Students’ Use of Information from Their Readings to Write an Argumentative Essay

Authors

  • Abir Ouafi University of Algiers II, Boulevard Djamel Eddine El Afghani, Bouzareah- Algiers Algeria

Keywords:

background readings, reading-to-write, argumentative essays, critical thinking skills, discourse analysis.

Abstract

This paper examines students’ use of information from background texts in their argumentative essays. This cognitively demanding task requires students to select relevant information from background texts in accordance with the new rhetorical purpose and introduce transformations by combining source content to personal background knowledge. Integrating texts content knowledge into one’s writing necessitates not only the acknowledgement of the sources in order to avoid plagiarism, but also making use of critical thinking skills to take a position, defend it,  analyse and evaluate others’ words in one’s own. In order to see whether Algerian university students are able to approach the reading-to-write task in an appropriate way, a case study was conducted with six Master students at the University of Algiers II. The participants were provided with two pre-selected source texts as a basis for writing an argumentative essay. Using discourse analysis, their essays were analysed at the microstructural level which pertains to the degree of information integration in students’ papers. The results suggest that the students misused the background readings, as they borrowed sentences and connected information from source texts without elaboration and integration. Students’ papers seem to be juxtaposition of summaries implying knowledge telling rather than knowledge transforming, which suggests the lack of high order thinking skills. Moreover, some cases of copy/paste sentences were detected.   

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Published

2017-08-25

How to Cite

Ouafi, A. (2017). Students’ Use of Information from Their Readings to Write an Argumentative Essay. American Scientific Research Journal for Engineering, Technology, and Sciences, 35(1), 25–41. Retrieved from https://asrjetsjournal.org/index.php/American_Scientific_Journal/article/view/3249

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Articles