The development of rhetorical preferences in the analytical writing of spanish students from elementary to higher education
- Autores: Liliana Tolchinsky Landsmann, María Dolores Alonso-Cortés Fradejas, Teresa Llamazares Prieto, Mercedes López Aguado
- Localización: Development of writing skills in children in diverse cultural contexts: contributions to teaching and learning / coord. por Alina Galvao Spinillo, Carmen Sotomayor, 2023, ISBN 9783031292859, págs. 169-194
- Idioma: inglés
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Resumen
Analytical writing refers to the diverse text types that students produce in academic settings such as essays, descriptions, and reports. Analytical texts (ATs) are aimed at offering compelling information on a certain topic to persuade the reader. Proficiency in analytical writing contributes to academic success and has also an epistemic effect: writers learn more about the topic in the process of producing the text. Some ATs are mainly argumentative, arguing in favor of a defined standpoint backed by adequate evidence and reasons; others are more expository or descriptive focusing on the analysis of the target topic. However, analytical essays on debatable topics require both argumentative components that serve to assert and defend the writer’s standpoint and expository ones which discuss the topic and describe the supporting evidence. In previous studies, we examined the development of argumentative and expository components in analytical essays. We found a transition from texts containing unsupported opinions to texts where the provision of reasons and backing evidence prevailed. In the study presented in this chapter, we dwell on the influence of school level and instructional activities on the quality of students’ rhetorical choices: the perspective from which their standpoints are asserted and the kind of backing they provide. In discussing the findings, we speculate on the influence of Spanish rhetorical tradition on top of developmental and instructional factors.
