Towards a more explicit writing pedagogy: The complexity of teaching argumentative writing

Reading & Writing

 
 
Field Value
 
Title Towards a more explicit writing pedagogy: The complexity of teaching argumentative writing
 
Creator Dornbrack, Jacqui Dixon, Kerryn
 
Subject education writing pedagogy; argumentative writing; CAPS; process and genre approaches
Description Advances in technology, changes in communication practices, and the imperatives of the workplace have led to the repositioning of the role of writing in the global context. This has implications for the teaching of writing in schools. This article focuses on the argumentative essay, which is a high-stakes genre. A sample of work from one Grade 10 student identified as high performing in a township school in Cape Town (South Africa) is analysed. Drawing on the work of Ormerod and Ivanic, who argue that writing practices can be inferred from material artifacts, as well as critical discourse analysis, we show that the argumentative genre is complex, especially for novice first additional language English writers. This complexity is confounded by the conflation of the process and genre approaches in the Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) document. Based on the analysis we discuss the implications of planning, particularly in relation to thinking and reasoning, the need to read in order to write argument and how social and school capital are insufficient without explicit instruction of the conventions of this complex genre. These findings present some insights into particular input needed to improve writing pedagogy for specific genres.
 
Publisher AOSIS Publishing
 
Contributor None
Date 2014-04-17
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion — textual analysis
Format text/html application/octet-stream text/xml application/pdf
Identifier 10.4102/rw.v5i1.40
 
Source Reading & Writing; Vol 5, No 1 (2014); 8 pages 2308-1422 2079-8245
 
Language eng
 
Relation
The following web links (URLs) may trigger a file download or direct you to an alternative webpage to gain access to a publication file format of the published article:

https://rw.org.za/index.php/rw/article/view/40/84 https://rw.org.za/index.php/rw/article/view/40/86 https://rw.org.za/index.php/rw/article/view/40/87 https://rw.org.za/index.php/rw/article/view/40/83
 
Coverage Africa current 16, female, Xhosa
Rights Copyright (c) 2014 Jacqui Dornbrack, Kerryn Dixon https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
ADVERTISEMENT