Argumentative Texts Research Articles

Cohesive Devices used in Students’ Argumentative Essay; A Discourse Analysis

The cohesive devices are one of the important aspects of academic writing that has been recognized as a fundamental characteristic of good writing. The aims of this study are to find out the types of cohesive devices used by students and to identify the error of using cohesive devices when composing an argumentative text. This study recruited ten students from the fifth semester of the English language program in the 2021/2022 academic year. The research approach used in this study was descriptive qualitative. This entire data were analyzed by identifying the kind of cohesive devices used and also errors of using the cohesive devices. Based on the documentary results of the student's argumentative essay, it indicated that the students used only three types of cohesive devices as a reference, conjunctions, and substitutions. While there are two types of errors revealed in student essays of using cohesive devices, namely; references and conjunctions. The types of references included personal references, such as; they, them, and it, as well as demonstrative references, such as; that, those, and these. Furthermore, there are errors with additive conjunctions such as the using of and or. The Errors in causal conjunctions, such as; using the conjunctions so and because. The students often used the cohesive devices inefficiently, incorrectly, or excessively. In other words, the sentences are not linked correctly and properly. It seems that students cannot use cohesive devices in writing because they do not understand how to use them properly.

Constructing theoretically informed measures of pause duration in experimentally manipulated writing

This paper argues that traditional threshold-based approaches to the analysis of pauses in writing fail to capture the complexity of the cognitive processes involved in text production. It proposes that, to capture these processes, pause analysis should focus on the transition times between linearly produced units of text. Following a review of some of the problematic features of traditional pause analysis, the paper is divided into two sections. These are designed to demonstrate: (i) how to isolate relevant transitions within a text and calculate their durations; and (ii) the use of mixture modelling to identify structure within the distributions of pauses at different locations. The paper uses a set of keystroke logs collected from 32 university students writing argumentative texts about current affairs topics to demonstrate these methods. In the first section, it defines how pauses are calculated using a reproducible framework, explains the distinction between linear and non-linear text transitions, and explains how relevant sections of text are identified. It provides Excel scripts for automatically identifying relevant pauses and calculating their duration. The second section applies mixture modelling to linear transitions at sentence, sub sentence, between-word and within-word boundaries for each participant. It concludes that these transitions cannot be characterised by a single distribution of “cognitive” pauses. It proposes, further, that transitions between words should be characterised by a three-component distribution reflecting lexical, supra-lexical and reflective processes, while transitions at other text locations can be modelled by two-component distributions distinguishing between fluent and less fluent or more reflective processing. The paper concludes by recommending that, rather than imposing fixed thresholds to distinguish processes, researchers should instead impose a common set of theoretically informed distributions on the data and estimate how the parameters of these distributions vary for different individuals and under different conditions.

Struggling with historical significance: Reasoning, reading, and writing processes

Abstract The concept of historical significance is seen as a key concept of historical reasoning. Assigning significance is based on criteria and related to the identity of who assigns significance. However, little is known about reasoning-, reading-, and writing processes when students attribute significance. The aim of this study is to investigate how students and experienced history teachers with a master’s degree reason, read, and write about historical significance while thinking aloud. We analyzed the think-aloud protocols of twelve 10th-grade students and four history teachers on reasoning, reading, and writing processes. While thinking aloud, participants read two contrasting accounts after which they wrote an argumentative text about the historical significance of Christopher Columbus. Analysis of participants’ think-aloud protocols and their written texts showed that students did not recognize historical accounts as perspectives—influenced by the historical context. In contrast, teachers looked for the authors’ judgement, evidence, and context. In addition, students’ limited use of metaknowledge regarding texts and the concept of historical significance hampered them. These out-comes provide direction for teaching reasoning, reading, and writing with respect to historical significance.

