VietTESOL International Convention 2026

Although coherence is widely regarded as a key component of effective argumentative writing, instruction in many Vietnamese EFL contexts continues to emphasize grammatical accuracy and overall essay structure more than the management of information flow across clauses and discourse units. Previous studies on Vietnamese EFL writing have mainly examined cohesion and structural organization, while relatively little attention has been given to the ways learners package information to achieve textual coherence and discourse progression. This study develops and applies a multi-dimensional annotation framework to investigate information-packaging features in a corpus of 20 argumentative essays written by Vietnamese EFL students. Drawing on information structure theory, Systemic Functional Linguistics, and learner corpus methodology, the analysis focuses on thematic organization, given-new information flow, focus and emphasis, syntactic packaging constructions, referential management, and discourse progression. The findings reveal that the students relied heavily on formulaic argumentative expressions such as “on the one hand/on the other hand,” “in my opinion,” and “in conclusion,” together with repeated topical nouns to maintain coherence. In contrast, more sophisticated resources, including passive constructions, cleft structures, extraposition, and controlled nominalization, appeared relatively limited. The analysis further suggests that although the students demonstrated awareness of global essay organization, they experienced difficulties in managing local information flow and clause-level prominence effectively. The study highlights the importance of addressing thematic development, reference management, and information distribution more explicitly in EFL writing instruction. The proposed framework also offers a practical foundation for future corpus-based investigations of discourse organization in Vietnamese learner writing in academic contexts.