Process-oriented writing is the main way for teachers to precisely control the problems and weak links presented by students in each writing stage.Therefore,it is possible to design teaching activities that are in lin...Process-oriented writing is the main way for teachers to precisely control the problems and weak links presented by students in each writing stage.Therefore,it is possible to design teaching activities that are in line with their cognitive levels based on students’needs;promote writing through debate,attach importance to the high integration of reading,speaking,and writing;and strengthen the subjectivity of students in writing by taking interest as the lead and life as the source.展开更多
Competence in academic writing in college is a challenging as well as an engaging task for many college students. Argumentative writing and acknowledging the counterargument is one of modes that is introduced in fresh...Competence in academic writing in college is a challenging as well as an engaging task for many college students. Argumentative writing and acknowledging the counterargument is one of modes that is introduced in freshman classes; however, college students approach writing with a certain mindset. Learning to write in different modes could be exciting when taught utilizing a film or a documentary. Using a documentary, such as Devil＇s Playground, writing professors not only initiate interest in culture learning and cultural understanding but also motivate students to use argumentation to foster critical thinking as well as cultural understanding.展开更多
This study investigated the effect of explicit instruction about DCs in argumentative writings by 15 Chinese learners of English. This study involved in a 4-week experiment. Pre-and post-writing tests were quantitativ...This study investigated the effect of explicit instruction about DCs in argumentative writings by 15 Chinese learners of English. This study involved in a 4-week experiment. Pre-and post-writing tests were quantitatively analyzed to examine whether the explicit instruction about DCs had a significant effect on the students'argumentative writing. The findings revealed that the ex-plicit instruction of the target DCs facilitated the improvement of the participants in their argumentative writing .展开更多
Based on the theoretical foundation of thematic progression construction, this paper introduces several common patterns of thematic progression and attempts to find applicability of patterns of thematic progression in...Based on the theoretical foundation of thematic progression construction, this paper introduces several common patterns of thematic progression and attempts to find applicability of patterns of thematic progression in the teaching of CET-4 argumentative writing from the perspective of discourse so as to show the implication of these patterns for the teaching of college English writing.展开更多
This paper centers on the research on the enhancement of the argumentative writing ability of medical school learners through Email.And in recent years,the argumentative writing has been examined much more frequently ...This paper centers on the research on the enhancement of the argumentative writing ability of medical school learners through Email.And in recent years,the argumentative writing has been examined much more frequently that other writing styles in Band-4 Exams.As to how to enhance their argumentative writing ability,the author tries to use Email as a way of communication.Email as an instantaneous communication way,could be used to the utmost in this research.All the data collected for this research is true.The author made a careful analysis.And this paper will give us the result of this practice.展开更多
The primary concern of this paper is to address the issue of discrepancies between teachers intuitively defined stronger and weaker student argumentative writings.There exists a problem in Chinese university EFL writi...The primary concern of this paper is to address the issue of discrepancies between teachers intuitively defined stronger and weaker student argumentative writings.There exists a problem in Chinese university EFL writing classrooms that the teachers'remarks on student compositions are often found to be rather vague or even unhelpful.Remarks such as Needs further amendment and You wrote just like the way you speak cannot supply students with explicit reasons of what is really needed for their writing improvement.Affirming the dialectal view on text-context relationship held by Systemic Functional Grammar(SFG),the theoretical propositions of Rich Feature Analysis(Barton,2004) are contended to a sound solution to the problem proposed by this paper.To demonstrate its feasibility,the paper followed the gist of Rich Feature Analysis to analyze a corpus of four argumentative writings on same topics.The paper consolidates "the spoken-written continuum"(Barton,2004,p.64),and concludes stronger argumentative writings should own at least one of the following properties: product-like,condensed,recursive,coherent,distanced,and open to scrutiny.The absence of lexical density and nominalization constitutes the main reason for writing deficiencies by tertiary students.The implications for learning the register of schooling are discussed.展开更多
