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Debate as L2 Pedagogy: The Effects of
Debating on Writing Development in
Secondary Education
ABID EL MAJIDI,1RICK DE GRAAFF,2AND DANIEL JANSSEN3
1Utrecht University, Department of Languages, Literature and Communication – Linguistics, Trans 10, 3512 JK,
Utrecht, the Netherlands. Email: a.elmajidi@uu.nl
2Utrecht University, Department of Languages, Literature and Communication – Linguistics, Trans 10, 3512 JK,
Utrecht, the Netherlands. Email: r.degraaff@uu.nl
3Utrecht University, Department of Languages, Literature and Communication – Linguistics, Trans 10, 3512 JK,
Utrecht, the Netherlands. Email: D.M.L.Janssen@uu.nl
Research has painted a pessimistic picture of students’ second language (L2) writing skills in secondary
education. One innovative tool that may help students foster their L2 prociency, including writing abil-
ity, is in-class debate. Debate is commonly associated with oral communication and argumentation skills.
However, debate may also offer advantages as an effective vehicle for L2 writing instruction. This study
evaluates the effect of a debate intervention on the writing competence of Dutch secondary-school stu-
dents. The intervention consisted of a number of speaking and writing activities, including case writing
and note taking. The study, which employed a pretest–posttest design with a control group, involved 8
classes at 3 secondary schools in the Netherlands (N=146). To measure the effect of the intervention,
we analyzed 2 opinion writing tasks produced by the students: just prior to the rst debate (pretest) and
approximately 10 weeks later (posttest). We used a variety of measures, tapping into different aspects of
writing performance, including uency, syntactic and lexical complexity, accuracy, and cohesion. Multi-
level analysis of the data revealed that the students in the intervention group signicantly improved on
a number of measures in comparison to the control group.
Keywords: in-class debate; writing development; second language acquisition; secondary education; L2
writing instruction
WRITING EFFECTIVELY IS REGARDED AS A
vital 21st-century skill for personal, academic, and
professional success (Allen, 2018). With the rapid
growth of globalization and the importance of in-
ternational correspondence, the need to be pro-
cient in the English language in general, and
in English writing in particular, has increased
The Modern Language Journal, 104, 4, (2020)
DOI: 10.1111/modl.12673
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or adaptations are made.
(Naghdipour, 2016). Almost all forms of personal,
academic, and business communication are now
carried out in English and, evidently, the more
prociently we communicate, the more success-
ful we can be in life and at work. In the Nether-
lands, this awareness has led to interesting de-
velopments in the educational system: a growing
number of multilingual secondary schools (En-
glish and Dutch) and a growing number of univer-
sities that offer bachelor’s and master’s programs
in English only.
Naghdipour (2016) and Allen (2018) pointed
out that second language (L2) writing instruc-
tion has not effectively responded to the increas-
ing signicance of writing in English. A number
of studies have painted a pessimistic picture of
the (L2) writing skills of secondary-school stu-
dents in the Netherlands (Beeker et al., 2015) and
elsewhere (Leki, Cumming, & Silva, 2010), and
Abid el Majidi, Rick De Graaff, and Daniel Janssen 805
the effects thereof on society and higher educa-
tion. For example, Beeker et al. (2015) reported
that only 51% of Dutch secondary advanced stu-
dents manage to achieve the target level (B2 in
the Common European Framework of Reference
for Languages [CEFR], Council of Europe, 2018).
Naghdipour (2016) and Polio and Park (2016)
called for more interventions to inform L2 writ-
ing pedagogy about how to help students write ef-
fectively.
Writing is a highly demanding task that
requires cognitive processing, enactment of lin-
guistic knowledge, awareness of the social context
underlying the written communication (Qin &
Uccelli, 2016), and a higher level of precision
than speech (Manchón & Williams, 2016). Seeing
its complexity and the current worrying situation,
“we need to search for innovative pedagogical
tools and strategies to respond more effectively”
to these challenges (Uccelli, Dobbs, & Scott,
2013, p. 37). One of these innovative tools that
may help students foster their L2 writing ability is
debate. Debate is widely acclaimed as an effective
teaching tool and is believed to hold promise as
a conducive mechanism for L2 learning (e.g.,
Lustigova, 2011; Zare & Othman, 2013). Debate
is commonly associated with oral communication
and the skill of argumentation. It is our view
that debate also offers advantages as an effective
vehicle for L2 writing instruction. It affords
learners an opportunity to practice and attend to
language processes that help improve L2 writing.
