Argumentation as a discourse practice (Didactic and Linguistic concepts)

Argumentative competence, written or oral argumantation skills are essential in the process of academic non-academic communication. Raising this competence is of particular importance in the education process, which ultimately focuses on promoting the development of general, intercultural communication and stratehic learning skills.The competence to create an argumentative text is complex and includes different dimensions, which means the selection, construction, grouping of arguments, the proper conduct of argumentative reasoning. The systematization of the various concepts and respectives contained in it allows the arguments to be divided into two groups: speaker-oriented and interaction-oriented.Argumentative discussions and organized discussions processes generate discourse that is equated with the notion of community. Argumentation from the perspective of discourse analysis is a discource practice, which is realized in a specific context (contextualized), arises interactively, develops, models and is perceived by the participants in the interaction as argumentation. Strategic reasoning skills, as a discourse practice, instill in everyone in a particular society, in a particular discourse area, mandatory and important knowledge for all and form a solid system of thinking that ultimately leads to reasoned discussions processes.

A Case Study on the Development of Chinese EFL Debaters’ Argumentative Competence

This study aims to explore and analyze the argumentative competence of Chinese debaters by observing the fallacies they made in one semester’s English debate course. The 8 rounds of debates are selected, of which three teams participated in 2 of the prepared debates and 2 fixed impromptu debates respectively. It is evident that of the five categories of fallacies, relevance-related, sufficiency-related and acceptability-related fallacies were the most common fallacies compared with structural-related fallacies and rebuttal-related fallacies. In prepared debate, the debaters’ argumentative skills in relevance, sufficiency, acceptability, structure, and rebuttal improved but in impromptu debate, this trend did not exist, revealing the debaters’ argumentative competence was unstable and varied from team to team.

A New Measurement Instrument for Music-Related Argumentative Competence: The MARKO Competency Test and Competency Model

In this paper, we introduce the MARKO competency test and competency model, a new measurement instrument for music-related argumentative competence (MARKO: Musikbezogene ARgumentationsKOmpetenz; German for music-related argumentative competence). This competence, which plays an essential role in school curricula, refers to the ability to justify, and defend judgments about music. The two main goals of this study were 1) to design an assessment test for music-related argumentation that fulfills psychometric criteria and 2) to derive competency levels based on empirical data to describe the cognitive dispositions that are necessary when engaging in argumentation about music. Based on a theoretical framework, we developed a competency test to assess music-related argumentative competence. After two pretests (n = 391), we collected data from 440 students from grade nine to the university level. The final test consisted exclusively of open-ended items, which were rated with coding schemes that had been designed for each item. After ensuring inter-rater reliability, we composed an item pool that met psychometric criteria (e.g., local stochastic independence and item homogeneity) and represented content-related aspects in a meaningful way. Based on this item pool, we estimated a one-dimensional partial credit model. Following a standard-setting approach, four competency levels were derived from the empirical data. While individuals on the lowest competency level expressed their own opinions about the music by referring to salient musical attributes, participants on the highest level discussed different opinions on the music, and considered the social and cultural context of the music. The proficiency scores significantly varied between grades. Our findings empirically support some theoretical assumptions about music-related argumentation and challenge others.

Being (Un)safe Together: Student Group Dynamics, Facework and Argumentation

Small group work offers the opportunity for students to engage in many-sided discussions. Students can learn how to argue standpoints and develop argumentative competence (i.e. learning to argue) but may also, by using argumentative structures, learn about and tease apart relevant facets of the topic at hand (i.e. arguing to learn). Although these processes can be beneficial for both arguing to learn as well as learning to argue, their success is predicated on the characteristics of the group enacting them. Discussions happen in a social, interpersonal context. Especially in small group collaborative learning, the social relationships between students should have a stronger and more direct impact on the form and content of their contributions than in more direct, teacher-led instruction. In this chapter, we will seek to specify the relations between cognitive and social aspects of collaborative argumentation and illustrate them with an example from the DIALLS lesson recordings.

The Importance Of The Discussion Method In The Development Of Argumentative Competence In Students

This article discusses the importance of using debate as a teaching method in mastering key technologies to improve students’ argumentative competence. At the same time, the ability to argue constructively is interpreted as the ability to perform various argumentative actions to substantiate or refute certain points of view. The article presents the characteristics of argumentative skills, as well as the conditions for the formation of logical and psychological components of debate, which is one of the specific manifestations of argumentation.

El análisis de datos textuales como metodología para el abordaje de la argumentación: una investigación con estudiantes de pregrado en universidades chilenas

This article aims to show how textual data analysis can be applied to the study of argumentation. This is an alternative methodology allowing to trace back massive qualitative data standing for cognitive skill displays, the analysis of which would allow to provide feedback, for instance, to the educational system. Textual data analysis was done in two key dimensions of argumentative competence, namely, counter-argumentation and epistemic revision. The analysis examined language outcomes from 86 Chilean undergraduate university students from different Chilean universities (three public and three private) from Metropolitan and Coquimbo regions, enrolled in the social sciences, exact and natural sciences, and engineering programs. In this correlational non-experimental study, the students responded a semi-structured interview, which sought to examine how this ecological community behaves argumentatively. Findings reveal that textual data analysis helps to detect specific vocabulary for each type of response, it provides an in-context analysis of selected verbs, both on the intradiscursive and interdiscursive levels, and allows data to return to reality. This is due to the flexibility of the analysis responding to a complexity inherent in the units of study, integrating different types of quantitative data with textual data.

Abilities, knowledge requirements and national tests in RE – The Swedish case as an example in the outcome-focused school and society of today

The aim of this article is to present the system that governs Swedish RE in terms of curricular requirements, national tests and their outcomes, and discuss this in light of the current critical debate on an outcome-focused school, as well as the debate on the need for ‘powerful knowledge’. The debate on educational achievements and measurements can be seen from different angles. On the one hand, there are reasons to take the criticisms seriously, for instance concerning how such a focus tends to instrumentalise and superficialise knowledge and education. On the other hand, from a societal perspective, one has to ensure that all students, through their education, have opportunities to develop powerful knowledge that helps to explain the world so that school can contribute to social justice. Against such a background, the Swedish system is described as a rather strongly steering system that regulates schools through curricula but also monitors them through national tests. Through a brief presentation of empirical findings from the EthiCo project, it is shown how this system in practice limits the students’ chances of acquiring a multidimensional ethical competence and instead highlights a one-dimensional argumentative competence. Such a teaching runs the risk of reducing rather than widening students’ ethical competence.