Place of Dialogue in Argumentative Writing: A Study
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.58213/ell.v3i2.40Keywords:
Dialogue, argumentation, evidence, writingAbstract
An essential part of our approach to developing argumentative writing is to use a dialogic approach, in which students actively participate in a conversation with peers, which offers both an audience and a purpose for the activity. It took place over the course of a school year in which sixth graders debated a variety of themes on the internet with their peers and wrote individual essays on each of them. To put it another way, as compared to a non-participating group, they showed far greater coordination ability. In particular, they displayed a stronger ability to use evidence to both support and undermine their claims. Additionally, they showed modest meta-level gain in their understanding of the importance and role of evidence in reasoning. They were able to rule out the idea that this improvement was due to superior memory of the specific evidence that had been made accessible to them rather than a wider meta-level understanding of the subject matter. To help students improve their argumentative writing skills, some believe that they should be given more opportunities to converse about the topics that interest them personally.
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