The Syllabus for English Majors at Universities and Colleges(2000) makes it clear to further strengthen the English majors' critical thinking and logical reasoning ability.But how to effectively incorporate the cu...The Syllabus for English Majors at Universities and Colleges(2000) makes it clear to further strengthen the English majors' critical thinking and logical reasoning ability.But how to effectively incorporate the cultivation of critical thinking skills into English majors' core courses,such as the writing courses,remains one of the most important tasks of teaching reform for English majors.The present study is aimed at having a systematic analysis on the causal reasoning deficiencies in English majors' argumentative writing.Furthermore,the reasons resulting in the causal reasoning deficiencies and the implications for the teaching of second language writing are explored.展开更多
It is known that writing is one of the main basic language skills and is very important for the ESL learners.However,writing skill is normally the more complex and challenging one,especially for Chinese ESL learners.A...It is known that writing is one of the main basic language skills and is very important for the ESL learners.However,writing skill is normally the more complex and challenging one,especially for Chinese ESL learners.A successful written discourse is influenced by a variety of elements and the good use of cohesive device is one of them.In this paper,by using the Halliday&Hasan’s taxonomy of cohesive devices as the framework,the features of cohesive devices which Chinese ESL learners have adopted in their argumentative writings will be analyzed and identified.展开更多
The objective of the study is to examine the effects of Problem based English writing instruction on Thai Upper secondary school students' critical thinking abilities and argumentative writing skill.In this study,...The objective of the study is to examine the effects of Problem based English writing instruction on Thai Upper secondary school students' critical thinking abilities and argumentative writing skill.In this study,the researcher constructed 18weeks' training in a prestigious secondary school M6 level.The instruments used in this research include lesson plans,writing assignments,instructional material and topics.Critical thinking pre- test and post test were used to measure students' critical thinking development.Scoring rubric was designed to measure students' argumentative writing development.The data were analyzed using mean,t-test,correlation through SPSS system.The results of the analyses reveal that 1) students who learn through Problem based English Writing Instruction gained significantly higher average scores on the critical thinking post test than the critical thinking pre-test at the significance level of 0.05 and the mean difference is 0.5 which is referred to large effect;2) students who learn through Problem based English Writing Instruction gained significantly higher average score on their fifth argumentative writing assignment than the average score of their first argumentative writing assignment at the significance level of 0.05,with the mean of the effect size at 0.84 which referred to large effect.Problem-based English writing instruction was proved to be an effective way in improving students' Critical thinking and argumentative writing.展开更多
Compared structural approach with communicative approach, the former puts too much emphasis on linguistic knowledge and neglects the language application, while the latter lays too much emphasis on the communicative c...Compared structural approach with communicative approach, the former puts too much emphasis on linguistic knowledge and neglects the language application, while the latter lays too much emphasis on the communicative classroom activities and neglects the systematic study of linguistic knowledge. Both of them cannot meet the requirements of improving the non-English major students＇ argumentative writing scores. So based on the Lexical Approach theory, taking the College English Integrated Course 4 （LI, 2003） as the main teaching material and lexical phrases as teaching and learning units, this study explores the effectiveness of the Lexical Approach in improving non-English major students＇ argumentative writing through classroom activities of input, absorption, and output of lexical phrases. The results show that lexical phrases have more effects on students＇ English competence than single words. They can help to improve the argumentative writing scores and cultivate an interest in learning English independently.展开更多
Argumentative English writing is an important touchstone of Chinese advanced English learners’English competence.Herbert Paul Grice’s“cooperative principles”(including maxims of quantity,quality,relation,and manne...Argumentative English writing is an important touchstone of Chinese advanced English learners’English competence.Herbert Paul Grice’s“cooperative principles”(including maxims of quantity,quality,relation,and manner),as“lubricant”of human communication would help build up harmonious and friendly atmosphere for the communication between the Chinese writers and their target readers,thereby providing them,as well as their instructors,with feasible evaluative criteria for judging the effectiveness of their argumentative English writing.展开更多
Based on the six Thematic Progression patterns proposed by Huang Guowen,a comparative study of argumentative writing by Chinese English majors is carried out,aiming at finding out the features of thematic progression ...Based on the six Thematic Progression patterns proposed by Huang Guowen,a comparative study of argumentative writing by Chinese English majors is carried out,aiming at finding out the features of thematic progression in college writing from a developmental perspective.The research results show that the parallel progression,the continuous progression and the concentrated progression are the tendency TP patterns by Chinese English Majors in the argumentative writing.In addition,Grade two is a key stage where the ability has a substantial change.Therefore,teachers and students should take full advantage of the best learning opportunity.展开更多
