Argumentative Writing Research Articles

The Impact of Peer Review on Pre-Service Science Teachers' Written Arguments about Socioscientific Issues Related to Chemistry

This study investigated the impact of peer review on developing pre-service science teachers’ (PSTs) written arguments about socioscientific issues related to chemistry. In the study, a quasi-experimental design was used with experimental (32 PSTs) and comparison class (33 PSTs). The participants were PSTs who were juniors in a public university in Turkey. Argumentation procedure for each group was conducted by the same instructor identically except peer review of written arguments in the experimental class. Toulmin’s (1958) argument pattern was used for coding the arguments, and argumentation levels were determined by the levels proposed by Venville and Dawson (2010). Results indicated that the experimental class generated more Level 3 and Level 4 argumentation comprises more complex arguments than the comparison class. In both groups, more complex arguments were generated in the contexts of the use of medicine and home chemicals whereas less complex arguments were generated in the context of chemical additives in food. The conclusions and implications for science educators and researchers were discussed.

Measuring Students’ Ability in Using Collocations in Argumentative Writing Across Gender

This research is a descriptive study. It investigates the difference of EFL male and female students’ ability in using collocations in argumentative writing. There were 24 students taking a writing test in this research. They were 17 female and 7 male students. The test used a writing test with two different writing prompts to be chosen by the students. The rubric focused on the use of collocationsas other elements of writing are ignored to make the test valid. The research findings show that overall score of the students’ ability in using collocations in argumentative writing is 63.8 which is in average level. There is no student with excellent ability, 13 students with good ability, 7 students with average ability, 3 students with fair ability and 1 student with poor ability. Another finding, even with different score 64.2 for male and 62.7 for female, there is no difference between the male and female students’ ability in collocations in argumentative writing as they both are in average level. In conlusion, the ability in using collocations of male and female students is in the same level.

Effects of Content Support and Planning Instruction on Discourse Connection in EFL Argumentative Writing.

Discourse connection is a challenging aspect of writing in a second language. This study seeks to investigate the effects of two classroom instructions on discourse connection in writing for EFL college students, focusing on their argumentative writing. Three classes were exposed to different pre-task conditions: receiving reading materials that provide content support for the writing, receiving planning instructions on effective outlining, and receiving no resources. The results showed that the instructions helped students attain better overall coherence in writing. However, noticeable differences between the two experimental groups emerged in terms of cohesion features. The reading group was found to employ more lexical cohesion devices in writing than the outline group, which indicated a heightened genre awareness. This inquiry helped us identify the reading group’s alignment with content support materials, particularly the change in stance as a factor that contributes to a higher level of lexical cohesion in writing.

The Challenge of Position-Taking in Novice Higher Education Students’ Argumentative Writing

Argumentative writing is the central generic skill in higher education studies. However, students have difficulties in basic argumentation skills. Novice students do not necessarily receive adequate guidance, and their prior education may not have supported the requirements of higher education writing. Position-taking is at the core of argumentation, but students are often hesitant to make their point. Furthermore, they may have an incorrect and one-sided perception about an argument, leading them to avoid alternative positions in their argumentative writing. The study aims to explore starting level skills of novice students’ argumentative writing, namely their position-taking. The participants were 196 first-year students from diverse fields of study in two Finnish higher education institutions. They were required to solve a problem and write an argumentative essay based on five documents that were given to them. The essays were analyzed using qualitative content analysis applying abductive approach. Substantial variation was detected in students’ position-taking. We identified four groups of writers based on their position-taking. First two groups were more or less explicit in their position-taking. Most of the students (72%) belonged to these two groups. However, a minority of them were consistent in their position-taking. Writers in the third group (15%) implied their position, and writers in the fourth group (12%) stuck to summarizing sources without position-taking. The findings invite teachers to support novice students in their basic argumentation. Co-operation between faculty teachers and writing teachers is encouraged.

Authorial Voice in Islamic College English Department Students’ Argumentative Writing

While considered elusive and abstract, authorial voice is paramount in English writing. Unfortunately, many of Indonesian EFL learners found it is highly challeging to show their voice in their writing. The importance of voice is even exaggerated in argumentative writing, since this kind of writing needs obvious stance of the writer. This study investigates the authorial voice students made in their argumentative writing. The purpose of this study is to gain the picture of students' writing ability especially in authorial voice to map the road in guiding the next writing classes. The object of the study is the argumentative writing made by English department students' at one Indonesian State College of Islamic Studies in their writing III course. Using Hyland's interactional model of voice (2008) the data analysis results the authorial presence in the essays is in position 2 at 0 ² 4 scale which means the reader feels somehow weak presence of the authorial voice in the essay. This result confirms the findings of some previous studies that EFL learners especially from 'interdependent' cultural background tend to find this authorial voice difficult in writing English essay.

