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There is an assumption in education that allowing students to choose their writing topics and positions is beneficial; however, there is little research to support this belief, particularly from the students' perspectives. In the present study, we conducted 20 semistructured interviews with students at a large university in the Southwest of the United States after they completed two in-class argumentative writing assignments in a course on exceptional children, one where they chose their writing position and one where they were assigned their writing position. As a group, these 20 students (13 female, 7 male) were above average writers in their first to third year of study, and the majority of them were education majors (70%), followed by arts and sciences (25%), and design and the arts (5%). The interview protocol focused upon their shifting perspectives on the underlying motivational construct of choice related to this and other writing assignments. Taking a grounded theory approach to thematic analysis, findings indicated that having choice in writing was important because it allowed students to write about topics that they find easier, more interesting, and possess greater knowledge. Choice also allowed students to demonstrate their autonomy, which they believed, influenced their motivation and writing quality/grades. While the university students in this study generally preferred choice, a majority of them identified benefits of not choosing, including opportunities to improve writing tenacity, enhance their writing skills, and achieve new perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effects of self-regulated strategy development revising instruction for college students that targeted the use of argumentation schemes and critical questions were assessed in three conditions. In the first condition, students were taught to revise their essays by asking and answering critical questions about the argument from consequences and argument from example schemes while writing about controversial topics. In the second condition, students were taught to revise their essays by using argumentation schemes to justify their standpoint, but did not learn the critical questions. In the third condition, students received no instruction about either the argumentation schemes or the critical questions. Compared to students in the contrasting conditions, those who were taught to ask and answer critical questions wrote essays that were of higher quality, and included more counterarguments, alternative standpoints, and rebuttals. These findings indicate that strategy instruction that includes critical standards for argumentation increases college students' sensitivity to alternative perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although there have been many contrastive studies of English writing in college context, little attention has been paid to the empirical research on argumentative English writing composed by contemporary adolescent English writers. The present empirical study examined the rhetorical pattern differences in English argumentative essays written by high school juniors in China and the United States from the perspective of intercultural rhetoric. Data was collected from 60 essays written by Chinese EFL students and 50 essays written by American native-English students by using same writing topic. The findings revealed that the rhetorical patterns were flexible, as both Chinese and American students placed their thesis statements in four different places. The deductive pattern was most frequently employed for both groups, followed by the inductive pattern, and the non-deductive and non-inductive pattern. Even though both groups preferred deductive patterns, American students preferred showing the thesis statement as the first sentence, and Chinese students preferred placing the thesis statement anywhere in the first paragraph. The findings indicated that English writing instruction and textbooks were the most significant factor of influencing rhetorical patterns in both contemporary Chinese and American students' English essays. Further intercultural rhetoric research on ESL teaching is suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]