Determination of Cognitive Structures in Concepts Related to Writing Education With the Word Association Test

This research was conducted as a case study, which is one of the qualitative research methods, to determine how prospective Turkish teachers explain the concepts in their minds about writing skills. The study group consists of 60 3rd-grade prospective teachers studying at the Department of Turkish Language Education of Hatay Mustafa Kemal University in the 2018-2019 academic year. Research data were collected through a word association test. In order to reach the concepts that best describe the writing skill, first of all, ten concepts were determined by the researcher within the scope of the relevant course. Then, the test prepared with these concepts was presented to the expert opinion, and the word association test was designed with the remaining six concepts (writing, text, text types, narrative text, informative text, and argumentative text). In the data analysis, the answers of the prospective teachers to the word test were examined in detail and independently with an expert to ensure reliability. Frequency distribution was created with the frequency of repetition of the concepts related to key concepts. According to the frequency of the concepts, the breakpoint technique (Bahar, Johnstone & Sutcliffe, 1999) was used. In this study, breakpoint points between 20 concepts and above, 15-19 concepts, 10-14 concepts, and 5-9 concepts were applied. Concept networks were created separately according to the pre-test and post-test. According to the data obtained, the concept in the pre-test (f =1.636) increased to (f=1.732) in the last test. While the least increase was observed in the “writing” key concept (f=299-302), the highest increase was found in the “text” concept (f=263-292). The number of sentences containing academic information about key concepts increased from pre-test to post-test (f=116; f=179). The number of sentences without academic information (f=189-f=115) decreased. Moreover, the decrease in sentences containing misconceptions (f=29- f=13) supports this situation. When the sentences were examined in terms of including scientific information, it was found that academic expressions were used more accurately, and misconceptions were reduced.

The Effectiveness Of Fishbone Method On Students’ Writing Ability Of Argumentative Text

This research departed from some problems faced by senior high school students in writing argumentative text such as their difficulties to organize the idea, lack of intention in writing, and lack of technique especially in writing argumentative text. The objective of this research was to find out whether the use of fishbone diagram could improve students’ ability in writing argumentative text or not.
 This research was a classroom action research. The subject of this research was 34 students consisted of 12 males and 22 females. The instruments of this research were writing test, students’ and teacher’s observation checklist, and interview. The research was conducted in two cycles which included plan, action, observation, and reflection.
 The result of this research showed that there was an improvement of students’ ability in writing argumentative text in every cycle. In the pre-test, the students’ mean score was 58.2. In cycle 1, the students’ mean score was 66.7. In the cycle 2, the mean score of the students was 77.7. It could be revealed that fishbone diagram was effective in improving students’ ability in writing argumentative text.

Refocusing education in writing style? Relationships between stylistic lapses and the quality of Dutch secondary school students’ argumentative writing

In Dutch L1 classrooms, style in non-fictional genres is typically taught by means of normative exercises in which students are tasked to identify stylistic lapses. Not much is known about the effectiveness of such exercises when teaching style. Unknown factors include  what kinds of stylistic shortcomings are found in Dutch students’ writing, and how the occurrence of certain stylistic lapses relates to writing quality. The current study empirically explores these scarcely investigated issues. Teachers rated 125 argumentative texts written by tenth-grade pre-university students by means of comparative judgement. Additionally, these texts were manually analyzed to investigate the occurrence of stylistic lapses, taking into account stylistic lapses that are common in text books (‘standard category’) and other types of style related errors (‘other category’). Multilevel regression analyses revealed that only one of the stylistic lapses from the standard category negatively influenced text quality as evaluated by teachers, namely the use of detached phrases. In the other category, only mistakes in question marks negatively predicted text quality. A final model including those two predictors explained 11.1% of the variance in text quality. The article discusses the implications of these findings for non-fictional style education, suggesting that it might need to be refocused.

INAS: Interactive Argumentation Support for the Scientific Domain of Invasion Biology