Swedish (L1) and English (L2) Argumentative Writing of Upper Secondary Students with Reading Difficulties

Writing has been identified as a challenge for students with reading difficulties. This study contributes to previous research by exploring argumentative writing in L1 (Swedish) and L2 (English) in a group of students with reading difficulties in upper secondary school. Participants were 19 students with typical reading, 19 students with poor decoding, and 9 students with poor comprehension. A majority of students attended vocational programmes. Written text quality was assessed by using an adapted version of Jacobs et al.’s (1981) analytic scoring scheme including content, organisation, cohesion, vocabulary, language use, spelling, and punctuation. Students with reading difficulties (regardless of reader subgroup) were found to perform poorly in all categories in both L1 and L2, with spelling being particularly challenging in L1, and cohesion, language use, spelling, and punctuation in L2. Significant differences were found between students with poor comprehension and students with typical reading in cohesion, language use and spelling in L2. Few other significant differences were identified possibly due to an overall poor writing outcome also for students with typical reading. This general poor outcome in writing is discussed in relation to previous studies on writing among students with reading difficulties and writing in vocational programmes.

The Effects of an Integrated Writing Task on Undergraduates’ Critical Thinking in English Argumentative Writing

The critical thinking in English writing skills is among the heated discussions in the field of second language writing. Grounded in Paul & Elder's critical thinking model and aided by Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory-Chinese Version (CTDI-CV), the present study explored non-English majors’ critical thinking ability through examining the development of critical thinking in English argumentative writing. The results shows no significant difference in scores of critical thinking between the experimental group and the control group. The English argumentative writing skills between the experimental group and the control group differed significantly. No relationship between the critical thinking and English argumentative writing scores was indicated in the current study.

Assessment of Students’ Argumentative Writing: A Rubric Development

A rubric is used for assessing student work and performance. It is a tool that works in various ways to develop student learning and has great possibilities. The study presented aims to investigate the rubric development of second language learners' argumentative writing. The study's significance is to explore how well the rubric assesses students' achievement of the skills needed to develop argumentative essays. This study will add to the literature more data regarding rubrics' effectiveness in providing constructive feedback to students. This research describes the results of the current study in relation to rubric feedback from undergraduate students and the faculty who teach them from a private university in Saudi Arabia. The use of the rubric would be to support instruction and student performance. The researchers have proposed a methodology to design, develop, and implement a rubric as a scoring guide for argumentative essays based upon the achievement of learning outcomes for this genre. The rubric was developed to evaluate the following criterion: organization, integrating academic sources, thesis statement, finding evidence/lack of evidence, writing refutation paragraph, writing counterclaims, content, academic tone, mechanic, and vocabulary. The researchers statistically found significant interrater reliability and convergent validity coefficients. The results are considered to encourage the evaluation and development of such rubrics to be used across universities and colleges.

An empirical study of claims and qualifiers in ESL students\u2019 argumentative writing based on Toulmin model

English argumentative writing is difficult in second language writing for ESL students. Although there has been a lot of research on English argumentative writings, empirical research focusing on claims in argumentative writing is very scarce. Based on the Toulmin model, this paper studied the relationship between the claims and English argumentative writing performance. 117 time-limited writings were collected at a top university in Northeast China. The qualifiers were in the form of words, participle and sentence (QW, QP, QS), based on which claims were classified. Through the text analysis of each argumentative writing, 23 types of claims were extracted. Types of claims and 117 argumentative writings were scored respectively. Correlation analysis showed that claims based on qualifier divisions did not predict holistic writing performance. Claims in the higher-mark writings were also discussed. The findings led us to conclude corresponding pedagogy implications in promoting argumentative writings.