We know of little research into the benets of
debating for improving L2 writing skills, especially
in secondary schools. The main aim of this study
is therefore to evaluate the effect of debating
on the writing competence of Dutch secondary-
school students. To this end, we conducted a de-
bate intervention comprising writing components
in addition to actual debates, including summariz-
ing preparatory articles, making notes, and writ-
ing cases.1We assessed the debate-writing effect
by measuring effects on the linguistic features of
opinion-writing tasks in a pretest–posttest design.
SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION AND L2
WRITING INSTRUCTION
Manchón and Williams (2016) remark-
ed that, in recent years, increasing effort has
been invested in cross-disciplinarity and the
development of second language acquisition
(SLA)–L2 writing interfaces. They identied
three areas where L2 writing research and SLA
can overlap: “1. the development of learners’
written language over time; 2. the contribution
of general L2 prociency to writing; and 3. the
contribution of writing, writing instruction, and
feedback to L2 prociency” (p. 568). The current
research promotes this interface by making some
modest contributions, in particular to the third
area.
Writing instruction can, broadly speaking, be
product-oriented or process-oriented. While the
product-oriented approach sees the written prod-
uct as an end in itself, the process-oriented ap-
proach puts emphasis on the subject matter, ideas,
and the negotiation of meaning (Badger & White,
2000) and highlights the writing process and pro-
cedures that learners need to go through before
producing a written product, including drafting,
revising, and editing. Yong (2010) contended that
process writing offers learners an enriched learn-
ing experience, enhances their interest in the sub-
ject matter, and stimulates their critical thinking.
Writing in our debate intervention seems to sub-
scribe to process-oriented instruction: For exam-
ple, writing a case foregrounds the negotiation
of arguments and involves recursive processes of
composing, revision, and editing.
Manchón (2011) identied three L2 writing
perspectives that are relevant to L2 writing in-
struction: learning to write (LW), writing to learn
content (WLC), and writing to learn language
(WLL). In the LW perspective, writing is learned
and taught as an end in itself. The WLC perspec-
tive sees L2 writing as a medium for learning dis-
ciplinary subject matter in the content areas. The
WLL perspective, which constitutes an important
area of study in the research agenda on SLA–L2
writing interfaces (Manchón & Williams, 2016),
regards writing as a means of promoting language
learning mainly through offering learners the op-
portunity to improve their own writing by guiding
them through the revision process to raise their
awareness of problematic linguistic areas in their
output.
Feedback plays a central role in the three writ-
ing perspectives. It is generally regarded as an im-
portant instrument for scaffolding L2 writing in
that it holds the potential to raise consciousness
and noticing in the learning process by direct-
ing learners’ attention to the problematic forms
in their output (Hyland, 2011). Becoming aware
of these problematic areas is considered an essen-
tial condition for language learning to take place
(Schmidt, 2001).
As we shall see, the three writing perspec-
tives in our debate intervention are blended and
reinforce one another (especially the LW and
WLL perspectives). Ortega (2011) contends that
the interface between these writing perspectives
(LW, WLC, and WLL) can lead to synergistic
benets for L2 writing development. In debates,
806 The Modern Language Journal 104 (2020)
students engage in writing (i.e., case writing) with
a communicative purpose, that is, defending their
proposition and weakening that of their oppo-
nent. This orientation stimulates students to focus
on negotiating meaning. Here, writing operates
as a vehicle for synthesizing and analyzing argu-
ments (the WLC perspective). This approach also
corresponds with Hyland’s (2011) view of a suc-
cessful LW implementation, wherein a text is seen
as a social and reader-oriented discourse that con-
veys the writer’s intentions, ideas, and perspec-
tives.
