The impact of structured argumentation and enactive role play on students’ argumentative writing skills

Abstract

This paper reports the impact of using a structured argumentation board and enactive role play in Second Life on students’ argumentative writing skills in the context of the A-level subject General Paper. Students were taught the structural aspects of argumentation based on Toulmin’s (1958) argumentation framework. The structured argumentation board, Voices of Reason, supported their argumentation discourse while the Second Life platform supported students’ contextualised role-playing activities on the topic of globalisation.

Students participated in these two separate modes of technology-facilitated learning in a cyclic, interwoven fashion, alternating back and forth between two cycles of argument and enaction. Data in the form of argumentative essays were collected at the beginning and the end of a four week intervention period. We compare the pre and post intervention argumentation essays written by the students based on Toulmin’s argumentation framework, contrast the findings with that of the control group’s argumentative essays, and present the statistical results in this paper.