Argumentation in students’ online forum discussion

Chandrasegaran, A., & Kong, K. M. C. (2006). Stance-taking and stance-support in students’ online
forum discussion. Linguistics, 17(3), 374-390.

Background

The authors noted that it was widely believed by secondary school teachers in Singapore that students lacked the argumentation and thinking skills that are required for writing argumentative essays.

Aims

This study examined the extent to which a group of Secondary 3 students in Singapore were able to engage in stance assertion and stance-support behaviours in argument in online forum postings and whether these strategies of stance-support were relevant to secondary school essay writing. It also examined their use of lexico-grammatical resources for argumentation.

Sample

The data of the study consisted of 192 online postings on eight different topics from 15-year-old students in a secondary school in Singapore.

Method

The following analyses were performed: (a) presence of stance in postings, where the writer’s position on the named topic could be identified (b) presence of stance-support for postings expressing a stance, (c) strategy used for stance-support, and (d) lexico-grammatical features used to communicate and support stance. After these analyses, seven students were identified to be interviewed to ascertain their communicative intention and their ability at stance-taking and stance-support.

Findings

Only 159 postings were suitable for analysis of which 137 contained a stance and 75 out of the latter displayed stance-support. The most frequently used stance-support strategies were assertion of personal opinion and recourse to fact accepted as true by this community of school students. More sophisticated strategies like hypothesising outcomes and anticipating opposing views were also found though less frequently.

Implications

Teachers can use students’ knowledge of social practices in everyday argument, demonstrated in online discussion during writing lessons as a springboard to written discourse practices found in argumentative essays. Teachers can also teach students the necessary linguistic structures that they need for stance-taking and stance-support moves in argumentation.

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