An investigation of organisation of argumentative writing in Hong Kong : students’ and teachers’ perspectives

Abstract

Exposition, or argumentative writing, is challenging yet important to English learners in ESL contexts like Hong Kong. This genre is assessed in the Writing Paper in English Language as a subject in the HKDSE Examination. Organisation of writing has been selected as the focus of this study since it has not received much attention in classrooms (Lee, 2008) and it is an abstract concept to be assessed, partly because of vague descriptors in the marking rubric of Writing Paper (See HKEAA, 2015). In this study, 22 pieces of students’ writing were deconstructed based on two linguistic constructs (cohesion and coherence) from the SFL approach to examine how students with different English proficiency organised their ideas through Theme choices, thematic progression and cohesive devices. Interviews were also conducted with six students and three teachers to investigate their beliefs in organisation of argumentative writing. From the analysis of students’ writing, while stronger students displayed greater competence in correctly using an array of conjunctions and conjunctive Adjuncts than their weaker peers, both groups of students seemed to lack the awareness of how they could exploit different cohesive devices, various Themes, especially marked Themes, interpersonal Themes and textual Themes, in clauses and patterns of thematic progression to argue and to produce more cohesive and coherent texts. As revealed in the interview data, the teachers tended to judge the organisation of writing only by conjunctions and conjunctive Adjuncts. In view of the findings, this study concluded with the suggestion that that both the awareness of students and teachers about cohesive devices and Themes in SFL has to be fostered.