Argumentative Texts Research Articles

Students’ Use of Open-Minded Attitude and Elaborate Talk in Group Discussion and Role-Playing Debate on Socioscientific Issues

Student-active science teaching that includes interactions among students is suggested to support students’ reasoning skills. However, little is known about what are the beneficial modes of interaction to support learning. In the present study, we investigated how different types of classroom discussion on socioscientific issues can encourage students’ reasoning skills as expressed in argumentative essays. Qualities of students’ talk and reasoning skills were described in terms of attitudes, drawing on Dewey, and sociolinguistic codes, drawn from Bernstein. Qualitative data consisting of transcribed classroom discussions and student argumentative essays were analysed by means of statistical methods. The results describe how specific qualities in students’ talk influence qualities of students’ argumentative texts. The results indicate that teachers by promoting elaborate talk among students can stimulate more nuanced and elaborate student texts.

From Reading to Writing Argumentative Texts: Strategies as a Bridge

Reading and Writing differ in accordance with the position of the learner and depend on the process of retrieving ideas from the text or formulating ideas into a written text. Reading process becomes a writing process when it turns from a receptive skill into a productive one. Wittrock (1989, p. 347) explains that “These well-known differences are summarized best by the commonly accepted belief that writing is the process of putting meaning on written pages, whereas reading is the process of getting meaning from the written pages”. Nevertheless, and despite the different aspects of the two skills, a large and growing body of the literature has investigated and highlighted the existence of common points and the conversion from Reading to Writing. This paper investigated the conversion of Receptive strategies into productive strategies in the writing of argumentative essays by 147 Tunisian University students. Results revealed the strong connection of the two sets of strategies and recommends teachers to raise students’ awareness of the latter to enhance their proficiency level. The aim of this study was to assess the relationship and connection between Reading and Writing in English as a Foreign Language context, and more particularly in the Tunisian University Setting. This study argues in favor of focusing on that connection while teaching Reading and Writing argumentative texts to non-native speakers.

The Role of Critical Reading to Promote Students’ Critical Thinking and Reading Comprehension

Developing students' critical thinking and reading comprehension is crucial, particularly for those in colleges, because they need to read numerous scientific journals and textbooks written in English. Therefore, students need to employ critical reading strategies to raise their critical thinking skills for a successful academic life. However, current studies have shown a lack of critical thinking strategies among Indonesian students, thereby leading to various academic problems, particularly the inability to comprehend English. Therefore, this research aims to explore critical reading's role to support students' critical thinking and reading comprehension skills when reading a text. This is a qualitative research with the purposive random technique used to obtain data from seven (7) EFL non–English major undergraduate students in their 2nd semester through three (3) short argumentative texts, a semi-structured interview, and students' answers in written forms. The results showed that students developed their critical thinking skills and improved their reading comprehension in varying degrees by exposure to numerous tasks. Keywords: Critical Reading, Critical Thinking, Reading Comprehension

Academic Features Among the Non-academic: A Case of Chinese Argumentative Texts as Compared to BaREnLoB

Compared with different degrees of academic corpora(RC): BaREnLoB, this study conducted a CIA analysis to find out whether the usage features owned by Chinese English majors in their argumentative texts in WECCL2.0 (the observation corpus,OC henceforth) can demonstrate different academic features except for non academic ones. Results show some academic features among the non-academic(i.e.almost the same strong narrative features, and insufficient epistemic comments, rare depiction and classification of particular things, i.e. similar to previous findings). It shows: (i) NN2 (mostly followed by should ) and we (the usual form to refer to the author himself /herself or the research group themselves) are usually incorporated as subjects; (ii) The standard frequency (PMW) of the top 20 verbs(including be, have, find, know, become, see, etc.) and all the 55 pointed common stative ones(Zhang Z.B, 2003) between OC and RC differ much although the standard frequency(PMW) of stative verbs among the 20 top between differs slightly. (iii) the occurrences of “ they/he/she + modal verbs” in OC are many times more than those in RC, even “we/you/I + modal verbs” between show the nonnatives employ much less than the natives. (iv) there are 4 out of 19 carefully-picked abstract nouns before modal verbs are in OC while none in RC. In short, this research finds that the English argumentative writings by Chinese English majors display some academic features as mirrored by the reference corpus except for some non-academic features as we found before. Finally, some implications for the teaching and research of modal verbs are discussed. Keywords: deontic and epistemic modality, academic feature among non academic, Chinese argumentative texts DOI: 10.7176/JLLL/71-02 Publication date: August 31 st 2020