Purpose:The study sought to examine the effectiveness of a dialogue-based argument intervention in enhancing Chinese middle school students'integration of conflicting information from multiple texts in argumentati...Purpose:The study sought to examine the effectiveness of a dialogue-based argument intervention in enhancing Chinese middle school students'integration of conflicting information from multiple texts in argumentative writing.Design/Approach/Methods:The study followed a quasi-experimental design with pre-assessment and post-assessment,comparing seventh-grade intervention and non-participating control students'individual post-assessment writing performance on a non-discourse topic involving geneticallymodified foods.Findings:Intervention students outperformed control students in integrating textual evidence inconsistent with one's position.Specifically,intervention students were more successful in integrating position-inconsistent information with their prior knowledge or integrating multiple pieces of position-inconsistent information from one text or across multiple texts.Intervention students were also more successful in integrating two pieces of conflicting information.When judging text trustworthiness,intervention students trusted a primary source to a greater extent and showed greater gains in taking into consideration the epistemological aspect,as well as one's own or a text's position on the issue.OriginalityNalue:The present study demonstrated the effectiveness of the dialogue-based argument curriculum in promoting Chinese middle school students'ability to write integrated essays from multiple texts.展开更多
Introduction Argument skills are fundamental intellectual skills implicated in a variety of higher-order intellectual practices characteristic of the 21st century such as critical thinking(Kuhn,2018),scientific inquir...Introduction Argument skills are fundamental intellectual skills implicated in a variety of higher-order intellectual practices characteristic of the 21st century such as critical thinking(Kuhn,2018),scientific inquiry(Kuhn,2010),knowledge construction(lordanou et al.,2019),and belief revision(Kuhn et al.,2020).The latest educational policies and curriculum standards in multiple countries have recognized the importance of argumentative competence by identifying it as a major objective of elementary and secondary school education.展开更多
Legal argumentation analysis represents a critical yet underexplored domain in computational linguistics,particularly for cross-lingual contexts where high-quality parallel corpora with argumentative annotations remai...Legal argumentation analysis represents a critical yet underexplored domain in computational linguistics,particularly for cross-lingual contexts where high-quality parallel corpora with argumentative annotations remain scarce.This paper introduces the Hong Kong Legal Judgments Argumentative Corpus(HKLJ-Arg),a novel bilingual Chinese-English parallel corpus comprising 557 professionally translated paragraph pairs extracted from 15 legal judgments spanning 2012-2025.Our corpus uniquely leverages Hong Kong’s bilingual legal framework to provide high-fidelity parallel translations with comprehensive argumentative structure annotations,including claims,premises,examples,and their logical relationships.The annotation methodology employs a prompt-engineered approach using large language models,validated through expert evaluation achieving Cohen’sκof 0.79 for component identification and 0.72 for relationship classification.We further present the Argumentation Preservation Assessment Framework(APAF),a systematic methodology for evaluating how effectively machine translation systems preserve argumentative structures across linguistic boundaries.Statistical analysis reveals diverse argumentative patterns across constitutional,criminal,and civil law domains,with systematic preservation of logical structures across languages.This resource addresses a critical gap in legal natural language processing by providing the first large-scale bilingual corpus specifically designed for cross-lingual legal argumentation mining,translation quality assessment,and comparative legal reasoning analysis.展开更多
This paper reports a study on a Chinese English major＇s argumentative English writings focusing on the development of her thinking capacities and factors that facilitate or constrain such development. The data came f...This paper reports a study on a Chinese English major＇s argumentative English writings focusing on the development of her thinking capacities and factors that facilitate or constrain such development. The data came from three sources： her essays, reflective journals, and my semi-structured interviews with her. Major findings can be summed up as follows： 1） at the initial stage, the participant was weak in rational thinking; 2） as she had more writing practice, she made progress in ideas and organization of ideas but not in expression of ideas; and 3） factors facilitating or constraining her development primarily include language input, cultural identification, teacher feedback and motivation.展开更多
