Undergraduate Students' Participation in a Written Controversy: Role of Understanding Intertextual Relations

Abstract

The present study investigated undergraduate students' engagement in the discussion of multiple authors' works, including their responses to refutational relations between the authors' arguments in their essays, and the relationship of that engagement to their understanding of intertextual relations, as well as effects of reading purpose upon those 2 processes. Participants (95 university freshmen) read 4 controversial texts with the purpose either of understanding a controversy among the authors or of forming their own opinion about the issues. After that, they wrote argumentative essays. The main results were as follows: (a) in their essays, over a half of the students made no mention of the refutational relations or else illogically affirmed refuted authors' points, whereas only a few responded in a logical way to all the refutational relations; (b) the students' understanding of the intertextual relations predicted their response to the refutational relations; and (c) the students whose purpose was understanding the controversy were better at understanding the intertextual relations than were the students whose purpose was forming an opinion; this effect extended to their responses to the refutational relations.