Improving Arguentative Writing by Fostering Argumentative Speech

Abstract

The present investigation tested the effectiveness of an educational project aimed at improving the ability to take the addressee’s stance into account and to apply it to the planning of argumentative discourse and text. This aim is derived from the assumption that the ability to make argumentation suitable to the addressee’s stance (Perelman & Olbrecht-Tyteca, 1958) is an important condition for conceiving effective claims, arguments and counter-arguments and for expressing them both in oral discourse and in written compositions. The educational methodology adopted can be characterised as a route from oral to written expression of argumentation (Lumbelli & Camagni, 1993). In 9 experimental sessions 30 high school students (a) first discussed upon topics selected by themselves, observed and evaluated their own transcribed utterances (b) were presented with a problem-solving situation, in which they were given the task to detect the most effective route to make a hypothetical addressee change his/her point of view into an opposite one, (c) were presented with a special kind of modelling in which there was the experimenter who talked aloud while reading a few argumentative texts which had been in advance evaluated as significant instances of argumentation and counterargumentation. The argumentative competence was assessed by a test specially tapping the ability to take the addressee’s point of view into account in the choice of the best argumentation (among four ones) and by the evaluation of written compositions according to categories based on the same criterion. 30 students matched on both these argumentative ability tests worked as control group. Experimental students significantly outperformed the control ones as to their sensitivity to audience’s needs and their ability to adjust the arguments and counter-arguments to the addressee’s stance.