The Reflection-Response in Enhancing Argumentation Ability

Abstract

In this project, we define and experimentally check an educational project aimed at improving argumentation ability. We focused on producing arguments suitable to the addressee's viewpoint [Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca (1958). Traite´de l'argumentation. La nouvelle rhe´torique (The new rhetoric. A treatise on argumentation). Paris: Presses, Universitaires de France]. We adopted an educational approach based on the prediction that the more the teacher systematically encouraged students to self-regulate their attempts to cope with the learning tasks, the more effective the educational project will be. In the main phases of the project, we excluded any speech act that might discourage learners' initiative. The only kind of speech act adopted was that defined by Rogers [(1951). Client-centered therapy. New York: Houghton Mifflin] as the only means of implementing an empathic attitude and, consequently, enhancing the addressee's involvement in any kind of mental activity. We assumed that other kinds of educational approaches (such as modelling and observational learning) would be more effective if they were preceded by instructional contexts characterised by a teacher's communicative behaviour aimed solely at encouraging learners' initiative and/or self-regulation, namely by a completely learner-centred instruction. We summarised the main lines of the project and the experimental results. We analysed some significant aspects of the special kind of teacher-learner interaction implemented in the core phase of the treatment by zooming in on a few examples of that interaction. Case analysis was carried out with the goal of gaining insights into how the communication form might have brought about the experimental results.

Memory for an imagined pathway and strategy effects in sighted and in totally congenitally blind individuals

“…3. An interview was conducted using a mirror technique (Crasnich & Lumbelli, 2005), where the basic question (Which strategy did you use for the task?) was developed by repeating the words given by the participant (e.g.…”

Component analysis of strategy instruction in writing composition: evaluation and instruction = Análisis componencial de la instrucción estratégica en composición escrita: evaluación e instrucción

“…The reader-focused condition was rooted in the communicative paradigm of writing, in which students should be aware of the aim of their communication and their audience, and should be able to gauge their needs. This knowledge can be taught through learners observing readers reading texts aloud (Crasnich & Lumbelli, 2005;Couzijn & Rijlaarsdam, 2005;Lumbelli, Paoletti, & Frausin, 1999) or learners moving from their writer's role into the reader's role (Couzijn, 1999;Couzijn & Rijlaarsdam, 2005. In our reader-focused instruction students observed how readers responded when reading and evaluating imperfect texts, including suggestions about how to correct the problems they saw.…”