Analysing ESL Persuasive Essay Writing Using Toulmin’s Model of Argument

Abstract

In Malaysian universities, writing in English is taught in several settings: writing for general purposes, writing for academic purposes and writing for specific purposes. Writing in these settings allows learners to learn to write in different genres, such as research, reports, and persuasive writing genres. One of the standard genres is persuasive because it is used to convince readers of what is researched or reported. To be competent in persuading or arguing, using the appropriate rhetorical and linguistic structure is crucial. The appropriate rhetorical and linguistic elements will help to achieve the writers' objective and intention. This paper will examine rhetorical and linguistic structures used by the ESL writers in producing a persuasive essay. Fifteen persuasive essays written by tertiary learners were analysed in this study. The researchers employed Stephen Toulmin's Model of argument (1969) as the tool of analysis in identifying the rhetorical and linguistic structures realised in the students' essays. The analysis outcome indicates that the 15 ESL writers under investigation comply with Toulmin's model except for the rebuttal stage, which was not visible in the essays. The findings will explain the common and uncommon rhetorical and linguistic elements used based on the model that Toulmin has developed. The implications from the findings are twofold; first, academic writing teachers can focus on the necessary elements to produce competent persuasive ESL writers, and secondly, textbook developers may produce their books based on the findings drawn from this study.

Argumentation Skills: An Analysis on EFL Students’ Essays Based on Toulmin’s Model of Argument

“…Argumentation skills in the context of English language learning are reflected through essay writing with particular genre argumentative essay. A good argumentative essay contains strong argumentation which convinces the readers that the writer's assertion is true [8]. To do this, the writer should give strong reasons why he proposes such claims.…”

“…Toulmin views that proposing an argument is a cognitive process of problem-solving in which the goal is to convince the reader to change their initial position and follow the writer's position. Toulmin model is useful to develop the argument as it gives the basic layout for argumentation which can help the students-writers to develop ideas to be transformed into a complete argument [8].…”

“…The claim can be challenged; therefore, it should be backed up by supporting grounds [26] that are warrant. Similarly, making a claim could be the equivalent of writing a thesis as the activity of giving an argument [13] The warrant is strengthened by backing to increase the validity of the warrant and thus affect the validity of the claim [8]. The data or evidence given to support the claim can be in the form of facts, observations, statistical data, previous conclusions, and other specific information or texts [27,30].…”

“…Students often consider writing as the most challenging skill as it requires them to possess linguistic knowledge, master the vocabulary and syntactic patterns and good ability in using cohesive devices [10,22] Studies have found that writing good essays is challenging for EFL students as they had problems in organizing ideas and some students misused cohesive devices [1,15,20]. These findings imply that writing essays are uneasy, let alone writing argumentative essays since this genre requires the writer's capacity in using higher-order thinking skills [8,10]. Some research has revealed that writing argumentative essays is challenging [18,24,29].…”

“…Some research has revealed that writing argumentative essays is challenging [18,24,29]. The arguments made by students were not strong even the rebuttal was rarely used [8], while some others show weak or no refutation [10] Meanwhile, a study by Wingate [29] to undergraduate students in London revealed that their ability in making argumentation was insufficient; their writings were lack of evidence and analysis. Similarly, an investigation by Stapleton and Wu [24] to high school students in Hong Kong on the argumentation quality in writing explanation essays revealed that the quality of reasoning was poor as they gave weak and even irrelevant reasons.…”