April 2010 Volume 6 Issue 1
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Title
A Socio-cognitive Modeling Approach to Teaching
English Argumentation

Fei-Wen Cheng　　　　
National Chiayi University, Taiwan

Biodata
Fei-Wen Cheng is an Associate Professor in the Department of Foreign Languages at National Chiayi University in Taiwan, where she teaches English composition in undergraduate and graduate courses. Her research interests lie in the areas of academic writing, genre theory, and critical pedagogies. chengfw@gmail.com

Abstract
Argumentative writing is an important literary activity underlying various writing tasks across all disciplines. To write effective English argumentation requires mastering analytical and evaluative skills. These English rhetorical expectations run counter to the educational practices emphasizing group harmony and conformity. However, few studies have addressed the pedagogical needs of developing explicit instructional approaches to foster argumentation skills for L2 writers. Accordingly, how to teach L2 students a thinking process for achieving well-formed argumentation motivates the present study. This study introduces a socio-cognitive modeling approach, which has been used successfully with English freshmen in an EFL composition course. Results indicate that student essays exhibited significant pre- to post-test gains in specific argumentative features. Participant responses to the evaluation questionnaire on the usefulness of this approach also reflected the same findings as in the textual analysis. These findings illustrate that this socio-cognitive approach can facilitate the composing of effective English arguments by EFL learners.