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.

The Importance of Environmental Materials in Indonesian Language Learning

The environment is very important for human life. However, there are many issues regarding the environment. These environmental problems are a result of the low awareness of the environment. Therefore, environmental materials are needed in learning. Environmental material can be inserted in various materials such as in writing argumentative texts. This can make students not only care about the environment but also able to write argumentative texts well. In addition, environmental materials can also be integrated with persuasive speech writing materials. Persuasive speech can influence other people to protect the environment. Finally, environmental materials can be included in poetry writing materials. Students can write poetry with environmental themes.

“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.

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

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.

Students’ use of Justifications in Socioscientific Argumentation

Research focusing on students’ argumentation in socioscientific issues (SSI) shows that students tend to base their arguments on values rather than knowledge. This study explores Swedish upper secondary chemistry students’ written argumentation. The data consists of student texts written at the end of an intervention designed to develop skills related to high quality argumentation. The results show that after being taught about argumentation and the context of SSI, students mainly base their arguments on content knowledge. Value justifications are present in students’ texts, but constitute a smaller proportion. Beside content knowledge- and value justifications, we found a third category – “reasoning” – in which students draw conclusions, or make predictions of future events, to support or refute a claim. The justifications in the argumentative texts include a breadth of subject areas in which chemistry knowledge plays an important role. This study suggests that content knowledge constitutes an important part in student argumentation.

Non-canonical word order as a measure of syntactic complexity in advanced L2 German

A major issue in SLA research concerns the operationalization of syntactic complexity, in particular the need for fine-grained measures that go beyond the traditional focus on syntactic elaboration. Following recent findings that have demonstrated the potential of syntactic diversity for providing a more detailed picture of how complexity develops across languages and proficiency levels, the present study argues for the use of two types of non-canonical structures, passives and argument inversions, as indices of syntactic complexification in advanced L2 German writing. Based on 75 argumentative texts written by experienced L2 learners of German (B2 to C2 CEFR levels), we addressed the question to what extent learners’ use of non-canonical word order is a hallmark of advanced proficiency compared to measures of syntactic elaboration. The results revealed a considerable increase in the frequency of argument inversions from B2 to C1 and highlighted the interrelationship between diversity and elaboration in learner compositions.

Information Easiness Affects Non-experts’ Evaluation of Scientific Claims About Which They Hold Prior Beliefs

Usually, non-experts do not possess sufficient deep-level knowledge to make fully informed evaluations of scientific claims. Instead, they depend on pertinent experts for support. However, previous research has shown that the easiness by which textual information on a scientific issue can be understood seduces non-experts into overlooking their evaluative limitations. The present study examined whether text easiness affects non-experts’ evaluation of scientific claims even if they possess prior beliefs about the accuracy of these claims. Undergraduates who strongly believed that climate change is anthropogenic read argumentative texts that were either easy or difficult to understand and that supported a claim either consistent or inconsistent with their beliefs. Results are consistent with the hypothesis that text easiness affects non-experts’ judgment of scientific claims about which they hold prior beliefs—but only when these claims are in accordance with their beliefs. It seems that both text difficulty and belief inconsistency remind non-experts of their own limitations.

Enhancing science students’ participation in writing argumentative essays in Biology class through a genre-based approach (an action research)

