Analyzing Critical Thinking Elements in the Argument Structure of Non-English-Major Chinese Undergraduate Students' Writing

Developing students' critical thinking skills in writing is essential in different educational contexts. However, the analysis of the argument structure in non-English-major undergraduate students' writing remains largely unexplored. This study aimed to analyze the structure of argumentative English papers written by Chinese university students, based on the adapted Toulmin model of argument structure constituting six elements (claim, data, counterargument claim, counterargument data, rebuttal claim, and rebuttal data). The participants in this study were a class of 47 sophomores enrolled in the course "Modern Education Technology" at Zhejiang University, China. They were required to identify the components of the argument structure in a pre-assigned short text with two opposing views, and to write an argumentative essay. Content analysis was used to assess the students' CT and argument structures. In both tasks, the results found that the majority of the students could identify author's claim with at least a piece of data. They also stated their own claims and provided at least one piece of data to back these up. However, a majority failed to identify the author's counter argument and even though many stated the counter argument claims in their essays, most were unjustified. The majority did not state a conclusion in both tasks. This study may be beneficial in understanding non-English major-undergraduate students' critical thinking skills in English writing and the results suggest that L2 essay writing instructors should use active and explicit methods such as computer-assisted argument mapping tools like RationaleTM to help learners master the argument structure. Some pedagogic guidelines are listed for the implementation of the Rationale
^TM
software in the L2 classroom.