Characterizing the Language Features and Rhetorical Moves of Argumentative Essays Written by Filipino ESL Senior High School Writers

Abstract

This study presents the Filipino ESL senior high school students’ strengths and weaknesses in writing an argumentative essay. In the context of an institution in the Philippines where English is used as a second language by learners with varied L1, and the learners are required to write in academic English, the aim of this study is to identify the language features and the rhetorical moves of the argumentative essays using Hyland’s model (1990). Analyzing the students’ essays as a requirement in the academe across disciplines could provide appropriate scaffolding in guiding the Filipino ESL writers. The original essays written within an hour by 51 (from 108) Filipino ESL senior high school writers were encoded and processed using the Antconc software to identify the language features that characterize the essays. The essays were coded by the researcher and an inter-coder verified the analysis in relation to the stages/parts and the rhetorical moves found in the essays. The top three most commonly used verbs in the argumentative essays of the Filipino ESL writers of English are non-action verbs–is, are, have. In writing argumentative essays, the Filipino ESL senior high school writers of English lack lexical verbs in the lexical level, and the thesis and conclusion parts in the discourse level. They were familiar with the argument part, but lack citation as support to their claims.