In an academic environment increasingly shaped by metrics and the imperatives of“publish or perish”,it is rare to encounter a leading scientist willing to interweave personal narrative with conceptual reflection.The...In an academic environment increasingly shaped by metrics and the imperatives of“publish or perish”,it is rare to encounter a leading scientist willing to interweave personal narrative with conceptual reflection.The Soul of Geography by Fu(2025)achieves precisely this.The book resists simple categorisation:it is neither a conventional monograph nor a memoir,but rather a hybrid text that integrates autobiography,disciplinary reflection,and scientific arguments.In doing so,Fu articulates not only the trajectory of his own career but also a vision of geography as a discipline of theoretical depth and practical relevance.展开更多
In 2021,we published our first special issue on the xu-argument in Chinese Journal of Applied Linguistics.Five years have passed since then.Over this period,second language acquisition(SLA)has undergone substantial ch...In 2021,we published our first special issue on the xu-argument in Chinese Journal of Applied Linguistics.Five years have passed since then.Over this period,second language acquisition(SLA)has undergone substantial changes.For example,the emergence of Large Language Models(LLMs)such as ChatGPT and DeepSeek has begun to reshape language teaching and learning.During the same period,the xu-argument has advanced considerably,both theoretically and methodologically.The present special issue brings together an interview and seven empirical studies,which collectively exemplify these developments.展开更多
文摘Process-oriented writing is the main way for teachers to precisely control the problems and weak links presented by students in each writing stage.Therefore,it is possible to design teaching activities that are in line with their cognitive levels based on students’needs;promote writing through debate,attach importance to the high integration of reading,speaking,and writing;and strengthen the subjectivity of students in writing by taking interest as the lead and life as the source.
文摘Competence in academic writing in college is a challenging as well as an engaging task for many college students. Argumentative writing and acknowledging the counterargument is one of modes that is introduced in freshman classes; however, college students approach writing with a certain mindset. Learning to write in different modes could be exciting when taught utilizing a film or a documentary. Using a documentary, such as Devil＇s Playground, writing professors not only initiate interest in culture learning and cultural understanding but also motivate students to use argumentation to foster critical thinking as well as cultural understanding.
文摘This study investigated the effect of explicit instruction about DCs in argumentative writings by 15 Chinese learners of English. This study involved in a 4-week experiment. Pre-and post-writing tests were quantitatively analyzed to examine whether the explicit instruction about DCs had a significant effect on the students'argumentative writing. The findings revealed that the ex-plicit instruction of the target DCs facilitated the improvement of the participants in their argumentative writing .
文摘Based on the theoretical foundation of thematic progression construction, this paper introduces several common patterns of thematic progression and attempts to find applicability of patterns of thematic progression in the teaching of CET-4 argumentative writing from the perspective of discourse so as to show the implication of these patterns for the teaching of college English writing.
文摘This paper centers on the research on the enhancement of the argumentative writing ability of medical school learners through Email.And in recent years,the argumentative writing has been examined much more frequently that other writing styles in Band-4 Exams.As to how to enhance their argumentative writing ability,the author tries to use Email as a way of communication.Email as an instantaneous communication way,could be used to the utmost in this research.All the data collected for this research is true.The author made a careful analysis.And this paper will give us the result of this practice.
文摘The primary concern of this paper is to address the issue of discrepancies between teachers intuitively defined stronger and weaker student argumentative writings.There exists a problem in Chinese university EFL writing classrooms that the teachers'remarks on student compositions are often found to be rather vague or even unhelpful.Remarks such as Needs further amendment and You wrote just like the way you speak cannot supply students with explicit reasons of what is really needed for their writing improvement.Affirming the dialectal view on text-context relationship held by Systemic Functional Grammar(SFG),the theoretical propositions of Rich Feature Analysis(Barton,2004) are contended to a sound solution to the problem proposed by this paper.To demonstrate its feasibility,the paper followed the gist of Rich Feature Analysis to analyze a corpus of four argumentative writings on same topics.The paper consolidates "the spoken-written continuum"(Barton,2004,p.64),and concludes stronger argumentative writings should own at least one of the following properties: product-like,condensed,recursive,coherent,distanced,and open to scrutiny.The absence of lexical density and nominalization constitutes the main reason for writing deficiencies by tertiary students.The implications for learning the register of schooling are discussed.