ABSTRAK Metode genre based telah dipakai dalam banyak studi. Metode ini juga memberikan banyak kontribusi terhadap peningkatan mutu penulisan dalam berbagai konteks pelajaran. Tujuan dari penelitian ini adalah untuk meningkatkan partisipasi siswa kelas IPA dalam menulis teks argumentasi pada pelajaran biologi dengan menggunakan metode genre based di SMAN 1 Kupang Timur. Penelitian ini menggunakan metode penelitan tindakan kelas yang terdiri dari dua fase. 41 siswa kelas IPA pada SMAN 1 Kupang Timur terlibat dalam penelitian ini. Metode genre based ini diaplikasikan selama empat kali pelatihan selama satu bulan berfokus pada bagaimana siswa menulis teks argumentasi dalam pelajaran biologi. Teks argumentasi siswa dinilai dengan menggunakan penilaian “systemic functional grammar” dalam pemberian pre-test dan postest. Hasil penelitian menunjukan bahwa metode genre based meningkatkan partisipasi dan nilai menulis siswa kelas IPA. Kata Kunci: pendekatan genre-based, teks argumenatsi, penelitian tindakan, systemic functional grammar ABSTRACT Genre-based approach has been used frequently in many studies. It has been shown in any number of studies to contribute to the development of writing across different contexts. The main purpose of the research was to increase science students’ participation in argumentative essay writing using a genre-based approach at SMAN 1 Kupang Timur. This study applied an action research method which was comprised of two cycles. 41 students at SMAN 1 Kupang Timur participated in the study. A genre-based approach was applied four times over the course of a month to teach the students how to write argumentative essays. Students’ argumentative essays were measured by the systemic functional grammar framework in pretest and post-test. The research findings indicated that the genre-based approach increased students’ participation and scores in argumentative writing. Key words: genre-based approach, argumentative texts, action research, systemic functional grammar

Quality of argumentation in political tweets: what is and how to measure it / Qualidade da argumentação em tweets de política: o que e como avaliar

Argumentation is something inherent to human beings and essential to written and spoken communication. Because of the popularization of Internet access, social media are one of the main means of creation and profusion of argumentative texts in various fields, such as politics. As a way to contribute to research related to the assessment of the quality of argumentation in Portuguese, we aim in this paper to propose and validate criteria and guidelines for the assessment of the quality of argumentation in Twitter posts in the domain of politics. For this purpose, a corpus was produced and annotated with tweets whose content is related to the Brazilian political scenario. The texts were collected in the first months of 2021, resulting in 1,649,674 posts. From the analysis of a sample, we defined linguistic criteria that would potentially characterize relevant aspects of the rhetorical dimension of argumentation, namely: (i) Clarity, (ii) Arrangement, (iii) Credibility, and (iv) Emotional appeal. After this phase of analysis, we proposed the annotation of a new set of 400 tweets, by four annotators. As a result, an agreement of around 70% for three out of four annotators was obtained. It is worth noting that this is the first work that proposes linguistic criteria for the evaluation of the quality of argumentation in social medias for Brazilian Portuguese. It is intended to construct a computer model that can automatically evaluate the quality of argumentation in social media messages, such as Twitter, based on the establishment of linguistic criteria, annotation rules, and annotated corpus.Keywords: argumentation; corpus; quality; rhetorical dimension; tweets; politics.Resumo: A argumentação é algo inerente ao ser humano e essencial para a comunicação escrita e falada. Por conta da popularização do acesso à Internet, as redes sociais são um dos principais meios de criação e profusão de textos argumentativos de vários domínios, como a política. Como forma de contribuir com as pesquisas relacionadas à avaliação da qualidade da argumentação em português, este trabalho tem como objetivo propor e validar critérios e diretrizes para a avaliação da qualidade da argumentação em postagens no Twitter no domínio da política. Para tanto, produziu-se um corpus anotado com tweets cujo conteúdo relaciona-se ao cenário político brasileiro. Os textos foram coletados nos primeiros meses de 2021, resultando em 1.649.674 postagens. A partir da análise de uma amostra, foram definidos critérios linguísticos que potencialmente caracterizariam aspectos relevantes da dimensão retórica da argumentação, a saber: (i) Clareza, (ii) Organização, (iii) Credibilidade e (iv) Apelo emocional. Após essa fase de análise, propôs-se a anotação de um novo conjunto de 400 tweets, por quatro anotadores. Como resultado, obteve-se uma concordância de cerca de 70% entre 3 dos 4 anotadores. Vale ressaltar que esse é o primeiro trabalho que propõe critérios linguísticos para a avaliação da qualidade da argumentação em redes sociais para o português brasileiro. A partir da definição dos critérios linguísticos, diretrizes de anotação e corpus anotado, espera-se construir um modelo computacional que possa avaliar automaticamente a qualidade da argumentação em textos de redes sociais, como o Twitter.Palavras-chave: argumentação; corpus; qualidade; dimensão retórica; tweets; política.