Developing a precise argument is not an easy task. In real-world argumentation scenarios, arguments presented in texts (e.g. scientific publications) often constitute the end result of a long and tedious process. A lot of work on computational argumentation has focused on analyzing and aggregating these products of argumentation processes, i.e. argumentative texts. In this project, we adopt a complementary perspective: we aim to develop an argumentation machine that supports users during the argumentation process in a scientific context, enabling them to follow ongoing argumentation in a scientific community and to develop their own arguments. To achieve this ambitious goal, we will focus on a particular phase of the scientific argumentation process, namely the initial phase of claim or hypothesis development. According to argumentation theory, the starting point of an argument is a claim, and also data that serves as a basis for the claim. In scientific argumentation, a carefully developed and thought-through hypothesis (which we see as Toulmin's "claim'' in a scientific context) is often crucial for researchers to be able to conduct a successful study and, in the end, present a new, high-quality finding or argument. Thus, an initial hypothesis needs to be specific enough that a researcher can test it based on data, but, at the same time, it should also relate to previous general claims made in the community. We investigate how argumentation machines can (i) represent concrete and more abstract knowledge on hypotheses and their underlying concepts, (ii) model the process of hypothesis refinement, including data as a basis of refinement, and (iii) interactively support a user in developing her own hypothesis based on these resources. This project will combine methods from different disciplines: natural language processing, knowledge representation and semantic web, philosophy of science and -- as an example for a scientific domain -- invasion biology. Our starting point is an existing resource in invasion biology that organizes and relates core hypotheses in the field and associates them to meta-data for more than 1000 scientific publications, which was developed over the course of several years based on manual analysis. This network, however, is currently static (i.e. needs substantial manual curation to be extended to incorporate new claims) and, moreover, is not easily accessible for users who miss specific background and domain knowledge in invasion biology. Our goal is to develop (i) a semantic model for representing knowledge on concepts and hypotheses, such that also non-expert users can use the network; (ii) a tool that automatically computes links from publication abstracts (and data) to these hypotheses; and (iii) an interactive system that supports users in refining their initial, potentially underdeveloped hypothesis.

Online interventions to help college students to improve the degree of integration of their argumentative synthesis

Writing an argumentative synthesis is a common but demanding task, consequently undergraduates require some instruction. The objective of this study was to test the effectiveness of two interventions on integrative argumentation: one of them was focused on the product features of argumentative texts; and the other one on the processes involved in the written argumentation. Sixty-six undergraduate students participated voluntarily. As an academic task, they were asked to write a pre-test synthesis after reading two sources which presented contradictory positions about an educational issue, then to read two new texts about a different but equivalent issue, and write a post-test synthesis following one of two types of instructional virtual environments. The instructions, implemented in Moodle, presented similar tools, employing videos, graphic organizers, and exercises. The first condition (n = 33) focused on the linguistic features while the second (n = 33), focused on the process, including explicit instruction and a script with critical questions to guide the reading and writing processes. In this study we have also analyzed how the students in the process condition answered some of the critical questions. The results show that the level of integration of the written products improved in both conditions, although this improvement was more pronounced in the process intervention. Nonetheless, the products that achieved medium and maximum integration were still limited. Despite the lack of a relationship between how students answered the critical questions and the level of integration in their post-test, the case analysis highlights certain educational implications and further research.

Investigating pausology of lower-intermediate and skilled EFL learners’ writing and its relation to writing genres: A keystroke logging study

Writing has been a challenging skill for EFL learners to master since they need to learn not only lexical and grammatical resources but also planning and idea presentation in different genres. In this regard, pausological details of a piece of writing (i.e., where and when the pauses take place) can provide a bulk of information about EFL learner’s writing behavior. The present study was, therefore, conducted to examine the pause duration and location of lower-intermediate and skilled EFL learners' writing and their relation to writing genres. For the collection of data, 20 EFL learners (10 lower-intermediate and 10 advanced) took part in the study. Using keystroke logging, writing tasks on five genres of descriptive, personal narrative, argumentative, and persuasive text, as well as a job application, were given to the participants. The recorded data included the percentage of pause duration and pause location (within words, before words, before sentence, and before paragraph) of the lower-intermediate and skilled L2 writers. The statistical analysis of the data indicated that although there was no significant difference between the two groups regarding the overall means of pause duration on five genres, the advanced group had higher means on job application and persuasive writing. Moreover, significant differences between groups on different types of pause locations were found between the two groups. Practical implications for education are further discussed.

Corpus-based study on syntactic complexity of texts by L1 and L2 learners

Based on 90 argumentative texts from the corpora of LOCNESS and WECCL, the paper attempts to make a study of the syntactic complexity of those texts. All the data are processed online by the Web-based L2 Syntactic Complexity Analyser, and then processed with the corpus tool AntConc and IBM SPSS Statistics 20. The findings include: for one thing, L1 learners use more complex sentences with more verb phrases, and more embedded clauses, in their writings, compared with L2 learners. For another, in writing L2 learners may use dependent clauses with longer size than those by L1 learners despite the L1 learners tend to use sentences embedded with dependent clauses more often. Finally, some pedagogical suggestions are made on how to improve L2 writing course teaching.