Crafting a persuasive case also entails the use
of accurate and sophisticated language. In our
debate intervention, reading-to-write pedagogy
(e.g., Hirvela, 2016) and the processing of feed-
back promote this focus on language. Before em-
barking on writing each case (see the Intervention
section), students read two articles. This allows
them, for example, to learn new words and imme-
diately employ some of them in the subsequent
case. In other words, “reading … provides writers
with essential material to write with and about”
(Hirvela, 2016, p. 49). Importantly, reading and
producing texts that share the same genre facil-
itates the transfer of linguistic forms from read
texts to written texts (Hyland, 2007; So, 2005).
Earlier research has revealed that genre pedagogy
that integrates reading and writing is fruitful for
L2 (Yang, 2016) and foreign language (FL) writ-
ing (Shum, Tai, & Shi, 2018). Furthermore, de-
bating enables a cyclic processing of feedback:
For each case, the student goes through the pro-
cess of writing, feedback processing, and revision.
This cycle enables students to go through linguis-
tic processing (e.g., noticing gaps in their L2) that
promotes learning, hence rening their knowl-
edge of the L2 (Manchón, 2011). In such a con-
text, learners make form–meaning connections;
as a result, writing operates as a facilitating fac-
tor, functioning as a vehicle for learning (the WLL
perspective; Williams, 2012).
THEORETICAL CONSIDERATIONS BEHIND
DEBATE AS L2 WRITING PEDAGOGY
We will discuss two relevant theoretical
perspectives—namely, Swain’s (1993) Output
Hypothesis and Long’s (1996) Interaction
Hypothesis—that corroborate our idea that de-
bating may be an effective pedagogical framework
for L2 writing development.
Swain (1993) argued that L2 learners “push
their linguistic competence to its limit as they
attempt to express their ideas” (p. 162). In her
view, output pushes learners to process language
more deeply and effectively than processing lan-
guage through reading and/or listening alone.
Research has suggested that it is mainly these
output processes that lead to L2 development
(Manchón & Williams, 2016). The act of writing,
by its nature, involves a greater need and oppor-
tunity to focus on form than does speaking; the
slower pace of writing offers learners more free-
dom and space to reect critically on both con-
tent and form (Manchón & Williams, 2016).
Stewart (2003) suggested that debates can gen-
erate a great deal of output as debaters hold differ-
ent views and need to sell their standpoints. The
inherently competitive environment of debate—
what is more compelling than outsmarting your
fellow classmates?—provides students with a func-
tional context in which they are able to produce
functional output in both oral contributions and
written ones. Furthermore, debate enables learn-
ers to engage in bidirectional output exchange,
which allows them to compare their output with
each other, notice gaps in their L2, and hence at-
tend to and remedy the problematic areas in their
interlanguage (Swain, 1993). Under such circum-
stances, output production will stimulate L2
development in general and writing in particular.
A second theoretical perspective that supports
the idea that debating may be an effective tool for
language learning is the Interaction Hypothesis
(Long, 1996). This theory suggests that learners
develop their L2 when they engage in negotiating
meaning. Several studies have shown that student
interaction in the learning process is an impact-
ful variable that facilitates language acquisition.
For example, Pica, Kang, and Sauro (2006) ar-
gued that student interaction activates attentional
processes and facilitates attention to form, func-
tion, and meaning. The authors also suggested
that through attentional processes, L2 learners
become aware of the shortcomings in their input,
thereby modifying their output.
In-class debates involve rich and multilevel
interactions that make it easier for language
learners to notice gaps and hence reect on and
revise their L2 output. First, students interact
with content as they read, select, and arrange
information, arguments, and texts. Second, stu-
dents interact with the instructor as they provide
feedback on their performance. Finally, students
interact with each other. Seen in this perspective,
it is clear why Wade (1998) lauded the interactive
pedagogical merit of debate when he stated that
“there are certainly trends in education which
encourage interactive and dialogic pedagogies,
but few are as potent as debate” (p. 63). It is true
that most interactions and meaning negotiations
in debating take place during actual debates, but
research (e.g., Cho, 2017) has shown that writing
Abid el Majidi, Rick De Graaff, and Daniel Janssen 807
also benets from these oral interactions and
negotiations.
The close connection between speaking and
writing facilitated by debate can reinvigorate writ-
ing development. The debate environment pro-
motes a smooth and recursive movement between
the two skills in a way that stimulates transfer
of gains to move from one mode to the other.
