Argumentative Writing

This work is an argumentative research paper exploring the impact of new media on the awareness and involvement of teenagers in society’s current issues and happenings.

Submitted and published as one of the major requirements for Writing Across the Disciplines in Ateneo de Davao University.

The most challenging skill perceived by students when they learn the English language is the writing skill. This recent study would like to identify the rhetorical strategies used by good writers and poor writers. Two participants were selected, and written essays was the instrument employed for this study. Both participants were required to write an essay on 'Should examinations be abolished?' The essays written were analysed using a coding technique. The findings indicated that both writers utilised the three elements, Logos, Ethos and Pathos, differently. Both were considerate to the readers when they wrote the essays and presented their message, which was also heavily emphasised. However, they did not focus on their roles as writers. Based on the findings, it can be concluded that teachers need to help students familiarise themselves with rhetorical strategies. As for students, they should be aware of the rhetorical strategies to enhance their writing skills to write arg...

En fonction de la langue évaluée dans les examens de certification officielle pour l’obtention du DELF et du DELE B1 et B2, les exigences concernant le développement de la compétence argumentative chez le candidat vont être spécifiques. Conditionné par les normes auxquelles se plient les épreuves qui visent à la certification officielle d’un niveau, le contenu de la tâche attendu dans les exercices des sujets révèle une conception propre de la dimension argumentative que doit avoir un discours en français ou en espagnol.

This study reports a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the use of discourse markers (DMs) in personal narrative and argumentative papers written by 30 undergraduate students: 15 native speakers (NS) and 15 non- native speakers (NNS). The study also ascertains whether the frequency and the incorrect use of DMs plays a role in determining the quality of ESL writings. Findings showed that there was no significant difference in the use of DMs. In both types of composition, NS and NNS writers used elaborative, contrastive and reason markers at higher rates than any DMs in other categories, forming, as consequence, a hierarchy of use. The qualitative analysis of NNS writings showed an overuse of DMs at sentence-initial position and an unnecessary use of semantically similar DMs within the boundary of a single sentence. The incorrect use and the frequency of DMs were key indicators of the quality of ESL writings. Finally, some pedagogical implications are offered.

https://www.routledge.com/A-Guide-to-Argumentative-Research-Writing-and-Thinking-Overcoming-Challenges/Wentzel/p/book/9781138039735
Research is difficult. Even though students are trained in the basic research methodology skills, when confronted with research writing, it feels to them as if they enter a bizarre world, with its own language and conventions, where it is hard to get things right. This book translates the apparent complexities of research writing into everyday ideas, language and skills and will enable novice researchers to start overcoming the major stumbling blocks immediately.

This book focuses only on the greatest challenges in research writing, specifically those that supervisors find most difficult to explain to novice researchers. These challenges include both basic and more complex skills such as: finding original research contributions; establishing one’s voice while drawing on other authors; turning a vague idea into a feasible research question; generating literature reviews that are original in themselves; and avoiding list-like writing when discussing the research methodology.

It shows that it is easier to overcome these challenges, not with lists of prescriptions that are difficult to remember while writing, but rather by cultivating an argumentative mindset. Not only is such a mindset much easier to maintain, but it offers a central point around which one can organise any difficult writing task. The book shows how to use the argumentative mindset to approach every important writing challenge. It translates all the necessary skills into jargon-free language using a variety of visuals and simple step-by-step procedures that will enable any person to read the book fast and start writing immediately.

The book is accompanied by a website with an instructor’s manual with guidance on the teaching and assessment of research writing and lecture slides.

