Argumentative text writing: Developmental trends

Abstract

Although children exhibit oral argumentative capabilities at a very young age, the ability to carry out the same argumentative processes in writing seems to be acquired later. The present study focuses on argumentative negotiation, a process by which speakers “remove themselves” from their discourse, thereby providing “room for discussion” with their addressee(s). This process is characteristic of elaborate argumentative discourse. At what age is it mastered in its various text forms? What factors explain it? Each of 115 subjects from 10 to 16 years old performed four tasks: an argumentative writing task, a textuality task, an argumentative script inference task, and an argumentativity judgment task. Progress was observed between the ages of 10 and 16 on all four tasks, particularly for argumentativity judgments and argumentative writing. Moreover, the performance observed on these two tasks was highly correlated for the older children.