외국인 유학생의 한국어 토론 입론문 분석 연구

Objectives The objective of this study is to examine the argumentation structure shown in the argument of debates by foreign students.
 Methods For this, total 35 pieces of argument data submitted by foreign students were analyzed according to the composition of argumentation, structure of reason, and types of grounds presentation.
 Results In the results of this study, regarding the structure of argumentation, the structure ‘claim+grounds+fact’ showed the highest frequency. In the composition of argumentation, most of them had the convergence structure. In the types of grounds presentation, most of them wrote their argument by using some examples of an objective fact.
 Conclusions Based on such results of this study, the debate argumentative writings produced by foreign students did not have the mutually-organic cohesiveness in the aspect of composition of argumentation. Also, in the presentation of grounds, they simply listed objective facts, so the persuasive power of their claim was not that great. Thus, the debate education as a Korean language course for general education for foreign students needs to practice the students to explicitly understand the structure of argumentation for persuasion in the pre-process of debate. Especially, the critical thinking skills for the selection of base data should be improved. After establishing the grounds for the debate subject to have a debate in Korean as a second language, it would be necessary to teach the persuasive speaking expressions for the most persuasive argument. Lastly, as a limitation of this study, this study could not analyze a large number of argument structure, so the further researches should analyze the argumentation structure specialized in debate of foreign students.

Integrating Computer-aided Argument Mapping into EFL Learners’ Argumentative Writing: Evidence from Saudi Arabia

This paper aims to examine the effects of Computer-Aided Argument Mapping (CAAM) on Saudi EFL learners’ argumentative writing performance across the development of writing content and coherence and their self-regulated learning skills. A total of 40 second-year university EFL learners were purposively selected as a one-group of pre- and post-test design. Using a mixed-method approach, three research tools were utilized: pre- and post-writing tests, a Self-regulated Learning Scale (SRLS), and semi-structured interviews. Quantitative results demonstrated that EFL learners’ argumentative writing performance made noteworthy gains, as manifested by the statistically significant differences between their pre- and post-test scores. Significant positive correlations were also found between the EFL learners’ overall argumentative writing performance and the SRL factor subscales, indicating an increase in the self-regulation mechanism relative to planning, self-monitoring, evaluation, effort, and self-efficacy. Qualitative results indicate that the participants have positively embraced the integration of CAAM to improve their writing skills and self-regulation processes. Recommendations for implementing digital mapping to revolutionize EFL learning classrooms in this digital era are provided.

A Corpus-Based Study: A Comparison between Native Speakers and Chinese EFL Learners in Using Adjectives in Argumentative Writings

The purpose of this study is to explore the differences in using adjectives between native speakers and Chinese EFL learners at beginner and intermediate levels, with the research data taken from three sub-written corpora of ICNALE, the written corpus of native speakers and the written corpus of Chinese EFL learners at A2 and B1 levels. The research data is coded by the UAM Corpus tool, version 3.2. The result is presented in two aspects, namely, the overall frequencies of the three sub-written corpora and the specific overused and underused wordings. The study reveals that compared with the native speakers, the Chinese EFL writers tend to employ adjectives that are vaguer and general in meaning. More importantly, the Chinese EFL learners’ lexical accuracy needs to be improved, as the result of the specific wordings shows that some adjectives are used inappropriately in the writing excerpts. However, in terms of lexical richness, the native speakers don’t show a significant variation in using adjectives, which differs from the findings of previous studies. The comparison between the beginner and intermediate Chinese EFL learners shows that the intermediate writers employ a wider range of higher leveled vocabulary, which is a major marker in many standard English writing tests. The study finally proposes two pedagogical implications for language teachers to improve EFL writers’ vocabulary variety as well as lexical accuracy, and the key point is to teach most essential academic adjectives under the syntactical and grammatical context.

An Empirical Study on the Correlation between Critical Thinking Ability and L2 Argumentative Writing Competence

Good critical thinking ability not only enables us to comprehensively understand things and make rational judgments, but also enables us to break the routine, think creatively and develop our personality. English argumentative writing is an effective way to cultivate critical thinking ability. This study uses corpus analysis and SPSS to analyze the relationship between students' critical thinking ability and their English essay writing level. The results show that: (1) students as a whole have a tendency towards positive critical thinking; (2) the dimensions of students’ critical thinking ability are, in descending order, curiosity, justice, openness, truth-seeking, cognitive maturity, analytical, resilience and confidence; (3) the correlation coefficient is 0.482, which means they are positively correlated. Based on the above findings, some valuable suggestions for optimization of English writing teaching are put forward accordingly.

The POW+TREE Strategy’s Effects on the Argumentative Writing of Struggling Secondary Students

The present study aims to evaluate the effects of an argumentative writing strategy (POW+TREE) on four struggling ninth graders’ ability to produce persuasive texts regarding their point of view on different questions. I applied a multiple-baseline design to evaluate outcomes across participants. The results indicate the intervention helped students to write more extensive essays, and evidence shows an increase in quality. Follow-up data suggest the effects remained after the treatment ended. I also discuss future research and the findings’ implications for practitioners.

