Writing Listening Arguments to Explore Truth: Teachers' Explications and Students' Writing Moves

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session Five
  In Roundtable Session: Critical Adolescent Writing and Literacies (Table 6)

Abstract

Although we need a civic public that can listen to differing perspectives, read and listen critically across sources, and make verbal and written arguments for potential ways forward--arguments that prompt others to listen, most argumentative writing in secondary English classrooms consists of one-sided claim-based arguments. In contrast, our study explores how four high school teachers and their students conceptualize and write arguments that listen to multiple perspectives. We ask: 1. How do teachers explain the writing moves that comprise listening arguments? And 2. How, if at all, does students’ argumentative writing display these listening argument moves? Analysis revealed four key writing moves teachers desired students to make: inserting the self, considering the other, opening, and positioning.

Authors

• Jennifer L. VanDerHeide, Michigan State University
  Presenting Author

• Allison S. Wynhoff Olsen, Montana State University
  Presenting Author