Argumentative writing is an important skill expected of all students from the institutions of higher learning. These tertiary students are often required to state their opinions and put forward their arguments in their written essays, assignments, and projects. As Shannon (2011) points out students are required to write to fulfill their academic course requirements. Hyland (2005) also emphasises the importance of writing which involves interactions between writers and readers. The ways that the writers express their opinions to the readers are very much related to the choices of their language use. Therefore, this study explores how undergraduate writers state their stances in English argumentative essays. The analysis of the argumentative essays for stance was based on the framework proposed by Biber (2006), focusing on the lexico-grammatical features. The findings of this study were obtained from the argumentative essays of thirty undergraduate writers from a public university in Malaysia. The findings of this study have provided a more in-depth understanding of how stance-taking can be identified through the use of particular linguistic features such as modal verbs, stance adverbs, and stance complement clauses in argumentative writing by these ESL undergraduate writers. Further, the findings from the analysis of the use of linguistic features in English for stating stances can then be used to guide these writers improve their abilities to write for academic purposes, specifically in argumentative writing. INTRODUCTION Writing is an important skill expected of all the undergraduates from the institutions of higher learning (IHL). It is often the case that these undergraduates need to do some forms of writing like essays, assignments, projects or theses. The writing skills that are required of them are often to state their stances and put forward their arguments. As Shannon (2011) points out, the students are required to write to fulfill their academic course requirements. As writing is considered important to the undergraduates, it is essential for them to be aware of how they express their stances in their academic writing, particularly in their argumentative writing. According to Hyland (2005), when the writers state their stances, they show how they convey their opinions, judgments, and commitments to the propositions. To him, stating a stance in writing involves interaction with the readers. The competency in stance-taking can establish writer-reader dialogue, and relationships between people and ideas.

Birkenstein; uncovers several ideas and misconceptions that emerged in argumentative writing. This outstanding book remarks through " moves " the strategies and ideas writers have to keep in mind when it comes to comprehend what others say and their own conceptions. In this way, it is exceptional how such moves of argumentative writing are presented through templates, patterns, instances and exercises in order for writers to connect, clarify misunderstandings, and practice these strategies they have in the argumentative style. Thus, it is impressive the clear and comprehensible way the language is used in the book, allowing writers from beginner to advanced level to have a better and proper notion of how to express their viewpoints kindly; throughout their texts taking into account several aspects such as agreeing and disagreeing. This useful book is divided into fourteen parts under 4 major parts which helps readers to think analytically so as to enhance and create a successful persuasive writing. Chapter 1 encloses the first four parts and it makes emphasis on several aspects when it comes to use and write others' ideas. For instance, the order of those thoughts illustrated in paraphrasing and quoting; which are meaningful strategies to give a high level of credibility, support and connection to writer's own ideas. Furthermore, within its next four parts Chapter 2 describes how to express writers' views with the " I say " label. Therefore, such crucial aspects as agreeing, disagreeing, and referencing some counterarguments, as well as specific people or groups; are taking into account in order to gain authority and reliability to the writers' arguments. Additionally, Chapter 3 provides several features so as to connect every part of texts as a whole. These are represented in the use of analogies, transition words and pointing words with the aim of avoiding redundancy. Besides the connection among several statements, and the relevance of using metacommentary taking into account that this is a meaningful resource to recognize some implications that might create confusion in the construction of proper arguments. Chapter 4 embraces some strategies and recommendations while writing in some academic settings such as science and social sciences. It is remarkable in this part how the authors give some details in order for writers to deal with data, arguments and conclusions based on information related to these fields. This engaging and fascinating book is really practical for writers in several fields and levels because the language that is used is really comprehensible and clear in order to avoid certain

En el siguiente trabajo se propone que el género discursivo del ensayo podría considerarse una herramienta válida para la enseñanza y el aprendizaje de la escritura académica, ya que ofrece al alumno una amplia libertad de enfoque sin obviar la coherencia argumentativa y expositiva. A partir de la caracterización del ensayo que realizan diferentes textos críticos, estos rasgos constitutivos del género permitirían una aproximación didáctica que lograría un aprendizaje significativo de los conocimientos teóricos y metodológicos de los géneros discursivos académicos e institucionales.

