Topical development, relevance and organisation in expository writting

This study investigates how topical development influences the success of expository writing, focusing on relevance and organisation. Through analysis of student essays, it identifies the importance of a dominant controlling topic (DCT) that runs consistently through the introduction, body, and conclusion. Supporting topics (DPTs) interact with the DCT to structure arguments and paragraphs. Two interaction patterns—DCT-to-DPT and DPT-to-DCT—are shown to enhance coherence. Essays lacking consistent topical development exhibit reduced relevance and poor organisation. The findings suggest that abstract writing qualities can be concretely represented through topic structure, offering potential for instructional models. While preliminary, the study highlights the value of understanding topic dynamics in discourse to improve writing pedagogy and learner outcomes (AI generated abstract, Copilot)