"Desire Is Like a Dreadful Monster": Analysis of Extended Metaphors in L2 Argumentative Essays by Chinese Learners of English.

This article explores the use, function, and understanding of extended metaphors in L2 argumentative essays by Chinese learners of English. The analysis starts with the identification of linguistic metaphors and extended metaphors in 72 argumentative texts produced by 37 intermediate Chinese English majors. The function of extended metaphors is then analyzed by adopting the bottom-up approach of establishing systematic metaphors from those identified extended metaphors, to draw learners’ communicative intentions in producing extended metaphors. To understand learners’ thinking processes behind using extended metaphors while writing, four of nine writers were interviewed about the process of writing extended metaphors in their texts in the stimulated recall interviews. It is found that extended metaphors, expressed through similes or direct metaphors at strategic stages in L2 argumentative essays, are often the result of learners’ conscious manipulation of L1 in producing L2 for various communicative purposes, such as the desire for vividness, coherence, comprehensibility, when there is a knowledge gap between L1 and L2, and for evaluative and persuasive power. These communicative functions are consistent with the ideational, interpersonal, and textual functions of language, which also coincide and interact with the rhetorical goals of moves and stages in L2 argumentative essays. Metaphoric thinking, L1 influence, and struggling to express meaning and persuade, cited in learners’ thought reports, are major factors triggering extended metaphors. The findings of this article can contribute to the knowledge of learners’ metaphoric competence in L2, which can, in turn, enrich teachers’ metaphor knowledge and draw teachers’ attention to learners’ creative ways of using metaphors and then raise metaphor awareness in L2 writing, teaching, and learning.

Kompetencje tekstotwórcze uczniów klas pierwszych szkół ponadgimnazjalnych… i ponadpodstawowych – próba porównania

The article presents the results of the study of students’ language competences who attend the first secondary school classes. In 2019, as a result of the education reform, two groups of students started their education in the first grades: junior high school graduates and eight-grade primary school graduates. Pre-secondary education in the case of students leaving primary school lasted a year shorter. Both groups took the exam at the end of lower junior high school or elementary school, respectively, and studied according to a different core curriculum.
 During the study, it was assumed that thanks to the education that lasted a year longer and was based on a different core curriculum, lower secondary school students should achieve better results in terms of creating an argumentative text and in terms of selected language skills. Both groups of students wrote the same test to confirm or reject the thesis.
 The results of the study showed that both groups of students achieved comparable results. In some areas, younger students have even outranked junior high school students. At the same time, it turned out that the lower stage of education was completed by students with very different competences. Both among junior high school and primary school students there are very good and very weak students, while in the group of junior high school students there is a large percentage of very weak students. This may prove that for many students three years of lower secondary school were a waste of time, and the last two years of primary school were enough to master the tested skills.

Divorce as a Performative Speech Act: A Cross-Cultural Study

The focus of this paper is to investigate whether the divorce act is one of the performative speech acts in English and Arabic cultures or not. The researchers assumed that what is regarded performative speech act in one culture might not be so in another. This assumption is applied to the divorce act in both English and Arab cultures. The researchers believe that divorce as a speech act underlies some pragmalinguistic differences in English and Arabic. To manipulate this argument, certain religious and legislative texts extracted from Arabic and English cultures are to be discussed to prove this assumption. To achieve the aim of this paper, the researchers adopt Austin’s (1962) interpretation of speech act theory and the concept of Felicity Conditions (FCs). Consequently, the goal of this study is to discuss and compare cross-culturally the divorce act in both languages to identify the similarities and differences between the two languages.

