An analysis of freshman year university students' argumentative essays

Abstract

The present study investigates organizational patterns and metadiscoursal markers in the essays written by freshman year university students. Two groups of students and two sets of data were used in the study. The participants were monolingual Turkish students, bilingual Turkish students who wrote in English and Turkish, respectively, and monolingual American students. Data collection took place in two different settings: Turkish students studying at an English medium private university in Turkey and American students studying at a university in the US. Each participant was asked to write an argumentative essay on a given topic. First, the essays were marked by two different raters. Second, they were analyzed on the basis of seven organizational patterns and eight metadiscoursal properties. Finally, ten bilingual Turkish students were chosen randomly and interviewed to get their reactions to their essays. It was found that monolingual American essays scored significantly higher than bilingual Turkish and English essays and monolingual Turkish essays. The TOEFL marking scheme was used to grade the essays. There was a significant difference between monolingual Turkish essays and bilingual Turkish and English essays in terms of title, paragraphing, introduction, thesis statement, and conclusion. Monolingual American students use logical connectives, frame markers, code glosses, first person singular markers more than the other students. On the other hand, more significant similarities than differences were found between English essays and Turkish essays written by bilingual Turks. The interview data also confirms that bilingual Turkish students take similar steps in both languages.