Previous research has revealed that spoken inter-
actions between learners provide scaffolding for
their writing development (e.g., Yang, 2008). In
such an environment, we can assume that the two
modes can “mutually scaffold the transformation
of complex, multidimensional thoughts into lines
of spoken and written words” (Belcher & Hirvela,
2008, p. 4). This mutual and close conjunction of
speaking and writing has also proved to be pro-
pitious to the produced content—namely, argu-
mentative skills (e.g., Chen, Hand, & Park, 2016;
Chen, Park, & Hand, 2016).
In the debate context, composition is viewed as
a socially oriented activity: Participants produce
cases for a particular purpose and aimed at a spe-
cic audience (teacher and classmates, especially
opponents). Chen, Hand, et al. (2016) and Chen,
Park, et al. (2016) stated that the audience pro-
vides students with additional motivation to de-
velop rich and convincing reasoning. They fur-
ther suggested that the audience is a critical factor
that inspires students to develop persuasive and
more complex arguments, and that helps them to
connect oral and written arguments. In the same
vein, Turgut (2009) found that the presence of a
real audience stimulated the development of writ-
ing skills among FL learners, who paid more atten-
tion to dimensions of language use such as word
choice.
Another factor that may offer students an
extra impulse to take the learning process more
seriously during debates is their positive attitude
toward debating as a pedagogical tool (e.g.,
el Majidi, de Graaff, & Janssen, 2015, 2018;
Lustigova, 2011). For example, Lustigova (2011)
reported that 75% of the students participating
in a debate course in the rst semester continued
into the second semester and thus participated
in debate sessions for an entire academic year.
Recent empirical research has revealed that there
is a positive correlation between task attitude and
language acquisition (Dewaele et al., 2018).
THE PRESENT STUDY
Very few studies in either the L1 or the L2 con-
text have examined the effect of debate on lan-
guage performance in general and on writing per-
formance in particular. The studies that have ex-
plored this effect in L2 or FL so far were based on
observations (Lustigova, 2011), interviews (Aclan
& Aziz, 2015), or questionnaires (mainly focused
on speaking; Zare & Othman, 2015); most were
aimed at students in higher education. One of the
studies involving L2 secondary-school students
was conducted by el Majidi et al. (2018). The
participants in this study perceptively correlated
debate participation with an improvement in writ-
ing with a mean of 3.94 on a 5-point Likert scale.
To the best of our knowledge, no empirical
studies have been conducted in L2 or FL re-
search to demonstrate to what extent in-class
debates improve students’ writing prociency
across different areas of performance. Polio and
Park (2016) called for the effect of interventions
on different linguistic aspects of writing to be
charted, including uency, syntactic and lexical
complexity, and accuracy. Following this call,
the present study explores the impact of in-class
debates on L2 writing development among
secondary school students—an understudied
population in L2 writing research, according to
Qin and Uccelli (2016)—with respect to uency,
syntactic and lexical complexity, accuracy, and
cohesion. More specically, this study will address
the following research question:
RQ. What are the effects of in-class debate
activities on different aspects of L2
writing prociency, including uency,
syntactic complexity, lexical complexity,
accuracy, and cohesion among Dutch
secondary-school students?
H. Given that learners in the debate inter-
vention were involved in a rich writing
environment that stimulates processes
that promote L2 writing development,
they were likely to compose texts of bet-
ter quality across various measures than
control-group students.
To answer this question, we conducted an in-
tervention with a pretest–posttest control group
quasi-experimental design. The main source of
data was opinion-writing tasks (in which the stu-
dents argued for or against a controversial topic)
produced by the students on two occasions: just
prior to the rst debate (pretest) and approxi-
mately 10 weeks later, prior to the tenth debate
(posttest).
METHOD
Participants
The study sample consisted of eight in-
tact classes at three secondary schools in the
808 The Modern Language Journal 104 (2020)
Netherlands (N=146) where English is taught
as a L2. These schools are located in three urban
areas (Rotterdam, Leiden, and Alkmaar) with
comparable graduation rates. Five classes were in
their fth year of the higher general secondary
education track (havo 5)2(n=88) and three
classes were in their fourth year of the secondary
preuniversity education track (vwo 4)(n=58).