Le discours argumentatif chez Christine de Pizan: genèse de l’énoncé complexe

The aim of this study is to characterize the structuring of complex utterance in Christine de Pizan’s writing and to situate the syntax of this utterance in relation to that of the authors of her time. We will examine mainly the role of this complex utterance structure in argumentative text. Two particular syntactic aspects are thus taken into consideration: on the one hand, the topicalization of a clause, which makes it possible to connect clausal content with a comment, in particular in refutative pattern, on the other hand, the correlative structures, strongly influenced by Latin prose, whether it be the classical oratory period or the mediaeval legal Latin. With regard to the first point, it will be observed how the articulation of the topic and the commentary leads to a hierarchisation of the clause, which distinguishes Christine’s syntax from that of many authors of that time, whose writing is characterized on this point by anacoluthon. The examination of these aspects of the argumentative text shows the presence of two opposing tendencies in Christine’s prose, on the one hand the use of simple linking of clauses by “enunciative linking” without clear hierarchisation, on the other hand the more or less marked integration of topicalized dependent clause, construction which is coherent with the progressive structuring of a unit corresponding to the “complex sentence”.

Source-Based Argumentation as a Form of Sustainable Academic Skill: An Exploratory Study Comparing Secondary School Students’ L1 and L2 Writing

Argumentative writing is the most commonly used genre in writing classroom practices and assessments. To draft an argumentative essay in authentic settings, writers are usually required to evaluate and use content knowledge from outside sources. Although source-based argumentation is a sustainable skill that is crucial for students’ academic career, this area remains under-researched. Hence, this paper presents a within-subject study that investigated Hong Kong secondary school students’ argumentation construction in L1 and L2 source-based writing from both product-oriented and process-oriented perspectives. Multiple sources of data were collected, including L1 and L2 source-based argumentative texts, eye-tracking metrics and recorded videos, and stimulated recall interviews. Findings of our study show that the L1 source-based argumentative compositions of the Hong Kong secondary student writers differed greatly from their L2 ones in terms of the argument structure, source use, and reasoning quality. Analyses on four cases further revealed a multitude of factors such as self-regulation and cultural orientations coming into play in similar and different argumentation performance between L1 and L2 source-based writing tasks. This study contributes new knowledge to better understand the argumentation in L1 and L2 source-based writing, yielding meaningful implications on pedagogy and assessment in this field.

"My opinion is that…": the subjective introduction in school students’ written discourse

Abstract. The paper is devoted to the analysis of the modes chosen to express the speaker’s/writer’s personal evaluations in essays written by children of eleven and twelve years old. The structural-semantic repertoire of subjectification tools, their functional potential, and frequency of occurrence in descriptive and argumentative essays are considered. It has been found that the ‘subjective’ textual density of argumentative texts reflects the developmental level of verbal introspection (related to the theory of mind) and correlates with children’s academic achievements. The results are compared with the data concerning a later mastering of the linguistic means expressing subjectivity. The research combines the methods of longitudinal and assessment observation, elements of statistical data processing and the theoretical principles of linguistic material analysis accepted in the Petersburg school of functional grammar. The linguistic tools of subjectification are interpreted in connection with the concepts of modus, modus frame, and authorship. The guidelines offered to language and literature teachers take into consideration the cognitive and the systemic-lingual difficulty of various subjectification means; they are aimed to enhance communicative skills promoting successful socialization of school children.

Argumentation as a discourse practice (Didactic and Linguistic concepts)

Argumentative competence, written or oral argumantation skills are essential in the process of academic non-academic communication. Raising this competence is of particular importance in the education process, which ultimately focuses on promoting the development of general, intercultural communication and stratehic learning skills.The competence to create an argumentative text is complex and includes different dimensions, which means the selection, construction, grouping of arguments, the proper conduct of argumentative reasoning. The systematization of the various concepts and respectives contained in it allows the arguments to be divided into two groups: speaker-oriented and interaction-oriented.Argumentative discussions and organized discussions processes generate discourse that is equated with the notion of community. Argumentation from the perspective of discourse analysis is a discource practice, which is realized in a specific context (contextualized), arises interactively, develops, models and is perceived by the participants in the interaction as argumentation. Strategic reasoning skills, as a discourse practice, instill in everyone in a particular society, in a particular discourse area, mandatory and important knowledge for all and form a solid system of thinking that ultimately leads to reasoned discussions processes.

