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Teaching argumentative writing to primary school pupils in Singapore : learning through immersion and explicit teaching
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Type
Thesis
Author
Png, Paula Xue Li
Supervisor
Hu, Guangwei
Teo, Peter
Abstract
With an increasing focus on the development of 21st century competencies in children, research on language and literacy education in recent years has witnessed a shift in emphasis towards the teaching and learning of written argumentation at the elementary school level. Despite extensive research conducted on improving children's writing, there remains a pedagogical debate on whether argumentative writing should be taught through planned and deliberate explication or cultivated through immersion in social situations that trigger their unconscious engagement in argumentative discourse behaviours. While many have suggested the promising benefits of a combined approach of explicit instruction and immersion, the apparent lack of theoretical grounding and empirical evidence makes it difficult to validate the effectiveness of such an approach in the teaching and learning of argumentative writing. This study, anchored conceptually upon a framework informed by Halliday's Systemic Functional Linguistics and Vygotsky's theorizing on spontaneous and scientific concepts, was designed to investigate the effectiveness of a combined approach of explicit instruction and immersion in promoting students’ ability to produce written argumentation across situation types, as well as their knowledge of the argumentation genre and its use in specific situations.
A total of 80 Grade 5 pupils from a Singapore primary school participated in the quasi-experimental study. Of the 80 participants involved, 40 pupils received writing instruction informed by the proposed combined approach, the Iterative Cycle of Argumentation (ICA), while the remaining 40 pupils received regular writing instruction. Data collected include informal and formal written arguments produced at baseline, at the end of the intervention period, and two months after intervention. In order to gain insight into the change in type of knowledge held by the participants, semi-structured interviews were conducted on 16 participants from both treatment groups before and after the intervention.
Both quantitative and qualitative analysis conducted on the written arguments revealed that participants who received the ICA treatment made significant and sustained improvements in their ability to construct two-sided arguments that attempt to weaken the opposing viewpoint, as well as their ability to appropriate language resources across both informal and formal situational types. However, the high-proficiency participants were better than their medium-proficiency counterparts at crafting rebuttals which directly address the counter-reason. Likewise, they were also the only ones who achieved success in situating their formal argument closer to the written end of the mode continuum.
Further, qualitative findings from the interview data also suggest the positive impact of the ICA treatment on students’ knowledge of the argumentative genre and the language resources that can be appropriated across situation types. Participants who received the ICA treatment were found to make significant gains in their scientific knowledge of the concepts in focus. This stands in contrast to their initial body of knowledge which reflected more everyday spontaneous understandings. For some of these participants however, their conceptual understanding of particular concepts, more evidently in their use of rebuttals and nominalised expressions, seemed less developed. These findings have important implications for writing pedagogy, as well as suggest avenues for further research.
A total of 80 Grade 5 pupils from a Singapore primary school participated in the quasi-experimental study. Of the 80 participants involved, 40 pupils received writing instruction informed by the proposed combined approach, the Iterative Cycle of Argumentation (ICA), while the remaining 40 pupils received regular writing instruction. Data collected include informal and formal written arguments produced at baseline, at the end of the intervention period, and two months after intervention. In order to gain insight into the change in type of knowledge held by the participants, semi-structured interviews were conducted on 16 participants from both treatment groups before and after the intervention.
Both quantitative and qualitative analysis conducted on the written arguments revealed that participants who received the ICA treatment made significant and sustained improvements in their ability to construct two-sided arguments that attempt to weaken the opposing viewpoint, as well as their ability to appropriate language resources across both informal and formal situational types. However, the high-proficiency participants were better than their medium-proficiency counterparts at crafting rebuttals which directly address the counter-reason. Likewise, they were also the only ones who achieved success in situating their formal argument closer to the written end of the mode continuum.
Further, qualitative findings from the interview data also suggest the positive impact of the ICA treatment on students’ knowledge of the argumentative genre and the language resources that can be appropriated across situation types. Participants who received the ICA treatment were found to make significant gains in their scientific knowledge of the concepts in focus. This stands in contrast to their initial body of knowledge which reflected more everyday spontaneous understandings. For some of these participants however, their conceptual understanding of particular concepts, more evidently in their use of rebuttals and nominalised expressions, seemed less developed. These findings have important implications for writing pedagogy, as well as suggest avenues for further research.
Date Issued
2016
Call Number
PE1404 Png
Date Submitted
2016