Five classes served as the intervention group (n
=95), and three as the control group (n=51).
Six classes (three intervention classes and three
control classes) came from one school, with the
rst author as the instructor, and the other two
intervention classes came from the other two
schools (two different instructors). The partici-
pants included 87 females and 59 males, ranging
in age from 15 to 18. The English prociency
level (including writing) of all classes spanned
mostly the B1 (the third level of English in CEFR;
this level is comparable to the intermediate level)
and B2 levels (the fourth level of English in CEFR;
this level is comparable to the upper intermediate
level), as estimated by their teachers. With the
exception of one intervention class that received
on average two English sessions of 50 minutes
per week, other groups received three sessions
of 50 minutes. Both groups received regular in-
struction consisting of activities dealing with the
four language skills (reading, writing, listening,
and speaking). For the purposes of this study,
while the intervention students were involved
in the debate intervention (once a week), the
control students received extra regular instruc-
tion (during that same session) during which the
four language skills were further practiced. With
regard to their writing experience in previous
years, the participants received the same writing
instruction, which was not intensive. Writing was
mostly covered in tasks from coursebooks, which
mostly require students to produce only short
texts.
Design
As mentioned, we opted for a pretest–posttest
control group quasi-experimental design. The
intervention group participated in 10 debates
(one debate per week), which were part of
the class curriculum, each lasting approximately
50 minutes. To enhance the external valid-
ity of the ndings, we gathered data from
three different secondary schools. The partic-
ipating teachers were trained and familiarized
with the content of the intervention by the rst
author.
Intervention
Our debate task design was validated in a previ-
ous study following the principles and guidelines
of educational design research. Prior to each de-
bate, the students received preparation time of
1 week. They were allowed to choose the topics
they found interesting (e.g., euthanasia; the right
to bear arms), and they were free to choose their
side as protagonist or antagonist. We dedicated
one session to each topic, and we used two de-
bate formats: debating in a group of four debaters
(two students in favor and two against) and a
one-to-one debating format. All debates had three
phases: constructive speech, rebuttal, and clash
(see, e.g., Snider & Schnurer, 2006).
Each debate consisted of three stages: prede-
bate, debate, and postdebate. Table 1 presents the
writing activities performed in each debate ses-
sion, in addition to the writing tasks performed
by the control group during the intervention.
It is important to note that the intervention stu-
dents also wrote persuasive essays and letters, but
fewer than the control students. More precisely,
during the intervention, the control group wrote
on average two more essays and one more letter
than the intervention group. In addition, both
groups received brief instruction on how to com-
pose essays and letters and received feedback on
their produced texts. Neither group was trained
in the specic task we used in the intervention—
an opinion task—but both groups had some ex-
perience with composing texts in which they had
to formulate a standpoint and support it with ar-
guments.
Procedures
To measure the effects of our debate inter-
vention on writing prociency, we compared two
free opinion tasks (as pre- and posttests). We se-
lected two (controversial) topics: (a) capital pun-
ishment should be legalized (henceforth, capital
punishment); and (b) abortion should be banned
(henceforth, abortion). Both topics are accessible
and of interest to students in this age group. The
topics of the pre- and posttest opinion tasks (capi-
tal punishment and abortion) were not discussed
beforehand and were identical for all participat-
ing classes, but we counterbalanced the order of
their administration to avoid any potential topic
effect (including control group). The conditions
around pre- and postassessments were the same
for both the intervention and control groups. In
both groups, students did not receive a grade for
these tasks.