Malaysian ESL Students’ Perception of the Importance Learning Argumentative Writing and Challenges Faced

Although argumentative writing skills are essential for survival in today’s social and professional world, they are rather challenging to master. The Malaysian Ministry of Higher Education places great emphasis on the needs for graduates to grasp argumentative writing skills. However, learners appear to be ambivalent about the skills. Thus, using a quantitative approach, this study aims to explore the students’ perceptions towards learning argumentative writing as well as identify the challenges that they face. Analysed using ANOVA, data from the questionnaire used in the study indicates that: i) the respondents believed that learning argumentative writing is equally important for academic success and career development in the future; and ii) those with lower grades tend to struggle more with language style and components of argumentative writing. The findings also suggest that educators should try to cater to students’ needs in order to promote mastery of argumentative writing skills. In the future, qualitative research could be conducted to explore learners’ perceptions in more detail. Researchers could also employ mixed methods to investigate issues around argumentative writing skills from educators’ perspectives.

The Effectiveness of 4MAT Model via Google Classroom in Developing Argumentative Writing Skills among EFL Majors

The Effectiveness of 4MAT Model via Google Classroom in Developing Argumentative Writing Skills among EFL Majors

Assessment of the Analytic Scale of Argumentative Writing (ASAW)

The Analytic Scale of Argumentative Writing (ASAW) was developed because of the need for a genre-specific scale to assess English as a Second Language (ESL) university student writers’ argumentative essays. The present study reports the findings of field-testing ASAW. For this purpose, argumentative samples (n = 110) were collected and remote-scored by experienced raters (n = 5) who used ASAW. Overall, moderate to high inter-rater reliability (r = 0.7-0.9), as well as high (r = 0.84-0.92) and moderate to high (r = 0.70-0.77) intra-rater reliability coefficients after short (6-week) and long (9-week) rating intervals were obtained, respectively. Some established instruments were used to score the same essays rated using ASAW to test the concurrent validity of the scale. The scores assigned by the raters using the scale demonstrated moderate (r = 0.51) to high (r = 0.77) correlations with the scores awarded using several other standard instruments. The raters who used ASAW were given a questionnaire to evaluate the scale itself, and on average, the results indicated that the raters were highly satisfied with it. It took an average of 5.5 minutes for the raters to evaluate an essay, indicating it was economical. The study has useful implications for refinement of ASAW and development and validation of similar scales and benchmarks in the future.

Human Ratings of Writing Quality Capture Features of Syntactic Variety and Transformation in Chinese EFL Learners' Argumentative Writing.

Traditionally, writing quality is measured by human ratings, either holistically or analytically. The present study aimed to investigate the locus of human ratings by analyzing the linguistic features that are predictive of writing quality. One hundred and 44 argumentative writing samples from Chinese learners of English as a foreign language were evaluated by human ratings and quantitative measurement of writing quality indexed by Coh-Metrix. Holistic and analytic human ratings had significant correlations with quantitative measures related to syntactic variety and transformation. Moreover, linear and logistic regressions revealed that syntactic simplicity, words before main verb, syntactic structure similarity in all sentences and across paragraphs, incidence of passive voice and temporal connectives were five valid indices that can consistently differentiate writing quality indexed by human ratings. The present findings have significant pedagogical implications for human ratings on writing quality in the foreign language learning context.

Exploring the Impacts of Peer Interaction in ESL University Students’ Argumentative Writing Activities via WhatsApp

Exploring the Impacts of Peer Interaction in ESL University Students’ Argumentative Writing Activities via WhatsApp

Linguistic Features of Formative Feedback on ESL Argumentative Writing: Comparing Pre-service and Experienced Teachers

This experimental study investigated pre-service and experienced teachers’ formative feedback responding to upper-secondary English as a Second Language (ESL) argumentative essays. It examined differences in feedback quality and linguistic features regarding teaching experience and text quality (high/low). We developed holistic criteria of effective formative feedback based on empirical findings in order to rate comments by 26 experienced and 41 pre-service teachers. Natural language processing tools were then applied to evaluate linguistic features of these comments. Results indicate that teachers provided more high-quality feedback to stronger essays than to weaker texts. No significant difference was found between pre-service and experienced teachers in terms of feedback quality. Further, comment length and absence of negative adjectives seem to predict feedback quality. Implications for research and practice are discussed.