The Effects of Using Rhetorical Structure Theory in Facilitating Global Coherence in L2 Writings

Constructing a coherent argument in a written text is an overwhelming task for the majority of L2 writers. Notwithstanding, neither L2 pedagogy nor research has given due attention to the development of global coherence and pedagogically efficient scaffolding methods thereof in L2 writing. In order to fulfill such gaps, this case study research aims at investigating how metacognitive training based on Rhetorical Structure Theory impacts the establishment of global coherence in students’ writings. The three-week instructional program consisted of two main phases. After composing the pretest, in the metacognitive training phase, five participants were instructed in the rhetorical structure of an opinion essay and coherence relations between its segments, followed by a continuous practice and feedback phase. After this metacognitive training phase, the students composed two posttests: posttest 1 was the revised version of the pretest and posttest 2 was an independent essay. These essays were analyzed in accordance with the four constraints of Rhetorical Structure Theory and a specifically designed scoring scheme. Results show that there were five types of errors that undermine global coherence in the pretest. However, results also highlight that there is a positive correlation between metacognitive training and the establishment of global coherence as attested by the lower incidence of coherence errors in the two posttests. These findings underscore the potential implementation of Rhetorical Structure Theory to facilitate students’ writing proficiency, particularly global coherence, albeit with certain modifications to render it more applicable to L2 students’ texts.