思维论证导图在大学英语议论文写作教学中应用的实验研究

本文是一篇英语论文论文，本研究以图式理论和知识可视化理论为指导，以文秋芳评价作文内容参数标准为文本分析框架，尝试在大学英语议论文写作教学中引入思维论证导图并进行教学实验研究来验证实验对提高学生英语议论文写作水平及批判性思维技能的有效性，运用写作测试和批判性思维技能测试两种工具检验实验效果。

Chapter One   Introduction

1.1   Research Background
Students’ English writing ability is an important aspect to measure their English competence,  of  which  importance  is embodied directly  in  the  College  English  Test (CET).  Writing  is  the  first  part  of  the  test accounting  for  15%  of  the  total  points, students are required to write a composition more than 120 (CET-4) or 160 (CET-6) words within 30 minutes.  
Through a general survey of the writing tasks in CET, argumentation is the most frequent  genre  and  it  plays  an important role  in  English  writing  teaching.  Different from  narration  and  exposition, argumentative  writing  requires  the  writer  to analyze the argument in an abstract way under the rational concepts (Wei, 1997). Therefore, students’ argumentative writing proficiency can be used to assess their logical ability, abstract thinking ability and Critical Thinking ability.
Although  the  importance  of  English  argumentative  writing  has  been  taken seriously  in  China,  it  is  still  a  huge challenge  for  Chinese  teachers  and  learners.  In terms  of  the  domestic  research,  in addition  to  the  linguistic problems,  there  are deficiencies  in  structure,  cohesion  and  coherence  for  most  Chinese  students  (Cai, 1995; Cheng & Wang, 2004). Poor logic or reasoning process often led to a failure in an  argumentative  writing,  many  Chinese  students don’t  know  how  to  organize  an essay on a certain topic or how to express their ideas with appropriate words, they are often lack of linguistic diversity, besides, the mechanical application of composition is easily influenced by Chinese language transfer, which reflects deficiencies in writing teaching.
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1.2   Research Objectives
Writing is an effective way to facilitate students’ comprehensive English ability. However, the traditional Chinese teaching approach of writing pays much attention to the standardization of language, the accuracy of grammar or the proficiency of writing skills rather than the writing content and logic. Therefore, the basic research objective is to help students out of not knowing how to plan their English writing, to improve their logic and speculation in English argumentative writing and enrich their writing content and make their compositions clearly and logically.
Besides,  this  research  aims  to  discover  whether  the  application  of  Argument Diagramming  can  help  students  to improve  their  argumentative  writing  proficiency and Critical Thinking Skills. Specifically, a writing teaching experiment is conducted to test the effect of Argument Diagramming on the students’ writing achievements in proficiency tests, the students’ writing content and their Critical Thinking Skills.
As a skill of showing language learners’ language competence, writing ability is getting  more  and  more  important. Therefore,  it  is  necessary  to  improve  students’ English  writing  ability.  Argumentative writing plays  an  important  role in  many important English examinations such as TEM4/8, CET/6 as well as some international tests, such as International English Level Test System (IELTS), the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TESOL), and Graduate Record Examinations (GRE).
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Chapter Two   Literature Review

