and cohesion in the IELTS Academic Writing Task 2. IELTS Research Reports 12. 1–76.Search in Google Scholar
Council of Europe. 2017. Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, teaching and assessment. Companion volume with new descriptors. https://rm.coe.int/common-european-framework-of-reference-for-languages-learning-teaching/168074a4e2 (accessed 29 November 2017).Search in Google Scholar
De Silva, Nishadi H. 2007. A narrative-based collaborative writing tool for constructing coherent technical documents. Southampton: University of Southampton PhD thesis.Search in Google Scholar
Egg, Markus & Gisela Redeker. 2008. Underspecified discourse representation. In Anton Benz & Peter Kühnlein (eds.), Constraints in Discourse (Pragmatics and Beyond New Series 172), 117–138. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/pbns.172.06eggSearch in Google Scholar
Egg, Markus & Gisela Redeker. 2010. How complex is discourse structure? In Nicoletta Calzolari, Khalid Choukri, Bente Maegaard, Joseph Mariani, Jan Odijk, Stelios Piperidis, Mike Rosner & Daniel Tapias (eds.), Proceedings of LREC2010, Malta, 17–23 May 2010, 1619–1623. Valletta, Malta: European Language Resources Association.Search in Google Scholar
González, Virginia, Chia-Yin Chen & Claudia Sanchez. 2001. Cultural thinking and discourse organizational patterns influencing writing skills in a Chinese English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL) Learner. Bilingual Research Journal 25(4). 417–442.10.1080/15235882.2001.11074470Search in Google Scholar
Grosz, Barbara, Aravind Joshi & Scott Weinstein. 1995. Centering: A framework for modelling the local coherence of discourse. Computational Linguistics 21(2). 203–226.10.21236/ADA324949Search in Google Scholar
Gruber, Helmut. 2006. Rhetorical Structure Theory and quality assessment of students’ texts. Information Design Journal 14(2). 114–129.10.1075/idj.14.2.04gruSearch in Google Scholar
Hoey, Michael. 1991. Patterns of Lexis in Text. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Huang, Chu-Ren, Winnie Cheng, Hintat Cheung, Yasunari Harada, Huaqing Hong, Sophia Skoufaki & Helen K.Y. Chen. 2010. English learner corpus: Global perspectives with an Asian focus. In Tien-En Kao & Yaofu Lin (eds.), A new look at language teaching and testing: English as subject and vehicle, 85–117. Taipei: Language Training and Testing Center.Search in Google Scholar
Iruskieta, Mikel, Iria da Cunha & Maite Taboada. 2015. A qualitative comparison method for rhetorical structures: Identifying different discourse structures in multilingual corpora. Language Resources and Evaluation 49(2). 263–309.10.1007/s10579-014-9271-6Search in Google Scholar
Iruskieta, Mikel, Arantza Diaz de Ilarraza & Mikel Lersundi. 2013. Establishing criteria for RST-based discourse segmentation and annotation for texts in Basque. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory 11(2). 302–334.10.1515/cllt-2013-0008Search in Google Scholar
Mann, William C., Christian M. I. M. Matthiessen & Sandra A. Thompson. 1992. Rhetorical Structure Theory and text analysis. In William C. Mann & Sandra A. Thompson (eds.), Discourse description: Diverse linguistic analyses of a fund-raising text, 39–78. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/pbns.16.04manSearch in Google Scholar
Mann, William C. & Sandra A. Thompson. 1987. Rhetorical structure theory: A theory of text organization (No. ISI/RS-87-190). Marina del Rey, CA: Information Sciences Institute.Search in Google Scholar
Mann, William C. & Sandra A. Thompson. 1988. Rhetorical Structure Theory: Towards a functional theory of text organisation. Text 8(3). 243–281.10.1515/text.1.1988.8.3.243Search in Google Scholar
Marcu, Daniel. 2000. The rhetorical parsing of unrestricted texts: A surface-based approach. Computational Linguistics 26(3). 395–448.10.1162/089120100561755Search in Google Scholar
Marcu, Daniel, Estibaliz Amorrortu & Magdalena Romera. 1999. Experiments in constructing a corpus of discourse trees. In Marylin Walker (ed.), Proceedings of the ACL Workshop ‘Towards Standards and Tools for Discourse Tagging’, Maryland, 21 June 1999, 48–57. Stroudsburg, PA: Association for Computational Linguistics.Search in Google Scholar
Miltsakaki, Eleni & Karen Kukich. 2004. Evaluation of text coherence for electronic essay scoring systems. Natural Language Engineering 10(1). 25–55.10.1017/S1351324903003206Search in Google Scholar
O’Brien, Teresa. 1995. Rhetorical structure analysis and the case of the inaccurate, incoherent source-hopper. Applied Linguistics 16(4). 442–482.10.1093/applin/16.4.442Search in Google Scholar
O’Donnell, Michael. 1997. RSTTool: An RST analysis tool. In Proceedings of the 6th European Workshop on Natural Language Generation, 24–26 March, 1997 Gerhard-Mercator University, Duisburg, Germany.Search in Google Scholar
