ABSTRACT

A novel instrument, the Features of Excellent Arguments task (FEXA), was developed to elicit adolescents’ judgments about argumentative essays displaying to varying degrees features characteristic of strong persuasive writing: academic language, rich evidence, multiple perspectives, and rhetorical appeal. We collected students’ categorical choices about the purposes to which the essays were suited (e.g., convincing a friend, impressing a language-arts teacher), discussions of those choices, and a revision of their selected “least persuasive” essay. In this first study using the FEXA, we found that the essays judged most persuasive largely overlapped with those judged most likely to earn a good grade (i.e., those with rich evidence and academic language). Students explained their preferences by mentioning formal language, use of evidence, and essay structure, while their revisions of their “least persuasive” selections focused on linguistic features and on adding or elaborating reasons. Implications for argumentative writing instruction and assessment are discussed.

摘要

开发了一种新颖的工具，即“出色的论点任务”（FEXA），以引起青少年对论据性论文的评判，这些论据在不同程度上表现出有力的说服性写作的特征：学术语言，丰富的证据，多种观点和修辞吸引力。我们收集了学生对论文适合的目的的分类选择（例如，说服朋友，给语言艺术老师留下深刻的印象），对这些选择的讨论以及对所选“最少说服力”论文的修订。在使用FEXA进行的第一项研究中，我们发现被认为最具说服力的论文与那些被认为最有可能获得良好成绩的论文（即具有丰富证据和学术语言的论文）在很大程度上重叠。学生通过提及正式语言，证据使用，和论文结构，而对“最少说服力”选择的修订则着眼于语言特征以及增加或阐述的原因。讨论了对论证写作指导和评估的含义。