Abid el Majidi, Rick De Graaff, and Daniel Janssen 809
TABLE 1
Relevant Activities Performed During the Intervention
Intervention students Control students
Predebate stage
Reading two articles and summarizing them. The
instructor provided one article and the students
had to nd another
Writing a case
Reading and summarizing newspaper articles (e.g.,
The Guardian) covering current issues, including
argumentative articles addressing, for example,
issues related to politics and changes in policies
During-debate stage
Noting down the arguments of the opponents, as
debaters have to rebut them during the rebuttal
and clash stages
Noting down new words and mistakes from
classmates
Writing persuasive essays on controversial subjects
(e.g., school uniforms should be introduced in
schools)
Postdebate stage
Processing the feedback provided by the
instructor on written cases
Writing letters, especially complaint letters in which
students have to express dissatisfaction with a
particular service and accordingly convince the
addressed company to provide a refund
We opted for a free-opinion-writing task be-
cause it lowers the threshold for expressing one’s
ideas or point of view. Unlike many other forms
of argumentative writing, free opinion writing is
not constrained by genre conventions and hence
its composition is likely to be more accessible to
language learners. Dobbs (2014) contended that
opinion tasks3are accessible to middle schoolers
and yield a representative picture of a learner’s
writing prociency. Likewise, Hirvela (2017) held
that effective argumentation (which lies at the
heart of opinion tasks) is an important indicator
of L2 writing ability. Furthermore, opinion tasks
lend themselves more readily to the elicitation
and hence assessment of cohesion than, for ex-
ample, narrative tasks. It is important to mention
that both the intervention and the control groups
practiced different forms of argumentative writ-
ing (cases, essays, requests for refunds) that can
be seen as adequate and more or less equivalent
preparation for the opinion task used to elicit data
for the study.
Before performing the opinion tasks in class,
the students in both groups received 25 minutes
of preparation time (Qin & Karabacak, 2010).
They received a preselected article with opposing
views and were allowed to search the Internet for
more arguments. After 25 minutes, we collected
the articles to prevent the students from plagiariz-
ing. Then, the students had 15 minutes to write
down as many arguments as possible in support
of their standpoint. No further instruction was
given. We obtained consent from parents to use
their children’s data for research purposes.
Measures
To assess the quality of the participants’ written
tasks in the pretest and posttest, we used a variety
of genre-independent measures, tapping into dif-
ferent aspects of performance. Given the multidi-
mensional nature of L2 prociency and develop-
ment, it was essential to select a range of measures
to track relevant differences in performance be-
tween pretest and posttest (Wolfe–Quintero, Ina-
gaki, & Kim, 1998). For this reason, we analyzed
the texts produced for indicators of uency, syn-
tactic and lexical complexity, accuracy, and cohe-
sion. The measures were a mixture of automati-
cally coded features and measures that required
hand coding.
Fluency. Fluency was measured in terms of the
total number of words produced in 15 minutes.
This is the most common metric for measuring
written linguistic production (Plakans, Gebril, &
Bilki, 2016), and has been shown to differentiate
between different levels of writing ability and to
capture L2 learners’ writing development (Sasaki,
2004).
Syntactic Complexity. As measures of syntactic
complexity, we used three indices recommended
by Norris and Ortega (2009) that capture the mul-
tifaceted nature of this construct:
1. global complexity (number of words per T-
unit, MLT)
2. complexity by subordination (mean num-
ber of clauses per T-unit, C/T)
810 The Modern Language Journal 104 (2020)
3. clausal/phrasal complexity (mean length
of clauses, MLC)
In this study, all indices of syntactic complexity
were measured by the automatic L2 syntactic com-
plexity analyzer (Lu, 2010), which was specically
developed to parse L2 written data.
Accuracy. To measure accuracy, we rst seg-
mented the written texts (292 in total) into
clauses. Following Miller’s (2008) overview, non-
nite clauses were also coded as subordinate
clauses because “they express propositions and,
like nite clauses, consist of a verb plus com-
plements and adjuncts” (p. 85). Unnished sen-
tences at the end of texts were not coded for er-
rors. We calculated the following indices:
1. error-free clauses (EFCs)
2. lexical errors per 100 words (lex.er/100)
3. syntactic errors per 100 words (syn.er/100)
4. morphological errors per 100 words
(mor.er/100)
5. prepositional errors per 100 words
(pre.er/100).
We used the ratio of EFCs as a general measure,
since it is widely recognized as a reliable measure
for tracking changes in accuracy (e.g., Tavakoli
& Skehan, 2005). In addition, we calculated the
number of errors per 100 words (Inoue, 2016;
Mehnert, 1998). However, since different linguis-
tic categories (lexical, syntactic, morphological,
and prepositional) represent separate knowledge
domains (Ferris & Roberts, 2001), we computed
separate ratios for these grammatical categories
(see Yoon & Polio, 2017, for the operationaliza-
tion and examples of the rst three measures).4
Furthermore, we ignored spelling, spacing, and
punctuation errors, unless a misspelled word re-
sulted in an actual English word (Ferris & Roberts,
2001).