文摘The Syllabus for English Majors at Universities and Colleges(2000) makes it clear to further strengthen the English majors' critical thinking and logical reasoning ability.But how to effectively incorporate the cultivation of critical thinking skills into English majors' core courses,such as the writing courses,remains one of the most important tasks of teaching reform for English majors.The present study is aimed at having a systematic analysis on the causal reasoning deficiencies in English majors' argumentative writing.Furthermore,the reasons resulting in the causal reasoning deficiencies and the implications for the teaching of second language writing are explored.
文摘It is known that writing is one of the main basic language skills and is very important for the ESL learners.However,writing skill is normally the more complex and challenging one,especially for Chinese ESL learners.A successful written discourse is influenced by a variety of elements and the good use of cohesive device is one of them.In this paper,by using the Halliday&Hasan’s taxonomy of cohesive devices as the framework,the features of cohesive devices which Chinese ESL learners have adopted in their argumentative writings will be analyzed and identified.
文摘The objective of the study is to examine the effects of Problem based English writing instruction on Thai Upper secondary school students' critical thinking abilities and argumentative writing skill.In this study,the researcher constructed 18weeks' training in a prestigious secondary school M6 level.The instruments used in this research include lesson plans,writing assignments,instructional material and topics.Critical thinking pre- test and post test were used to measure students' critical thinking development.Scoring rubric was designed to measure students' argumentative writing development.The data were analyzed using mean,t-test,correlation through SPSS system.The results of the analyses reveal that 1) students who learn through Problem based English Writing Instruction gained significantly higher average scores on the critical thinking post test than the critical thinking pre-test at the significance level of 0.05 and the mean difference is 0.5 which is referred to large effect;2) students who learn through Problem based English Writing Instruction gained significantly higher average score on their fifth argumentative writing assignment than the average score of their first argumentative writing assignment at the significance level of 0.05,with the mean of the effect size at 0.84 which referred to large effect.Problem-based English writing instruction was proved to be an effective way in improving students' Critical thinking and argumentative writing.
文摘Compared structural approach with communicative approach, the former puts too much emphasis on linguistic knowledge and neglects the language application, while the latter lays too much emphasis on the communicative classroom activities and neglects the systematic study of linguistic knowledge. Both of them cannot meet the requirements of improving the non-English major students＇ argumentative writing scores. So based on the Lexical Approach theory, taking the College English Integrated Course 4 （LI, 2003） as the main teaching material and lexical phrases as teaching and learning units, this study explores the effectiveness of the Lexical Approach in improving non-English major students＇ argumentative writing through classroom activities of input, absorption, and output of lexical phrases. The results show that lexical phrases have more effects on students＇ English competence than single words. They can help to improve the argumentative writing scores and cultivate an interest in learning English independently.
文摘Argumentative English writing is an important touchstone of Chinese advanced English learners’English competence.Herbert Paul Grice’s“cooperative principles”(including maxims of quantity,quality,relation,and manner),as“lubricant”of human communication would help build up harmonious and friendly atmosphere for the communication between the Chinese writers and their target readers,thereby providing them,as well as their instructors,with feasible evaluative criteria for judging the effectiveness of their argumentative English writing.
文摘Based on the six Thematic Progression patterns proposed by Huang Guowen,a comparative study of argumentative writing by Chinese English majors is carried out,aiming at finding out the features of thematic progression in college writing from a developmental perspective.The research results show that the parallel progression,the continuous progression and the concentrated progression are the tendency TP patterns by Chinese English Majors in the argumentative writing.In addition,Grade two is a key stage where the ability has a substantial change.Therefore,teachers and students should take full advantage of the best learning opportunity.
