Designing an instructional unit on “argumentative essay” for prep year students: An action research in a state university in Turkey

Abstract

Writing is one of the productive skills for language learners. This study was conducted to design a unit for language students who were enrolled in the School of Foreign Languages in one of the most prestigious Turkish state universities located in Istanbul. These learners had been taught different academic essay types in this educational institution for which the researcher designed an instructional unit on “Argumentative Essay Writing”, which was highly needed for the learners taking English-medium-instruction to pursue their academic studies. For the purpose of this study, one prep class was chosen to implement the designed unit so that the efficiency could be evaluated in the end. As for the data collection tools, interviews were arranged with three students in the class where the design was implemented. Three junior students in different departments who had previously had a prep school experience before they took their departmental courses in their faculties were also interviewed as well as the instructors who gave the “academic writing” course by teaching the essay types for several years in this research context. Additionally, the writing tasks given to the students of the class where the research was conducted as well as their mid-term papers were also included in the data. All through these stages, observation protocols were also used by the “on-site” researcher. Results showed that an efficient and applicable unit for an “Argumentative Essay” is possible considering the students’ needs, entry characteristics, goals and objectives, instructional strategy, assessment, implementation and evaluation of the whole process.