A Description of Different Themes in the Written Discourse of Educable Intellectually Disabled Students in Tehran

The present study was conducted to analyze and compare the written discourse of EMR students according to textual metafuntion introduceed in Halliday’s systemic functional grammar.

The present research follows a descriptive method. The informants (311 students) were chosen among the primary, prevocational guidance school and vocational high school students in 2009. The informants were chosen according to multistratified cluster sampling. Four schools have been selected through random-sampling (two for boys and two for girls). A written test in the form of picture stories was administered to 311 students.

At first, the data (consisted of 2407 clauses and 10861 words) were analyzed concerning the thematic structure in clauses. Concerning the textual metafunction, overt subject theme is the most frequent (61%) in all grades. Covert subject theme occurred in (34%), and textual theme in (23%) of the clauses. The frequency of covert subject theme increases as the grades increase. Complex theme happens in about 25% of the clauses. Additionally, 96% of complex themes consist of textual and topical themes. Interpersonal themes come after textual and before topical themes.

Nonparametric statistical test (x2 test) shows that the difference between EMR student's use of different theme (except object theme) in different grades is significant when P≤0/001. Moreover, the use of different themes in each grade is also significant. The frequency of complex theme (as a criterion of complex clause) increases as the grade increases.