文摘Purpose:The study sought to examine the effectiveness of a dialogue-based argument intervention in enhancing Chinese middle school students'integration of conflicting information from multiple texts in argumentative writing.Design/Approach/Methods:The study followed a quasi-experimental design with pre-assessment and post-assessment,comparing seventh-grade intervention and non-participating control students'individual post-assessment writing performance on a non-discourse topic involving geneticallymodified foods.Findings:Intervention students outperformed control students in integrating textual evidence inconsistent with one's position.Specifically,intervention students were more successful in integrating position-inconsistent information with their prior knowledge or integrating multiple pieces of position-inconsistent information from one text or across multiple texts.Intervention students were also more successful in integrating two pieces of conflicting information.When judging text trustworthiness,intervention students trusted a primary source to a greater extent and showed greater gains in taking into consideration the epistemological aspect,as well as one's own or a text's position on the issue.OriginalityNalue:The present study demonstrated the effectiveness of the dialogue-based argument curriculum in promoting Chinese middle school students'ability to write integrated essays from multiple texts.
文摘Introduction Argument skills are fundamental intellectual skills implicated in a variety of higher-order intellectual practices characteristic of the 21st century such as critical thinking(Kuhn,2018),scientific inquiry(Kuhn,2010),knowledge construction(lordanou et al.,2019),and belief revision(Kuhn et al.,2020).The latest educational policies and curriculum standards in multiple countries have recognized the importance of argumentative competence by identifying it as a major objective of elementary and secondary school education.
基金supported by research grants from Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University Research Development Funding(RDF-22-01-053)Open Project of Anhui Provincial Key Laboratory of Multimodal Cognitive Computation,Anhui University(MMC202414)Duke Kunshan University.
文摘Legal argumentation analysis represents a critical yet underexplored domain in computational linguistics,particularly for cross-lingual contexts where high-quality parallel corpora with argumentative annotations remain scarce.This paper introduces the Hong Kong Legal Judgments Argumentative Corpus(HKLJ-Arg),a novel bilingual Chinese-English parallel corpus comprising 557 professionally translated paragraph pairs extracted from 15 legal judgments spanning 2012-2025.Our corpus uniquely leverages Hong Kong’s bilingual legal framework to provide high-fidelity parallel translations with comprehensive argumentative structure annotations,including claims,premises,examples,and their logical relationships.The annotation methodology employs a prompt-engineered approach using large language models,validated through expert evaluation achieving Cohen’sκof 0.79 for component identification and 0.72 for relationship classification.We further present the Argumentation Preservation Assessment Framework(APAF),a systematic methodology for evaluating how effectively machine translation systems preserve argumentative structures across linguistic boundaries.Statistical analysis reveals diverse argumentative patterns across constitutional,criminal,and civil law domains,with systematic preservation of logical structures across languages.This resource addresses a critical gap in legal natural language processing by providing the first large-scale bilingual corpus specifically designed for cross-lingual legal argumentation mining,translation quality assessment,and comparative legal reasoning analysis.
基金sponsored by the Social Science Planning Project from Beijing Municipal Commission of Education(SM201310038009)
文摘This paper reports a study on a Chinese English major＇s argumentative English writings focusing on the development of her thinking capacities and factors that facilitate or constrain such development. The data came from three sources： her essays, reflective journals, and my semi-structured interviews with her. Major findings can be summed up as follows： 1） at the initial stage, the participant was weak in rational thinking; 2） as she had more writing practice, she made progress in ideas and organization of ideas but not in expression of ideas; and 3） factors facilitating or constraining her development primarily include language input, cultural identification, teacher feedback and motivation.
文摘In an academic environment increasingly shaped by metrics and the imperatives of“publish or perish”,it is rare to encounter a leading scientist willing to interweave personal narrative with conceptual reflection.The Soul of Geography by Fu(2025)achieves precisely this.The book resists simple categorisation:it is neither a conventional monograph nor a memoir,but rather a hybrid text that integrates autobiography,disciplinary reflection,and scientific arguments.In doing so,Fu articulates not only the trajectory of his own career but also a vision of geography as a discipline of theoretical depth and practical relevance.
文摘In 2021,we published our first special issue on the xu-argument in Chinese Journal of Applied Linguistics.Five years have passed since then.Over this period,second language acquisition(SLA)has undergone substantial changes.For example,the emergence of Large Language Models(LLMs)such as ChatGPT and DeepSeek has begun to reshape language teaching and learning.During the same period,the xu-argument has advanced considerably,both theoretically and methodologically.The present special issue brings together an interview and seven empirical studies,which collectively exemplify these developments.