Direct and Indirect Supports in an EFL Academic Writing Classroom: New Rhetorical Genre Perspective

Despite the importance of academic writing skills in higher education, many Indonesian students encounter challenges that constrain their writing success. Earlier studies in the context have shown that many students have little control over the schematic structure of the argumentative text and their linguistics features. In the current paper, we aimed to document a classroom practice where direct and indirect supports were given to the students during the course of academic writing at an English Education program in a private university in Jakarta, Indonesia. From our reflection on the practice, students benefited from the two supports given to them in each stage of a writing activity. Students were shown to have sufficient knowledge about the academic literature, how to search journal articles, and how to comprehend and annotate the articles' contents. Despite the students' positive feedback, we found that the average students’ writings were not satisfactory. While students had sufficient knowledge to select and use appropriate academic words, there appeared substantial issues concerning the development of ideas and arguments to support the idea. We observed that students had limited time to practice, and this inhibited them from producing a good academic essay. The academic writing course syllabus and its timetable thus should be revisited to address such issues.

Implicit Teacher Theories Regarding the Argumentative Commentary of Multimodal Texts in the Teaching of Spanish as a Native and Foreign Language

The research works linked to the thinking of the teaching staff influence the relevant influence that implicit theories exert on decision-making about classroom practise and on the academic performance of students. In this sense, the present study focuses on the teaching belief system about the development of argumentation in the commentary of multimodal texts. For this, a quantitative methodology based on non-experimental or ex post facto design with semi-structured and closed survey-questionnaire-type instruments has been selected. From a target population made up of Spanish teachers, 502 respondents selected using the non-probabilistic sampling technique applied the accessibility criterion. An ad hoc questionnaire has been drawn up consisting of 28 items digitised electronically using the survey platform of the University of Murcia. It has been structured in two blocks: the first aimed at establishing the sociodemographic and professional profile of the participants and the second at collecting data related to the teachers' beliefs regarding the work of the text commentary in class. The results show five professional profiles defined based on the implicit theories and the pedagogical model to which they are associated. It is also found that the majority declare that they align themselves with non-conservative didactic trends or approaches, centred on the student body and oriented toward the construction of critical knowledge. In this regard, manifest contradictions are detected between his implicit and explicit epistemological convictions. The findings of this study offer guidelines for the design of an effective and efficient argumentative text commentary formative proposal.

Taking Stock of a Genre-Based Pedagogy: Sustaining the Development of EFL Students’ Knowledge of the Elements in Argumentation and Writing Improvement

The capacity to make effective argumentation in English writing is considered as a crucial ability in the field of second language writing. Currently, Chinese teachers of English as a foreign language (EFL) adopt the product approach to teach argumentative writing, in which they stress the mode of learners’ written production and show little concern with cognition. For students’ sustainable development in argumentation skills, teachers are encouraged to employ a genre-based approach to cultivate students’ knowledge about different elements in argumentation. However, few empirical studies have investigated the efficacy of such classroom-based instruction on learners’ comprehensive development in EFL writing, including their knowledge about writing and performance in producing argumentation. This is particularly the case with reference to Chinese students learning to write argumentative texts in EFL. To fill the research gap, this quasi-experimental study was conducted with 74 EFL sophomores, who were randomly allocated to either an experimental group or a comparison group. The experimental group received a genre-based writing approach, while the comparison group experienced their conventional writing instruction. Students’ changes were analysed using pre- and post-writing test measures, open-ended questionnaires, and stimulated recall interviews. Our findings revealed more changes in the experimental groups’ knowledge about argumentation following the genre-based writing treatment than the comparison group. Specifically, the experimental group’s progress was obvious in the way they displayed their knowledge of the structure of discourse moves and of language features specific to the argumentative genre. They began to express their knowledge of the content, process, intended purposes, and audience awareness towards producing more genre appropriate texts in argumentation. They also showed enhanced self-reflection on their knowledge of argumentation. In addition, the genre-based approach had a positive effect on the experimental group’s argumentative writing development, as evidenced in their use of discourse move structures and their overall writing quality improvement. The conventional writing approach was not as effective in helping students to write an argumentation. Writing proficiency effects were observed in terms of the extent to which the students were developed. Pedagogical implications and limitations are also discussed.