Designing integrated teaching project for argumentative texts in 11th grade philology curriculum

In the 2018 high school education program, integrated teaching is defined as an approach of developing curriculum, contents and teaching methods. The construction of integrated teaching themes in the Philology curriculum at high schools needs to fulfill the requirements to organize, connect the learning contents towards reality, creating opportunities for students to conduct practical studies, experience and navigate their future careers as well as to improve their overall capacities. This article illustrates ideas and results for designing integrated teaching themes for augmentative texts in the 11th grade Philology curriculum and the tentative plan for implementation of these themes with project-based learning method and portfolio assessment. This paper, meanwhile, handles multiple educational contents in the current 11th Grade Philology textbook and aims to a new lesson plan design in accordance with the 2018 Philology curriculum.

Особенности умений аргументации в эссе - выражении собственного мнения участников единого государственного экзамена по английскому языку

The paper aims to reveal specificity of students’ argumentation skills manifestation in the argumentative essay. The article describes structure of argumentation competence manifesting itself in proper organization of the essay paper, identifies typical semantic relations in the argumentative text and considers use of semantic connectors and key words as components of the argumentation strategy. Scientific originality of the study lies in the fact that the author identifies the role of cohesion skills in structure of students’ argumentation competence. The research findings are as follows: the author shows that insufficient cohesion skills, in particular, low competence in using semantic connectors and key words, influences negatively the quality of students’ argumentation.

Cohesion and coherence in the argumentative text in defense of the Portuguese language published by José Pacheco Pereira

This article is based on the area of Interactional Sociolinguistics and presents an analysis of excerpts from the argumentative text published by José Pacheco Pereira “O vírus que atacou a língua portuguesa”. Fragments of the text were analyzed to interpret cohesion and coherence and the justification of its arguments in the reading of this article is presented. In this initiative, the results revealed the pragmatic interpretation that the text had with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Nominal expansion in L2 adolescent writing: Functions and realizations of clausal embedding in argumentative texts

This study investigated nominal group (or noun phrase) expansion in the writing of Hong Kong adolescents, the majority of whom have Cantonese as their L1. Three hundred argumentative texts were analyzed for the embedding of clauses in nominal groups, using tools from systemic functional linguistics. The texts were further analyzed for realization, or accuracy, of these embeddings, in order to distinguish cases where students were attempting expansion, but did not have full control of the language resources required. The texts were also rated, and relationship between score and use of embedding investigated. Higher scoring texts were examined for the roles the embeddings play in the texts, and less successful texts considered in terms of students’ difficulties with embedding, plus their strategies for overcoming limitations in language resources. Clausal embedding was found to facilitate text organisation and the development of argument. However, students had difficulty with nominalization of their messages, and used compensatory clausal strategies and a more spoken discourse style. Correlations were found between score and overall use of clausal embedding, and between score and fully-realized, i.e. accurate, embeddings. The paper makes pedagogical suggestions for focusing on clausal embedding in argumentative text.

Ocorrências de anáforas encapsuladoras em redações do Enem

Este trabalho pretende verificar como as anáforas encapsuladoras – também conhecidas como encapsulamentos – são utilizadas como rótulos avaliativos no gênero “redação do Enem”. Primeiramente, destacamos a importância da referenciação pelas anáforas, por serem um meio relevante para a coesão textual. Depois, ressaltamos o papel dos encapsulamentos em sumarizar e rotular porções textuais, construindo objetos de discurso essenciais para a coesão e, no caso dos textos argumentativos, para o posicionamento do autor (Koch, 2004; Cavalcante, 2005; Bertucci, 2006). Nosso corpus é constituído de 31 redações nota 1000 no Enem de 2018. Após a seleção, quantificamos a ocorrência das anáforas encapsuladoras, distinguindo-as entre descritivas e opinativas. Verificamos que: i) apenas 2 redações não apresentavam os encapsulamentos sob análise; ii) houve uma ocorrência maior do tipo descritivo (79%); e iii) em apenas dois textos o tipo opinativo se sobressaiu. Do ponto de vista qualitativo, decidimos analisar dois casos. Em ambos, a análise corrobora a ideia de que essas anáforas são essenciais para a coesão do texto e, no caso do gênero redação do Enem, são essenciais também para o direcionamento argumentativo do texto. Não à toa, foram avaliados com a nota máxima no Exame.

