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 persity, 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 certainorganizational 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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