Abstract
Debate pedagogy may hold great potential for improving second language (L2) writing skills. This study investigates this potential by examining the effects of a debate intervention on the quality of argumentative essays of Dutch secondary school students. The intervention consisted of a number of speaking and writing activities, including case-writing and note-taking. The study, which employed a pretest–posttest–delayed-posttest design with a control group, involved 135 students from eight classes at three secondary schools in the Netherlands. To measure the effects of the intervention, we analysed argumentative essays composed by the students on three occasions (pretest, posttest, and delayed posttest). The students’ essays were analysed using a range of measures for fluency, syntactic and lexical complexity, accuracy, and cohesion, as well as for communicative adequacy. Multilevel analyses revealed that the intervention group made a significant improvement in a substantial number of measures in comparison to the control group. We discuss the findings in relation to key pedagogical features of the debate environment. We conclude with implications for L2 argumentative essay pedagogy.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Journal | Language Teaching Research |
| Early online date | 16 Mar 2023 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | E-pub ahead of print - 16 Mar 2023 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© The Author(s) 2023.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/ or publication of this article: This work has been financed by the Dutch Research Council (NWO; grant number 023.009.059).
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek | 023.009.059 |
Keywords
- L2 writing
- L2 writing pedagogy
- argumentative essays
- debate
- writing development