The contribution of argument knowledge to the comprehension and critical evaluation of argumentative text

The purpose of this study was to develop a comprehensive test to estimate argument knowledge and examine directly the influence of this knowledge on the comprehension of argumentative text and the critical evaluation of its arguments. Also, the possible contribution of comprehension to argument evaluation was explored. Sixth and ninth graders read two completely balanced two-sided argumentative texts on controversial issues before answering comprehension questions and evaluating the quality of the text-based arguments. Argument quality was varied systematically according to the presence or absence of the ad populum and ad ignorantiam fallacies. Results documented the facilitating role of argument knowledge on both comprehension and evaluation and the contribution of comprehension to argument evaluation. The study highlights the potential of argument knowledge as a target for instructional intervention and of the argumentative text as a fertile context for promoting both comprehension and critical thinking objectives.

THE EFECT OF CLASSROOM INTERACTION IN IMPROVING STUDENTS’ SPEAKING SKILL

The objective of this study was to find out the significant difference before and after the students being treated by classroom interaction strategy in speaking class. The researcher used quantitative method and preexperimental design to analyze research problem. This study was conducted to the second grade students of SMAN 6 Garut on 21th July until 5th August 2016. The data were collected through a speaking test, the test was consists of expressed argumentative text. Firstly, students had to express their opinions about the phenomenon surrounding without being given treatment. In this test, the researcher gave the topic about social media. Secondly, the students expressed their opinions after treatment. The treatment was the researcher teach the students how to expressing opinion, asking other people’s opinion and saying agreement. The test was given to measure the students’ speaking skill after treatment. The researcher investigated the data and collected the score pretest and post-test based on the scoring system. In analyzing the data, the researcher calculated the data used t-test, the researcher checked the normality of the data using Liliefors test to find out whether the distribution of data was normal, and so the researcher used t-test to clarify whether or not his hypothesis is accepted. The research findings showed that was a difference before and after the students being treated classroom interaction in speaking class. The result of the data showed that = 8,374 was greater than = 2,924. It proved that the result of post-test was better than the result of pre-test. In order to find out the significance of the improvement between pre-test and post-test, t-test was applied. After having the test of significance, the result of pre-test showed that the average score of pre-test was 67. Whereas, the averages score of post-test were 73. From the data showed, the result of the post-test in speaking test was better than the result of pre-test. From the result, it could be concluded that there are the significance of the improvement from pretest and post-test

Learning to modalize is learning to reason

This exploratory case study examines the interplay between epistemic modalizations and children’s argumentation from a language acquisition perspective. Two (pre)adolescents’ written argumentative texts and recordings of oral decision tasks (parent–child dyads) across four years (grades 6 to 9) present the basis of the longitudinal case study. Repertoires of epistemic modalizations drawn on in written and oral argumentation are described; these are related to overall argumentative structures of the texts as well as to interactive patterns of oral reasoning. Findings show that the occurrence of epistemic modalizations systematically coincides with more elaborated argumentative structures that deal with counter-claims and alternative evidence. In addition, oral reasoning seems to function as an arena for discovering and practicing epistemic modalizations and their potential for constructing two-sided argumentation, and pave the way for a transfer into written communication.

