How Questions Prompt Students' Writing Moves in Spoken and Written Literary Arguments

• In Event: Roundtable Session 6
  In Roundtable Session: Adolescent Language Processes

Abstract

This study explores the writing moves that constitute argumentative writing in an Advanced Placement Literature course as well as how the teacher prompts these moves. From a sociocultural perspective and drawing on genre theory, I conducted a move analysis of five students’ literary arguments across one semester to determine what writing moves students enacted. Discourse analysis of literacy events over time revealed that the teacher prompted students to make these same moves in conversations through questions that elicited particular moves, and over time, students anticipated future questions in their responses. This study suggests that rather than learning argument as a form, students could learn to argue through writing moves, moves that teachers (and other students) can prompt through questions.

Author

• Jennifer Lynn VanDerHeide, Michigan State University