Innovative Methods and Practices of Academic Writing and Writing Instruction
TOULMIN’S ARGUMENT MODEL AT WORK TEACHING ARGUMENTATION: THE TOULMIN MODEL AT WORK
Gamze Oncul
Middle East Technical University Northern Cyprus Campus, School of Foreign Languages, Kalkanli, Guzelyurt, Northern Cyprus via Mersin 10, Turkey
Argumentation is one of the key skills in academic writing in any language context, L1 or L2, and Stephen Toulmin’s model of argumentation has always got something to offer for the theory of argumentation and teaching argumentative writing since it was published in his book, The Uses of Argument , in 1958 (Bizup, 2009). Although there are quite a good number of studies talking about Whats, Whys, and Hows of the model, the discussion of its possible interpretations and practical uses for teachers of academic writing is either scarce or got lost behind the formal discussions of the topic. In an effort to help close this gap, this workshop will present Toulmin’s argument model at work in a sample setting a freshman level English for Academic Purposes course. Exploring its possible uses as a teaching, learning, and even as an assessment tool, we will examine how it works in teaching research, argumentation, planning and writing an argumentative paper and discuss possible ways to use it as a ground for peer and self evaluation, and formal assessment of the written work.
References
BIZUP, J. (2009). The uses of Toulmin in composition studies. College Composition and Communication . [Online] 61 (1), W1W23. Available from: http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Resources/Journals/CCC/0611sep09/CCC0611Uses.pdf . [Accessed:19th January 2015].