Abstract:

One integral constituent of argumentative writing is the ability to draw upon relevant evidence to endorse an argument, a practice that itself entails elaborate reading and writing processes. Taking the position that writing can be an important skill to foster knowledge building pedagogy; this article explores the argument quality of argumentative essays written by two groups of language learners attending an integrated writing course. Fifteen language learners as participants of the experimental group used two popular news mobile applications online and offline for reading as a pretask activity that made them outperform their counterparts in the control group in terms of using facts, namely statistics, incidence, findings, and quotations. The multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA), however, disclosed no significant difference in the overall writing ability of two groups despite quality representation of the variable content in the experimental group’s favor. Findings of the present paper can shed new light on how to utilize digital materials for the purpose of enriching EFL writing content.

Keywords:

Academic writing, argument, evidence, facts, MALL, opinion.