They say that argumentative writing skills are best learned through writing argumentative essays. I say that while this is excellent practice for argumentative writing, an important exercise to practice structuring such essays and build critical thinking skills simultaneously is what I call the four-sentence paper. The exercise has the template They say…, I say…, one might object…, I reply… One might object that the assignment oversimplifies argumentative writing, stifles creativity, promotes an adversarial attitude, or that students can't consider objections well anyway. I reply that a simplified form of argumentative writing is fine for beginners, especially since the template is ubiquitous in philosophy; that any assignment template has room for creativity; that considering objections is consistent with good manners; and that despite some pitfalls of trying to defend a thesis and consider objections, students are capable of considering objections well with proper instruction and practice. Most everyone reading this who is a philosopher surely assigns argumentative, " thesis-defense " papers. Most everyone reading this surely struggles with grading such papers, and most everyone reading this surely thinks about how best to help students improve their argumentative writing skills. A first thought is that if we want students to be able to write good argumentative papers, we should assign more papers. But we all know we're limited in that—in terms of load on both students and us—and most of us wind up assigning just a few papers in any one course, and the consequence is that progress is slow. What to do? I agree with the common thought just mentioned, and also with the thought that practicing various components or subskills of argumentative writing is helpful too. One of the most important of these is that of considering and replying to objections. This might be the most important skill in argumentative writing after getting the expository material right and having clear and cogent arguments of one's own. But in my experience, and my own department's assessment data confirm this, students only rarely consider objections to their own theses and arguments. Or if they do, it is usually by way of just a passing mention of an opposing view. Again, what to do? What I offer here is a tool to help build argumentative writing skills by way of making more practice of them possible, where the tool essentially includes practice at considering and replying to objections. I call it " the four-sentence paper. " It is inspired by the approach to writing favored by Graff and Birkenstein's (2014) They Say / I Say: The Moves that Matter in Academic Writing, which advocates using templates to help students see general argumentative " moves " in

The authors investigated ways of encouraging students to consider more counterarguments when writing
argumentative texts. One hundred eighty-four undergraduates wrote essays on TV violence. In Experiment
1, students given specific goals generated more counterarguments and rebuttals than controls. In
Experiment 2, some participants were provided with a text outlining arguments/counterarguments; some
were also asked to write a persuasive letter. Prior attitudes toward the topic were also measured.
Persuasion instructions negatively affected and text (without persuasion instructions) positively affected
counterargumentation and the overall quality of arguments. Text was only effective, however, for
students with less extreme prior attitudes. The danger of using persuasion goals and the advantages of
using more specific goals (with text) are discussed.

Literature, derived from the Latin word littera which means letter or handwriting, encompasses of various types from poetry to drama.  Although nowadays literature seems to gradually lose its value within the modern society, literature remains an essential portion to it. The contributions literature continues to make, even when it is neglected, could not be set aside. Literature is a leading role in the development of our society by shaping our civilization, developing each individual tolerance, and catalyzing the procurement of our social actions.

If there is a strong relationship between thinking clearly and writing well, critical thinking as a phrase should be taken into consideration to make sense of its applications in relation to writing. One of the areas to apply critical thinking is writing on a subject through argumentation. Written language provides a way to refine our thoughts and it makes our thinking visible. Written argumentation requires careful planning, analysis of one’s audience, and sufficient evidence to prove oneself that his/her opinion is worth being considered and valid as the way one intends to do the same when arguing orally (Reid 1988). From this perspective, it might be argued that a teacher should be able to implement such a method in the classroom that will help learners think critically in order to analyze and evaluate the reasoning of an argument.

In this respect, used today as a teaching strategy, the concept of Socratic Seminar is first introduced by Adler (1982) who used Socratic questioning for the mode of classroom discussion in his program. Adler also states that it is not possible to understand basic values and ideas through didactic teaching. Recent studies done in the field of ESL and education show that there is an effective use of the Socratic Method on students’ critical thinking when arguing on a subject, or analyzing any piece of written text. These studies on the Socratic Method have suggested a variety of results showing the findings of its effect on reasoning skills, critical thinking, and metacognitive strategies.

It is possible to say that most of the studies using the Socratic Method focused on critical thinking skills through an oral argumentation. However, there has been no detailed research on the roleof using the Socratic Method in improving EFL students’ argumentative writing skills. Accordingly, this study aims to explore whether and/or to what extent the Socratic Method helps students think critically in order to develop and organize their ideas, and write an effective argumentative essay.

This research was designed as a case study aiming at improving argumentative writing skills through the Socratic Method of 17 Grade 9 English Class students at Tarsus American College (TAC). Both qualitative and quantitative research methods were used. To provide data about the effects of the Socratic Method on the development
of argumentative writing skills of the participants, the participants’ argumentative essays, document analysis checklists, and Socratic Seminar graphic organizer were used. In order to enhance the reliability of the results, students were asked to submit their papers via Turnitin.