Lexical Complexity. To track the effect of the
debate intervention on the development of lex-
ical prociency, we used two measures of lex-
ical sophistication and one measure of lexical
diversity obtained from the computational tool
Coh-Metrix (McNamara, Crossley, & McCarthy,
2010):
1. average word length (WL)
2. word frequency (WF)
3. measure of textual lexical diversity (MTLD)
WL has been widely employed as an approxi-
mation of lexical sophistication and is regarded
as an effective predictor of sophisticated vocab-
ulary, with longer words indicating more sophis-
tication (Yoon, 2017; Yoon & Polio, 2017). The
WF index calculates the mean logarithmic fre-
quency for all words. It describes how often partic-
ular words occur in the English language, drawing
on the CELEX database (Baayen, Piepenbrock, &
Gulikers, 1995). A lower WF thus indicates higher
sophistication. We used MLTD to measure lexical
diversity. In addition to the fact that MTLD is less
affected by text length, it “also allows for compar-
isons between text segments of considerably dif-
ferent lengths (at least 100 to 2000 words) and
produces reliable results over a wide range of gen-
res” (McNamara et al., 2010. 69).
Cohesion. To convey an organized sequence of
ideas and arguments, students need to employ
cohesive devices. In this study, we measured co-
hesion by tracking the incidence of connectives,
which play a key role in creating cohesive links be-
tween ideas and clauses (Halliday & Hasan, 1976).
We adopted Hyland’s (2005) framework for in-
teractive metadiscourse as an analytic framework
to assess interactive metadiscourse markers, that
is, words and phrases used to explicitly signal the
coherent organization of ideas and arguments
in a text to guide readers. Coh-Metrix also en-
ables an automated computerized analysis of co-
hesion indices. However, earlier research (Uccelli
et al., 2013) has alluded to the point that Coh-
Metrix might not accurately measure cohesion,
as it might fail to distinguish between, for exam-
ple, cases in which certain organizational mark-
ers function as cohesive markers and other cases
in which they fulll other functions, as is the case
in this sentence: I like this too so much. In this sen-
tence, Coh-Metrix would count too and so as cohe-
sive markers, while they are not. Hyland’s analytic
framework seems to provide a more ne-grained
analysis of cohesive devices, since they are man-
ually identied and each marker is evaluated in
its own right. Furthermore, research has shown
that the frequency and diversity of these metadis-
course markers signicantly reect the quality of
argumentative or persuasive texts (Qin & Uccelli,
2016; Uccelli et al., 2013).
Following Hyland’s procedures, we coded the
produced texts for four types of organizational
marker, in addition to their diversity of type and
token (see, for example, Dobbs, 2014; Qin & Uc-
celli, 2016; Uccelli et al., 2013):
1. frame markers: markers that mark the se-
quence of arguments or counterarguments
(e.g., rstly,secondly)
Abid el Majidi, Rick De Graaff, and Daniel Janssen 811
2. code glosses markers: markers that intro-
duce an example or paraphrase (e.g., for in-
stance,in other words)
3. transition markers: markers that mark ad-
ditive, adversative, or causal relations be-
tween clauses and paragraphs (e.g., besides,
although,because). Temporal markers and
the coordinating conjunction and were ex-
cluded since they are less associated with
quality (Dobbs, 2014)
4. conclusion markers: markers that intro-
duce a summary or conclusion (e.g., in con-
clusion,all in all)
5. markers diversity token: diversity of markers
in terms of token
6. markers diversity type: diversity of markers
in terms of type
Interrater Reliability
To assess interrater reliability for the hand-
coded measures, a randomly selected sample of
25% of the total data was veried by a research as-
sistant, who was blind to the intervention condi-
tion of participants. Cohen’s Kappa was high for
the assessed measures: .98 for clause identica-
tion, .86 for mistake identication, .88 for mistake
categorization, .92 for EFC identication, and .95
for discourse markers. Disagreements were re-
solved through discussion until complete agree-
ment was achieved.
