Open AccessMetadiscourse and Counterargument Integration in Student Argumentative Papers
Author(s) -
Philip M. McCarthy,
Noor Wafic Kaddoura,
Khawlah Ahmed,
Rachel Hall Buck,
Anuja M. Thomas,
Ayah Al-harthy,
Nicholas D. Duran
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
english language teaching
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1916-4750
pISSN - 1916-4742
DOI - 10.5539/elt.v14n6p96
Subject(s) - argumentative , metadiscourse , software deployment , psychology , consistency (knowledge bases) , sentence , linguistics , mathematics education , computer science , artificial intelligence , philosophy , operating system
Incorporating counterarguments can be challenging for many student-writers, including those for whom English is a second or other language. In this study, we present findings that may lead to improvements in students’ understanding of the benefits of integrating counterarguments. In our study, expert readers were presented with excerpts of student academic writing in order to assess the degree to which counterarguments could be identified through student deployment of metadiscoursal features. The results suggest that student-writers deploy metadiscoursal features with insufficient frequency and consistency. The results further suggest that when metadiscoursal features are used in counterarguments, their deployment is largely restricted to the sentence-initial position. The study also considers the pedagogical and technological issues associated with the findings.