To conclude, the results of the research showed that the Socratic Method might be an important tool for students to develop their argumentative writing skills. More specifically in the participants’ essays, it has been observed that regarding an essay’s counterarguments, arguments, supporting ideas, and the examples, students have performed more efficiently when using these elements with its relevance and coherence in their essays. In addition, when the Socratic Method was used before writing an argumentative essay, the participants were highly competent in using text-to-self examples in their essays.

Link: https://tez.yok.gov.tr/UlusalTezMerkezi/TezGoster?key=OykDDeWBWTL9-Wm52sZBrNQZbJ8mFGFi51vBkAIyM4lW-KlO7Jly8sYc0UuRWJLe

It is important, when writing opinion essays, for students to
consider and integrate both arguments and counterarguments to develop
a final conclusion. In this article, the authors explored the effect of criteria
instruction and a graphic organizer to promote integration of arguments
and counterarguments. The researchers randomly assigned 84 participants
from an undergraduate educational psychology course to 1 of 4 conditions:
training only, organizer only, combined, and control. The graphic organizer
resulted in more refutations of counterarguments. However, criteria instruction
resulted in better integration of argument and counterargument (with
stronger rebuttals and more balanced reasoning). The authors discussed
how the 2 interventions may have activated somewhat different argumentation
schema in students.

Argument diagramming can scaffold the process of argumentation but only a few studies have investigated its impact on the quality of argumentative writing. This research contributed to this direction with two studies.

An exploratory study investigated the impact of argument diagramming, applied as a paper-based or a computer-based method, on the quality of argumentative text. The computer method increased the refutations and overall quality of essays. The study highlights the significance of writers’ argumentative ability for interpreting improvement.

A qualitative study looked into the impact of argument diagramming on the process of writing cognition through analysis of online process data, diagrams and essays of sixteen undergraduate students. Writers with myside bias schema used the method to increase counterarguments and refutations. Writers at lower level of pseudo-integration adopted more advanced strategies like weighing, and writers at middle level of pseudo-integration formed positions with qualifications. Needs at higher levels of argumentative ability are not met. The support of writing planning processes through argument diagramming affects mainly the semantic aspects of the text while the support of linearization processes affects mainly the rhetorical aspects.

The analysis of interviews revealed that interacting with argument diagramming can improve awareness of argumentation schema, hence, a writer can progress from unaware, to aware-and-lost and aware-but-oriented. Improvement is signified as being sensitised to limitations, gaining knowledge of writing processes and the ability to self-regulate.

Cohesive devices are important elements in that they contribute to the overall quality of writing in terms of establishing connections, actualizing transitions and linking ideas. Related to this, conjunctions also carry the same importance as cohesive devices since they connect paragraphs, sentences and clauses. In this regard, the present study aims to document the use of conjunctions by upper-intermediate and advanced learners of EFL in their argumentative essays and look for potential relationships between the frequency of the use of conjunctions and argumentative essay performance. The study is of a descriptive nature, utilizing quantitative data to conduct analyses. The corpus for the study is comprised of 160 argumentative essays written by 40 students throughout one semester in an English Literature course. The frequency values regarding the use of conjunctions for each essay in the corpus were formed by the researcher taking Halliday and Hasan's (1976) taxonomy of conjunctions as a basis. For the scoring of the essays, a holistic rubric developed for the scoring of argumentative essays was preferred. The use of conjunctions in the corpus was reported as frequencies and percentages classfying them under the subtitles of additive, adversative, causal and temporal. Spearman's Rank Order Correlation Coefficient was computed to see if there was a relationship between argumentative writing performance and the frequency of conjunction use. The findings are discussed in relation to relevant litearture in the conclusion section.