Are Two Voices Better Than One? Comparing Aspects of Text Quality and Authorial Voice in Paired and Independent L2 Writing

Research has shown that collaboratively produced texts are better in quality compared with individually written texts. However, no study has considered the role of collaboration in authorial voice, which is an essential element in current writing curricula. This study analyzes the effects of collaborative task performance in the quality of L2 learners’ argumentative texts and in their authorial voice strength. A total of 306 upper-intermediate L2 learners were selected and divided into independent ( N = 130) and paired ( N = 176) groups. Each learner/pair was asked to write one argumentative text. The quality of writings was determined by a quantitative analysis that included three measures of complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF). Participants’ authorial voice strength was assessed by two raters using an analytic voice rubric. Comparison of means revealed that pairs outperformed independent writers in all CAF measures. However, the results for the role of collaboration in authorial voice were mixed: While pairs were more successful than independent writers in manifesting their ideational voice, independent writers outperformed pairs with regard to affective and presence voice dimensions and holistic voice scores. The article concludes that, despite its positive implications for L2 writing, collaborative writing may pose challenges for learners’ authorial stance taking.

Explaining Arguments with Background Knowledge

Most information we consume as a society is obtained over the Web. News – often from questionable sources – are spread online, as are election campaigns; calls for (collective) action spread with unforeseen speed and intensity. All such actions have argumentation at their core, and the conveyed content is often strategically selected or rhetorically framed. The responsibility of critical analysis of arguments is thus tacitly transferred to the content consumer who is often not prepared for the task, nor aware of the responsibility.The ExpLAIN project aims at making the structure and reasoning of arguments explicit – not only for humans, but for Robust Argumentation Machines that are endowed with language understanding capacity. Our vision is a system that is able to deeply analyze argumentative text: that identifies arguments and counter-arguments, and reveals their internal structure, conveyed content and reasoning. A particular challenge for such a system is to uncover implicit knowledge which many arguments rely on. This requires human background knowledge and reasoning capacity, in order to explicate the complete reasoning of an argument.This article presents ongoing research of the ExpLAIN project that aims to make the vision of such a system a tangible aim. We introduce the problems and challenges we need to address, and present the progress we achieved until now by applying advanced natural language and knowledge processing methods. Our approach puts particular focus on leveraging available sources of structured and unstructured background knowledge, the automatic extension of such knowledge, the uncovering of implicit content, and reasoning techniques suitable for informal, everyday argumentation.

Pedagogías comparadas. De la Escuela del Mar y Pere Vergés a la Escuela 26 de enero (1943) y Enric Gibert

The objective of this article is to compare two antagonistic pedagogical models such as the beginnings of Escuela del Mar (1922), directed by Pere Vergés, and Escuela 26 de enero (1943) directed by Enric Gibert, in full francoism. The centers, in Barcelona, were in contact with nature.The first was located on the Barceloneta beach, and the second in the Guinardó neighborhood, where it is still located. From a methodology focused on the analysis of dimensions and study variables, differences, and similarities of the two centers in the initial moments of their creation are highlighted. For this, the treatment of primary documentary sources –periodic and non-periodic publications– has been used, together with the analysis of images of the time. Secondary sources contextualize all argumentative text. It is proved that both models promoted a way in principle hygienic-medical to see education, although in the case of Escuela del Mar there appeared a philosophy related to the students and the ideas of the New School and, instead, to Escuela 26 de enero, although there are also glimpses of pedagogical renewal activities, there is a Catholic and authoritarian model of submission of the child and, in short, of indoctrination, much more significant.

한국어 분석 시스템 Auto-Kohesion을 활용한 고등학교 국어교과서에 수록된 서사문과 논설문 비교 분석

This study aims to analyze the linguistic and psycholinguistic differences between narrative and argumentative materials of high school Korean textbooks with Auto-Kohesion, a computer program designed to investigate Korean texts by a wide range of measures. The results show that the higher proportion of modifiers and the use of more pronouns (the second and the third person pronouns) are noticeable in the narrative texts. For all word frequency measures, the average word frequency in the narrative texts is lower than in the argumentative texts. Also, the reference cohesion (noun overlap for adjacent sentences and total sentences), the syntactic complexity, the average sentence length, and the average word length are relatively higher in the narrative texts. These results have several pedagogical implications for the development of Korean textbooks and Korean language teaching materials.

