Analysing argumentative writing

Abstract

This article presents a framework which has proven helpful in analysing senior secondary academic writing from a linguistic and cognitive perspective, revealing a connection between those two aspects, consistent with a Vygotskian view of the development of thinking through language. It involves a close examination of linguistic and cognitive features of students’ writing for features of intentional design, which are borrowed from Design Theory, namely Contingency, Complexity and Specification. Writers’ means of inserting their views into their writing is also investigated. The framework is given at the end of the article and annotations for its application and several illustrations are given in the body of the article. Its use is intended to assist teachers in identifying, very specifically, which particular aspects of a student’s writing need attention.

• Academic writing
• cognitive features
• Design Theory
• linguistic features
• Vygotsky
• writing analysis