This article reports research investigating instances of linguistic metaphor in contextualized corpus data. Since the issue of metaphor identification in naturally-occurring data has been reason of current debate among cognitive and applied linguists, this paper focuses particularly on the process of identification of this type of language in corpus data and proposes a combined procedure for metaphor identification. The findings inform about the presence and word class of metaphorical language in the argumentative writing of EFL university students. Implications and directions for future research are highlighted. Resumen Este artículo reporta un estudio de instancias de lenguaje metafórico en datos contextualizados enmarcados en la lingüística del corpus. Dado que el problema de la identificación del lenguaje metafórico se ha constituido como causa de debate entre estudiosos de la lingüística cognitiva y la lingüística aplicada, este artículo se enfoca principalmente en los procesos de identificación de este tipo de lenguaje en datos auténticos de corpus, y propone un procedimiento combinado aplicable a este tipo de análisis. Los resultados informan acerca de la presencia del lenguaje metafórico y su clasificación gramatical en textos argumentativos escritos por estudiantes universitarios de inglés como lengua extranjera. El artículo discute las implicaciones de este estudio y propone posibles direcciones para futuras investigaciones. Palabras clave Metáfora lingüística, lingüística del corpus, procedimientos de identificación de metáfora, producción metafórica de estudiantes de inglés como lengua extranjera.

Students have asked me to make this sheet about writing academic paragraphs available. If you want to use this instruction sheet in your classes, you have permission. You do not need to contact me for permission.

Central to work at the university is the empirical method, which is the art of using credible evidence to clarify and justify claims you make. This paragraph assignment has been designed to train students in the art of using the empirical method for defending and supporting claims about a literary work. What I ask you to do in this paragraph is something you should do regularly in your writing and thinking about literature. For your benefit, I have identified five essential parts of the academic paragraph. Topic sentence: This sentence should make a point that is not obvious and that needs support, or evidence, to be convincing.

Promoting Literacy and Writing Proficiency through a Reading-Based Method


Nassira  Boudersa
Applied  Language  Studies
University  of  Constantine  01
Constantine, Algeria



Abstract
The  present  study  examines  the  writing  proficiency  of  Algerian  EFL  undergraduate  learners (Applied  Language  Studies)  at  the  university  of  Constantine  1,  Algeria.  As  a  very  important  language  skill,  the  ability  to  write  stretches  of  discourse  that  are  communicatively  successful  is  one  of  the  major  concerns  of  language  teachers.  The  main  aim  of  the  study  is  to  see  whether  there  is  a  positive  relationship  between  the  use  of  connective  expressions  in  the  argumentative  type  of  text  and  the  students’  overall  writing  quality,  reflected  by  the  teacher’s  assigned  marks  to  students’  essays.  Two  groups  of  students  were  tested  before  teaching  intervention  to  have  a  general  idea  about  their  level (pre-test) in  writing  and  the  use  of connectives.  The  two  groups  received  the  same  teaching  intervention  during  a  period  of  9  weeks(quasi-experimental  design),  then  they  have  been  given  a  post-test.  The  results  of  the  pretest  and  the  posttest  have  been  analyzed  using  the  correlation  coefficient  test.  The  results  have  shown  that  there  is  an  improvement  in  the  students’  proficiency  in  writing  after  the  teaching  intervention.  The  analysis  of  the  students’  essays  with  regard  to  the  use  of  connective  expressions  and  the  students’  overall  mark  has  shown  that  there  is  a  positive  relationship  between  the  students’  frequent  use  of  connective  expressions  and  their  marks (quality  of  texts The  hypothesis  upon  which  the  research  was  based  on  was,  hence,  confirmed.

Key words: Writing proficiency, connectives, argumentative writing, writing  quality

Yoon, Choongil. Nominalization in Korean EFL Learners' Argumentative Writing: A Comparative Study of Distribution and Use. The New Studies of English Language & Literature 69 (2018): 249-274. Nominalization has been identified as a key feature of academic writing for its high frequency and the cohesive and rhetorical functions it serves in text. The present study examined the instances of nominalization and related linguistic features in a corpus of Korean EFL college students' argumentative essays and compared the data with those from a corresponding corpus of native speakers. Results showed that the Korean EFL writers' nominalization use was almost as frequent as that of their NS counterparts. Despite the similar frequency, however, the Korean EFL writers' nominalizations were overall simpler in their syntactic patterns, less elaborated and less effective in terms of cohesive and rhetorical functions than those used by the native speaker university students. The paper concludes by discussing the pedagogical implications of the findings. (Dongguk University Gyeongju Campus)

