Advancing University EFL Students’ Argumentative Essay Writing Performance through Knowledge-Building-based Holistic Instruction

Abstract

Previous research has revealed that university students have multiple learning difficulties in argumentative essay writing (AEW). To address this issue, Knowledge building (KB) pedagogy that aims to create holistic learning environments highlighting idea-refinement, learner agency, and collaborative discourse could be promising. Therefore, this study designed and implemented two KB-based holistic AEW instructions integrating KB pedagogy and explicit instruction on argumentative essay structure and writing conventions. A quasi-experimental design explored the effects of the two holistic KB-based AEW instructions on university EFL students’ AEW learning. Two classes of university EFL students were assigned to two instruction groups: The Constant agency enhancement (AE) Instruction group (n = 34) and the Progressive opportunistic collaboration (OC) Instruction group (n = 32). The treatments were two different KB-based holistic AEW instructions for 16 weeks. The participant’s perception of learning environments was assessed before and after the instructions to examine if the learning environments created by the two instructions were aligned with KB pedagogy. To investigate the effects of the two instructions on students’ AEW performance, the students’ argumentative essays were evaluated before, in the middle, and after the instruction. It was found that the two KB-based holistic AEW instructions did align with KB pedagogy but provided university EFL students with distinct and unique learning contexts and opportunities. More importantly, this study also revealed that, compared with the Constant AE instruction, the Progressive OC instruction significantly benefited students more in their argumentative essay writing performance in both the structure and the quality of essays (p < .05).