2.1   Argument Diagramming (AD) and Mind Mapping
Both  Argument  Diagramming  and  Mind  Mapping  are  a  kind  of  graphical  tool  of thinking  visualization  which  can  help with  organizing  ideas,  realizing  the visualization and schematization of knowledge. However, there are salient differences between them which will be illustrated in this section.
2.1.1   Argument Diagramming
Argument  Diagramming,  which  is  also  called  Argument  Mapping  (AM),  has existed  since  the  19th  century.  Its increasingly  popularity  in  recent  times  can  be attributed  to  the  studies  in  pedagogy, especially  among  foreign scholars.  There  are different definitions of Argument Diagramming.
To  simplify  the  structure  of  an  argument  and  easy  understanding  of  core statements  and  relations,  Argument Mapping  as  a  method  of  visually  diagramming arguments in an organized structure is used (Dwyer et al., 2013). According to Sbarski et al. (2008), Toulmin’s (2003/1958) box and arrow graphic model of how to construct an argument has been computerized into Argument Mapping. Axelrod puts emphasis on showing decision and making processes with argument maps. Van Gelder (2011) defines  argument  maps  as  diagramming  an  argument  structure,  explaining  that argument maps make an argument and its constituents visible. Davies (2009) suggests that  Argument  Mapping  provides all the  necessary  informational  content  in  a  more visible way.
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2.2   Approaches for Teaching Writing
Based on the importance of English writing, teachers have devoted considerable effort to writing teaching with various pedagogical approaches, among which product approach,  process  approach,  genre  approach and  process  genre approach  are  widely used.
2.2.1   Product Approach
Product  approach  became  a  well-established  and  effective  teaching  method  for native English speakers in the 1960s, then it had been a leading role in English writing teaching  for  a  long  time.  The traditional  product  approach  is  derived from  the behavioristic theory, psychologists hold that writing teaching is achieved in terms of the  development  of  sets  of habits  in  the  process  of  stimulus  and response  (Nunan, 2001). Silva (1990) thinks that writing is the practice for forming habit. According to Eschholz  (1980),  product  approach  only  makes  for  blind  imitation  of  certain organizational plan or style.
Pincas  (1982)  points  that  there  are  four  stages  of  product  approach: familiarization,  controlled  writing,  guided writing and  free  writing.  Familiarization refers  that  making  learners  be  familiar  with  a sample  composition,  such  as  the structure, figure of speech and stylistic features. As for controlled writing, under the teacher’s guidance, students to begin write specific sentence patterns. At the stage of guided writing,  students  write  their  compositions  on  a  given  topic. After  practicing writing, students write anything they want freely at the stage of free writing.
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Chapter Three   Theoretical Foundations and Analytical Framework ................ 20
3.1   Schema Theory ................... 20
3.1.1   Concept of Schema ....................... 20
3.1.2   Classification of Schema .............. 21
Chapter Four   Methodology .................. 25
4.1   Research Questions ...................... 25
4.2   Participants ...................... 25
Chapter Five   Results and Discussion ........................ 37
5.1   Effects of the Writing Teaching Experiment on Students’ Writing Achievements ............. 37
5.1.1   Comparing Students’ Writing Achievements Before and After the Experiment .............. 38
5.1.2   Comparing the Distribution of Writing Achievements Among Different Grades .................. 40
Chapter Five   Results and Discussion

5.1   Effects  of  the  Writing  Teaching  Experiment  on  Students’ Writing Achievements
5.1.1  Comparing  Students’  Writing  Achievements  Before  and  After  the xperiment
As we have mentioned before, the mean scores of the two groups in the pre-test is  very  close  to  each  other, demonstrating  that  the  two  groups  are  at  the  similar writing level before the experiment. At first, there is a comparison between the average scores of EG and CG in the post-test,  which  aims  to  testify  whether there  is  significant  difference  of  the  means between  the  two  groups  after  the  writing teaching  experiment.  The statistics  can  be shown in the following table. 

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Chapter Six   Conclusion

6.1   Major Findings
Through  the  writing  teaching  experiment,  conclusions  can  be  drawn  that  the application  of  Argument  Diagramming  is  beneficial  for  students’  argumentative writing,  which  supports  previous researches in  this  area  showing  that diagramming can  be  helpful  to  students  in  many  educational  domains  (Griffin  et  al.,  1995; Nussbaum et al., 2007; Harrell, 2013). Different from the previous work, we are the first to show that Argument Diagramming benefits Chinese college English learners’ argumentative writings, besides, our research also tests the effectiveness of Argument Diagramming on improving students’ Critical Thinking Skills. Some major findings in consistency with the three research questions are obtained from the experiment, and they are listed as follows:
First,  the  writing  teaching  experiment  of  applying  Argument  Diagramming  to students’  writing  class  has  a  positive effect  on  students’  writing  achievements.  Not only the writing scores but also the writing levels have improved a lot. In the post-test, the mean score of students’ writing is 1.35 points (full score 15) higher than that in the pre-test  with  the significant  probability  0.000,  far  less  than  the standard  value  0.05, which shows that there is significant difference of mean scores between pre-test and post-test.  58.82%  students  of  the  experimental  group  reach  the  2nd grade  in comparison with that 35.29% in the control group, indicating that the application of Argument Diagramming plays a significant role in improving students’ argumentative writing achievements. Besides, by grouping students to different academic levels by comparing their writing achievements, there is significant difference of the post-test scores  between  the two  groups  among  students  in  Low  Academic  Level,  with  the statistic t (11)=1.50, p=0.01<<0.05. At the same time, low-achieving students’ writing achievements improved most compared to intermediate-achieving and high achieving students.
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