Teaching Strategies Used by Thai EFL Lecturers to Teach Argumentative Writing

Abstract

Knowledge about argumentative teaching strategies is not adequately descriptive to be effective in instructing EFL students to be proficient in writing. There is a critical need to investigate and develop effective teaching strategies to develop students’ writing competence. This study used a semi-structured interview and a stimulated recall interview to collect detailed information from two Thai EFL lecturers about the challenges in teaching argumentative essays,with the teaching strategies used to help improve their students’ writing skill. The types of teaching strategies used by the Thai EFL lecturers indicate avenues that can further develop their teaching activities to meet the writing needs of EFL students (Flower & Hayes, 1981; Leighton & Gierl, 2007). The findings of the study reveal that both Thai EFL lecturers admitted that their most consistent problems were with their students’ inability to produce a clear thesis statement, because they were not familiar with this genre. Their students encountered problems due to insufficient knowledge of grammatical structure, lexical features and argumentative features. Moreover, they encountered difficulties in putting together organised ideas and producing solid evidence to write a well organised essay. These weaknesses were the main barriers for Thai EFL students to write an argumentative essay. Furthermore, Thai tertiary students had less experience with argumentative writing as this genre was not taught to them while they were in school. The findings reveal that the two lecturers used the following strategies to teach argumentative writing to their students: (1) using different inputs and activities in class in order to motivate students to become active learners, including pair work, group discussion, explanation, illustration and debate in class;(2) analysing sample texts and presenting their understanding in class; and (3) understanding their students’ learning styles and providing what they need to develop their writing skills. The implications of the findings suggest that university EFL lecturers need to acknowledge the full repertoire of teaching strategies available to teach argumentative writing effectively. Importantly, this study highlights that enabled EFL learners can build effective social and cognitive bridges when writing argumentative essays using effective scaffolding, while receiving close guidance from teachers in the writing classroom.