O’Donnell, Michael. 2000. RSTTool 2.4 – A markup tool for Rhetorical Structure Theory. Proceedings of the International Natural Language Generation Conference (INLG’2000), Mitzpe Ramon, Israel, 13-16 June 2000, 253–256.Search in Google Scholar
Pitler, Emily & Ani Nenkova. 2008. Revisiting readability: A unified framework for predicting text quality. In Sebastian Padó (ed.), Proceedings of the Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing, 186–195. Edinburgh, Scotland.10.3115/1613715.1613742Search in Google Scholar
Ryan, Michael P. 1984. Conceptions of prose coherence: Individual differences in epistemological standards. Journal of Educational Psychology 76(6). 1226–1238.10.1037/0022-0663.76.6.1226Search in Google Scholar
Sanders, Ted. 1997. Semantic and pragmatic sources of coherence: On the categorization of coherence relations in context. Discourse Processes 24(1). 119–147.10.1080/01638539709545009Search in Google Scholar
Schiftner, Barbara. 2014. (Non-)signalling of coherence structures in English learner writing. In Helmut Gruber & Gisela Redeker (eds.), The pragmatics of discourse coherence: Theory and applications, 243–266. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/pbns.254.09schSearch in Google Scholar
Scott, William A. 1955. Reliability of content analysis: The case of nominal scale coding. Public Opinion Quarterly 19(3). 321–325.10.1086/266577Search in Google Scholar
Siegel, Sidney & N. John Castellan. 1988. Nonparametric statistics for the behavioral sciences. New York: McGraw-Hill.Search in Google Scholar
Skoufaki, Sophia. 2009. An exploratory application of Rhetorical Structure Theory to detect coherence errors in L2 English writing: Possible implications for Automated Writing Evaluation software. International Journal of Computational Linguistics and Chinese Language Processing 14(2). 181–203.Search in Google Scholar
Skoufaki, Sophia. In preparation. Looking for common ground between theory and practice: Coherence breaks according to Rhetorical Structure Theory and teachers in the writing of EFL learners.Search in Google Scholar
Stede, Manfred. 2008. Disambiguating rhetorical structure. Research on Language and Computation 6(3). 311–332.10.1007/s11168-008-9053-7Search in Google Scholar
Swales, John. 1990. Nonnative speaker graduate engineering students and their introductions: Global coherence and local management. In Ulla Connor & Ann M. Johns (eds.), Coherence in writing. Research and pedagogical perspectives, 187–207. Alexandria, Virginia: Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages.Search in Google Scholar
Taboada, Maite & William C. Mann. 2006. Rhetorical Structure Theory: Looking back and moving ahead. Discourse Studies 8(3). 423–459.10.1177/1461445606061881Search in Google Scholar
Virtanen, Tuija. 1992. Issues of text typology: Narrative – a ‘basic’ type of text? Text 12(2). 293–310.10.1515/text.1.1992.12.2.293Search in Google Scholar
Wang, Yongqing, Michael Harrington & P. White. 2012. Detecting breakdowns in local coherence in the writing of Chinese English Speakers. The Journal of Computer Assisted Learning 28(4). 396–410.10.1111/j.1365-2729.2011.00475.xSearch in Google Scholar
Watson Todd, Richard. 1997. Textual patterns in teachers’ eliciting. RELC Journal 28(1). 1–14.10.1177/003368829702800101Search in Google Scholar
Watson Todd, Richard. 1998. Topic-based analysis of classroom discourse. System 26(3). 303–318.10.1016/S0346-251X(98)00026-8Search in Google Scholar
Watson Todd, Richard. 2016. Discourse topics (Pragmatics and Beyond New Series 269). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/pbns.269Search in Google Scholar
Watson Todd, Richard, Somreudee Khongput & Pornapit Darasawang. 2007. Coherence, cohesion and comments on students’ Academic essays. Assessing Writing 12(1). 10–25.10.1016/j.asw.2007.02.002Search in Google Scholar
Watson Todd, Richard, Patteera Thienpermpool & Sonthida Keyuravong. 2004. Measuring the coherence of writing using topic-based analysis. Assessing Writing 9(2). 85–104.10.1016/j.asw.2004.06.002Search in Google Scholar
Werlich, Egon. 1976. A text grammar of English. Heidelberg: Quelle & Meyer.Search in Google Scholar
Wiebe, Janyce M., Rebecca F. Bruce & Thomas P. O’Hara. 1999. Development and use of a gold-standard data set for subjectivity classifications. In ACL99, Proceedings of the 37th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, 246–253. College Park, MD.10.3115/1034678.1034721Search in Google Scholar
Williams, James D. 1985. Coherence and cognitive style. Written Communication 2(4). 473–491.10.1177/0741088385002004008Search in Google Scholar
Wolf, Florian & Edward Gibson. 2005. Representing discourse coherence: A corpus-based analysis. Computational Linguistics 31(2). 249–287.10.1162/0891201054223977Search in Google Scholar
© 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
