Abstract:

The argumentative genre of writing is commonly found in an array of academic disciplines (Wolf, 2011, Mei, 2006; Schneer, 2014) as well as in nonacademic settings (Crowhurst, 1988; Johns, 1993). However, students across grade levels and national borders have demonstrated insufficient performance in this genre (Persky, Danne, & Jin, 2003; Ferretti & Graham, 2019). Specifically, university students in second language (L2) contexts are often found to be deficient in presenting well-structured and good-quality arguments; the arguments tend to be superficial and sometimes show “my bias”. To address these issues, this instructional study was conducted to investigate to what extent an institutionally custom designed online tool called “Think, Pair, and Share” by Center for Educational Innovation managed to affect L2 university students’ structural and qualitative aspects of argumentation. By using this online tool, students were prompted to think critically and to learn to negotiate and justify their opinions and answers, while exposing themselves to multiple perspectives. This study employed a pretest-posttest control group design, involving two academic writing classes at a UAE government university (n= 48). To assess the effect of the intervention, argumentative essays produced by control and intervention groups were analyzed at the beginning and towards the end of the intervention in terms of adjusted Toulmin model of argumentation (1958, 2003) and the overall quality. Findings revealed that this custom designed online tool had a positive effect upon a number of structural components and qualitative aspects of the written argumentation, which suggests that this strategy constitutes a conducive pedagogy for enhancing argumentation skills.    

Keywords:

Argumentative writing, critical thinking, online tool, UAE university students.