Abstract:

The present article discusses students' argumentative skills as reflected in state examination compositions. The study focuses on the question whether students can logically argue in state exam compositions. For the given purpose 1700 state examination compositions from the years 1997, 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2008 were analysed employing as methods T.A. van Dijk's macrostructures and M.Hoey's superstructures, the latter was related to the structure of the argumentative text type. The article discusses the logic of the argumentative text type: the correlation between the third paragraph and the logic of the paragraphs is analyzed, the comparison of the two most frequently used clusters deduced from the cluster analysis are presented with the respective examples of argumentation structures. The main problem of argumentation lies in the perception of the types of argumentation structures: as soon as multiple, coordinative or subordinative argumentation was employed in compositions, the logic of the argumentative structure suffered. During the learning process the specific characteristics of argumentation need to be explained in greater detail. Thus far the Estonian teaching materials have discussed single argumentation, however, mostly neglected the topic of text coherence.

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