Analysis Of Argument Structure In The Paragraph Of CET6Writing Based On The Toulmin Model

Based on analyzing argumentative passages from the English composition corpusof CET6, this descriptive study examines differences among Chinese college students’competence of employing various argumentative elements to compose argumentativewritings, under the framework of the modified Toulmin (1958,2003) model ofargument structure. In terms of (a) the extent to what kind of elements (i.e., claim, data,warrant, backing, reservation, and rebuttal) are used in an argument,(b) the variety ofargument structures (as measured by basic argument structure, extended argumentstructure, and elaboration of sub-argument structure), and (c) the topical and semanticanalysis devices to facilitate the identification of the Toulmin elements, this studydelineate the layout of the Toulmin element patterns existed in the students’ Englishargumentative paragraphs. In addition, it also investigates how the use of these threedevices are predictively related to the holistic scores assigned to students’argumentative passages.Before describing the overall use of Toulmin element patterns in argument, thepaper identifies the six Toulmin elements in students’ paragraphs in detail, categorizesthree kinds of argument structure in different levels of argument, classifies three kindsof topical and semantic analysis devices (i.e., non-efficient claim paragraphs, onlytopic-related propositions, and irrelevant propositions), and conduct quantitativeanalysis of these tools by introducing the devices of S-density and W-proportion.After describing the differences on students’ use of various Toulmin elementpatterns in the three scoring levels (i.e.,8’s level,11’s level, and14’s level), the studydraws conclusions as follows:(a) students at scores higher than8’(including8’) areable to present basic argument structure constituted of basic Toulmin elements (i.e.,claim and data) in their argumentative paragraphs,(b) however, there are far fewer useof warrants, backings, reservations, and rebuttals in the paragraphs which leads tosimplex argument structures in the majority of student passages,(c) students at ahigher scoring level show better writing competence than students at a lower scoringlevel, which is because the higher scoring students can use Toulmin elements morefrequently than the lower scoring students which the former students can produce morearguments with more extended and elaborated arguments than the later students,(d)there are positive correlations between the use of various Toulmin element patterns andoverall quality of student argumentative passages, while there are negative correlationsbetween the use of paragraphs with non-efficient claim, only topic-related propositions,and irrelevant propositions and the quality of student passages, and (e) the use of Toulmin element patterns, supplementary non-efficient claim paragraphs, onlytopic-related propositions, and irrelevant propositions can predict the overall quality ofChinese college student English argumentative papers. Finally, the results indicate thatit is practicable to qualitatively analyze student argumentative writing competence bydescribing the quantitative data. Potentially pedagogical implications of the results arediscussed as they provide a standard for evaluating the quality of students’argumentative writing in CET6.