University students across disciplines are often expected to write argumentative texts. However, many students, particularly L2 writers, struggle writing arguments and teachers may not be prepared to effectively scaffold argument writing. Despite its importance, argumentative writing is still an underresearched area in second language writing. In this paper, we use a Systemic Functional Linguistics conceptualization of argumentation to examine emergent arguments, texts that meet some of the expectations for argumentative writing but not others. We adapt Humphrey et al. (2010) 3 × 3 professional learning toolkit to analyze student writing from a first-year university history class. The 3 × 3 allows us to highlight these texts' mixed effectiveness in meeting genre expectations, based on how they control the resources of each of SFL's three metafunctions (ideational, interpersonal, and textual) at the levels of whole-text, paragraph , and sentence/clause. Our analysis of three emergent arguments shows how each exhibits challenges controlling the resources of a particular metafunction. Our application of the 3 × 3 provides a theoretical conceptualization of argumentative writing that can help teachers uncover subtle ways that student writing does and does not meet genre expectations.

This corpus-based study compares L1-English and L1-Chinese undergraduate students' use of lexical bundles in English argumentative essays, and identifies the most common bundle misuses in L2 student writing. Data consist of two corpora of student-produced argumentative essays: 101 high-rated essays written by L1-English students and 105 high-rated essays written by L1-Chinese students. Using Biber's (Biber et al., 1999; Biber et al., 2004) structural and functional taxonomy, we compared the forms and functions of four-word bundles used by L1-English and L1-Chinese university students. Findings indicate that L2 students not only use substantially more bundle types and tokens than L1 writers, but the structural and functional patterns of bundles also differ. While L1 writers' bundles consist of mostly noun and preposition phrases, L2 students use significantly more verb phrase (clausal) bundles. Results also show that L2 student writers use significantly more stance bundles than L1 writers. In addition, most of the misused bundles in the L2 writers' essays pertain to grammatical mistakes, particularly with articles and prepositions. We conclude with some pedagogical implications for ESL composition.

This study examined a new prewriting tool, argumentation vee diagrams (AVDs), which are used to write
reflective opinion essays. AVDs are based on the theoretical concept of argument– counterargument
integration, which involves evaluating and integrating both sides of an issue before developing a final
conclusion on a controversial question. In a test of the effectiveness of AVDs, 45 undergraduates at a
large, southwestern university were randomly assigned to an experimental or control group. Both groups
wrote 4 opinion essays over a 4-week period. The experimental group also received training on using the
AVDs, including instruction on criteria for weighing arguments. Results indicated that AVD training was
effective in enhancing argument– counterargument integration. Furthermore, examination of integration
strategies used by participants revealed a new strategy, minimization, which was not previously part of
E. M. Nussbaum and G. Schraw’s (2007) argument– counterargument integration framework. Minimization
involves curtailing the importance or extensiveness of a problem or advantage as a heuristic
shortcut for weighing advantages and disadvantages. The role of critical questions and argumentation
schemata in argument-counterargument integration is discussed.

The paper shows how error statistical theory can be deployed to grasp the deeper epistemic logic of the peer-review process. The intent is to provide the readers with a novel lens through which to make sense of the practices of academic publishing.

Teaching writing has been challenging for some teachers particularly in the context of teaching English as a Foreign Language. Learners' problems with regard to vocabulary, grammar, organization, and mechanics are among those which can become the sources of the challenge. For that reason, various teaching strategies have been developed to facilitate learners in improving their writing skills among which include Problem-Based Learning (PBL). This paper investigates the effectiveness of Problem-Based writing instruction on students' argumentative writing skills with regard to content, organization, vocabulary, grammar, and mechanics. It employs a quasi-experimental study by involving the intermediate level students of Lambung Mangkurat University, a state university in Indonesia as the experimental and the control groups. The instrument is a writing test which is statistically proven to be valid and reliable. The findings show that there is a significant difference in the mean scores of argumentative writing skills of students taught using Problem-Based writing instruction compared to those taught using guided-writing instruction in which the obtained p value is .041 which is less than the α .05 significance level. A significant difference is also found in the components of organization, vocabulary, and grammar. The results confirm that Problem-Based writing instruction can be recommended as an alternative teaching strategy particularly in teaching argumentative essay writing. The study also suggests that further research involves larger samples and the skills in listening, speaking, and reading to establish more conclusive findings on the roles of PBL in English Language Teaching contexts.