La relación de la imprecisión y la redundancia léxica en la coherencia de los textos argumentativos de los estudiantes universitarios

En este artículo, se reúnen los resultados de la investigación de mi tesis acerca de la relación de dos errores léxicos: la imprecisión y redundancia léxica en la coherencia del texto argumentativo de universitarios de los primeros ciclos. Se define la coherencia como la construcción de una unidad de sentido sin ninguna contradicción entre sus partes, lo que contribuye a la interpretación del texto a partir de la vinculación léxica con el desarrollo del contenido del texto desde espacios menores a nivel de microestructura, relación entre oraciones, así como de estas con el texto en general a nivel de macroestructura. En el estudio, se tuvo como objetivo principal analizar cómo la imprecisión y la redundancia léxica generan consecuencias semánticas en la coherencia de los textos de los estudiantes de la muestra. La investigación tuvo un enfoque cuantitativo, ya que primero se contabilizó la cantidad de errores para vincularlos estadísticamente, mediante el programa SPSS, con la coherencia textual. El diseño del estudio es no experimental y explicativo, ya que no existe manipulación de las variables. Los resultados de la investigación se pueden sintetizar en que hay una relación positiva entre la presencia o ausencia de la imprecisión, impropiedad, redundancia léxica y coloquialismos, y la coherencia de los textos argumentativos de la muestra. Es decir, conforme incrementaba el número de errores léxicos, los textos se volvían menos coherentes.

EFEKTIVITAS MODEL PEMBELAJARAN JIGSAW PADA KETERAMPILAN MENULIS BAHASA PERANCIS

This research aims to describe student’s writing ability before and after using Jigsaw model, the effectiveness of Jigsaw model in improving writing skills, and the opinion of students. This study applies descriptive quantitative method in form of pre-experimental design. Instruments that are used in the form of tests and questionnaires. The sample of this research is 32 characteristics writing skill of 6th semester French Education students. Based on the research result, the researcher can conclude that the students have been able to write the argumentative text nicely. The test result showed that the average test score after using the Jigsaw model is 8.9. It means, the average posttest score is higher than the average pretest score, up to 1.7%. Meanwhile, the results of the questionnaire show that students like writing but they find so much difficulty in making a writing or a text, and most students give a positive impression for the Jigsaw model.

Enseñar a argumentar en la escuela secundaria

Diversas investigaciones en diferentes contextos educativos han evidenciado las dificultades de los estudiantes de escuelas secundarias para comprender textos de cierta complejidad y para fundamentar la propia postura ante diversos contenidos disciplinares. En Argentina, los estudios se han focalizado en estudios diagnósticos sobre la comprensión de textos narrativos y expositivos, pero no en los efectos de la implementación de propuestas didácticas que favorezcan la comprensión y producción de textos argumentativos. En este artículo, se sintetizan los resultados de una investigación colaborativa, realizada en una escuela secundaria pública del noroeste argentino, cuyo objetivo fue el diseño, implementación y evaluación de estrategias didácticas que priorizan el desarrollo de prácticas argumentativas dialógicas para promover el pensamiento crítico -en sentido amplio- (Paul y Elder, 2003), en el aprendizaje de la Filosofía. Se triangularon resultados obtenidos de tres fuentes de datos: producciones estudiantiles, perspectivas de los estudiantes y del docente, y las secuencias didácticas implementadas.

La enseñanza de la argumentación en la universidad

Resulta innegable ignorar la brecha que separa las prácticas de lectura y escritura que tienen lugar en el nivel secundario y las que son necesarias en la universidad para acceder al conocimiento disciplinar y a la construcción de conocimiento científico. La toma de conciencia de esta situación de desventaja con la que llegan los estudiantes al primer año universitario ha llevado a implementar acciones tendientes a abordar la escritura en las aulas universitarias. En este sentido, el objetivo de este trabajo es dar cuenta de cómo se puede ayudar a los ingresantes universitarios a escribir un texto argumentativo de especialidad a partir de las retroalimentaciones escritas dadas por un docente de una materia de primer año de Humanidades de una universidad pública a un grupo de estudiantes que participan en ciclos de investigación-acción mediante el empleo de comentarios escritos digitales.