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A study on digression in student expository writing
Abstract
Adopting a theoretical framework informed by cognitive and socio-cultural views of writing, this thesis sets out to investigate the possible cognitive processes underlying digression in the expository essays of Singapore students, and the extent to which these cognitive processes are socio-culturally shaped. A two-fold methodology constituting textual analysis and semi-structured interviews was employed. A student’s essay was first identified for digressive instances with a set of defining criteria in combination with the linguistic tools of theme-rheme analysis and meta discursive analysis, following which the student who wrote the essay was interviewed. Interview transcripts were analysed with a coding scheme, and coded student responses studied to detect echoes of literacy practices and assumptions from the Singapore schooling culture. Findings indicate that digression can arise from one or more of six cognitive processes, namely, a topic-centric representation of the rhetorical problem, a contrary-view representation of the rhetorical problem, the setting of knowledge-recount goals, inadequacies in the encoding process, the associative development of a topic and the non-activation of reviewing processes during writing. Findings also indicate that five of these cognitive processes seem to be socio-culturally shaped by the pedagogical practices and assumptions familiar to Singapore students. A discussion of these findings in relation to the literature and the education-related discourse in Singapore suggests that digression in the expository essays of Singapore students reflect not only issues to do with antilogos ability, beliefs about writing and the coordination of multiple cognitive acts, but also values implicit in the Singapore literacy context.
Date Issued
2010
Call Number
LB1631 Chu
Date Submitted
2010