Examining Intertextual Connections in Written Arguments: A Study of Student Writing as Social Participation and Response

Abstract

Writing studies scholarship has long understood the need for context-based studies of student writing. Few studies, however, have closely examined how students use intertextual relationships in the context of learning to compose argumentative essays. Drawing on a 17-day argumentative writing unit in a ninth-grade humanities classroom, this article uses the concept of "intertextual trace" to explore how students make intertextual connections in their writing and negotiate the social dynamics of classroom learning. Intertextual analysis of students' final essays revealed overlapping tracings and resonances across multiple resources, showing how and the ways in which students create arguments and respond to exigencies within a classroom setting. Analysis of thematic, structural, and lexical tracings also showed students making intertextual connections through repeating, reordering, responding to, and extending the texts offered by their teacher and peers. In so doing, students served as curators-shaping ideas, curricular offerings, and language into final argumentative essays-who were able to develop agency in and through their writing.

Learning Effect in a Multilingual Web-Based Argumentative Writing Instruction Model, Called ECM, on Metacognition, Rhetorical Moves, and Self-Efficacy for Scientific Purposes

“…It would also be interesting in future research to investigate whether the skills acquired through the ECM in argumentative structuring, writing metacognition, and argumentative self-efficacy differ depending on the skills achieved in secondary education. For example, students who have developed textual interconnection skills in their argumentative writing [90] may be better able to learn both the structure of scientific argumentation shown by the ECM and to achieve new awareness of their knowledge of writing and new self-perceptions about their argumentative writing competence. In any case, in this study the academic background of the students was not considered in relation to their previous argumentative skills, although a significant amount of learning was found from their starting position (pretest position), which is attributable to the ECM since the control group showed no progress in this regard.…”

To be like a “scholar”: a study on the construction of authorial identity of Chinese EFL learners in academic writing: an intertextuality perspective

“…The application of intertextuality by authors is a basic ability they must possess ( Ma and Qin, 2015 ). Intertextuality shows the relationship between two or more texts, and the development of intertextuality ability is closely related to the development of writing ability, running through the entire writing process ( Wynhoff Olsen et al, 2018 ). In academic writing, intertextuality is more prominent because it borrows and integrates various forms of texts to a greater extent, bringing together various perspectives and voices, and also showing various intertextuality relationships between text and literature resources, such as verification, correlation, comparison, and application ( Thompson and Tribble, 2001 ; Polio and Shi, 2012 ).…”

“…However, scholars have paid less attention to the role of intertextuality in constructing the authorial identity, and Chinese EFL learners have long faced the problem of identity loss in academic writing ( Zhao and Llosa, 2008 ). Intertextuality is an inherent mechanism in text generation and comprehension, expressing the relationship between specific texts, and the understanding of a particular text depends on the understanding of the surrounding texts ( Wynhoff Olsen et al, 2018 ). Specifically, language users reconstruct meaning through absorption, internalization, transformation, and response between texts in the process of text generation.…”

Conceptualizing Dialogic Literary Argumentation: Inviting Students to Take a Turn in Important Conversations

“…The arrow moves across the spheres of texts, cognitive processes, and the event itself because instructional moves within (and across) the event mediate the sources. In other words, students recontextualize parts of these sources into their writing (Wynhoff Olsen et al, 2018), moving words, ideas, and structures from these multimodal texts into the individual student's cognition, and into the writing itself. This recontextualization is supported by dialogic instructional practices, such as choosing text sets, classroom dialogue, informal writing, ongoing feedback, and writing scaffolds.…”