Logical Relations in the Argumentative Essays Written by Second-Year English Major Students in the Université de Zinder

Abstract

This paper seeks to analyze the logical relations in the argumentative essays written by second-year English major students in the Université de Zinder (henceforth, UZ), the Republic of Niger. The students who enrolled for the second year in 2020-2021 were 80 in total, and they all followed a 10-week writing course. At the end of the course, they were asked to write an argumentative essay on two suggested topics. Using the descriptive mixed-method research design, this study randomly selected and examined ten of the students’ essays: 5 on the first topic and 5 on the second one. The logical relations in the texts were described or identified, and the findings thereof were tabulated. The findings revealed that the students used more clause complexes than clause simplexes in their essays, suggesting thus a spoken mode. The findings also indicated that the students deployed a lower number of rankshifted relations compared to the tactic relations found in their texts. This further exuded the speaking character of their texts. On the contrary, the findings showed a relatively small use of clause simplexes, rankshift and hypotaxis the texts, all of which are suggestive of a written mode. Another striking feature noted in some of the essays is the deployment of projection; projection of locutions mainly, but what is generally expected in an argumentative essay is the projection of ideas. The article concludes by highlighting the need to overtly teach EFL students the traits of spoken language and written language. This could be done, for instance, by focusing on the two systems of logical relations, namely: taxis and logico-semantics in the writing class.