Statistical Analysis
As our participants came from different classes
within different schools, our data were struc-
tured hierarchically. The performance of students
within one class or school is likely to be more
homogeneous and therefore more analogous to
each other than to the performance of students
in other classes and schools. We therefore applied
multilevel linear analysis (MLA). The multilevel
procedure enabled us to explicitly model possible
dependencies in the data. In this study, we used a
two-level hierarchical linear model to account for
the multilevel data structure, with students nested
within classes. We modelled the independent vari-
ables (time and condition) as xed effects, and
random variations across students and classes as
random effects.
To establish the effectiveness of the debate in-
tervention, we need to take into account the com-
bined effect of both main factors. In other words,
we need to focus on the interaction of time (pre-
vs. posttest) with group (intervention vs. control
group). For these reasons, we limit ourselves to re-
porting interactions. Prior to performing statisti-
cal analyses, we checked the prerequisite assump-
tion that the different residual scores are normally
distributed by a visual analysis of the histograms of
each residual, which is the standard procedure in
multilevel modelling. No notable deviations were
visible.
RESULTS
The objective of this study was to evaluate the
effectiveness of in-class debates on the written per-
formance of secondary school students. To this
end, we obtained two scores (pretest and posttest)
for each learner for texts produced in each con-
dition (intervention and control groups) and for
each measure (see the Appendix for an exam-
ple of the analysis of a text produced by a par-
ticipant). Table 2 presents the descriptive statis-
tics (estimated means and standard errors) for
the performance of the students in both the con-
trol and intervention groups. The gures indi-
cate that some measures generally improved over
the intervention period. It seems that the inter-
vention group performed better than the control
group across the majority of outcome variables at
posttest.
To estimate the magnitude of the difference
between the intervention and control groups, we
used Cohen’s deffect size when signicant differ-
ences were observed. The MLA results shown in
Table 3 are presented in relation to the measures
discussed in the previous section.
As for uency, the results indicate that the par-
ticipants in the intervention group were able to
produce signicantly longer texts than their coun-
terparts in the control group, F(1,284.136) =4.5,
p=.017. On average, the debaters produced
40 more words in the posttest compared to the
pretest, while the control participants produced
6 words more at posttest. The effect size dof this
improvement is moderate, d=.44.
Concerning syntactic complexity, the students
in the intervention group showed a signicant im-
provement in terms of clause length, F(1,292) =
5.4, p=.011, with a moderate effect size, d=.57.
The other two measures, however, fell short of sig-
nicance.
Regarding lexical complexity, it was found that
the mean word length, F(1,284.359) =4.1, p=
.022, was signicantly different; again, the inter-
vention group outperformed the control group,
and the effect size of the difference was moder-
ate, d=.52. As for word frequency and lexical
diversity, the intervention group also improved
more than the control group from pretest to
812 The Modern Language Journal 104 (2020)
TABLE 2
Means (and Standard Errors) of Outcome Variables Across Time and Condition
Intervention (n=95) Control (n=51)
Measure Index Pretest Posttest Pretest Posttest
Fluency Number of words 167.89 (18.47) 208.30 (18.47) 190.44 (24.01) 197.17 (24.01)
Syntactic complexity MLT 13.33 (.58) 13.58 (.58) 14.22 (.76) 13.76 (.76)
MLC 7.27 (.12) 7.76 (.12) 7.59 (.16) 7.43 (.16)
C/T 1.85 (.07) 1.76 (.07) 1.88 (.09) 1.85 (.09)
Lexical complexity MLTD 64.41 (1.69) 68.92 (1.69) 59.65 (2.31) 60.79 (2.31)
Word frequency 3.16 (.01) 3.13 (.01) 3.15 (.02) 3.15 (.02)
Word length 4.12 (.03) 4.27 (.03) 4.18 (.04) 4.20 (.04)
Accuracy EFCs 0.66 (.02) 0.75 (.02) 0.69 (.02) 0.72 (.02)
Lexical errors 1.65 (.21) 0.87 (.21) 1.36 (.28) 1.21 (.28)
Syntactic errors 0.99 (.11) 0.54 (.11) 0.75 (.15) 0.57 (.15)
Morphological errors 4.26 (.33) 3.10 (.33) 3.50 (.44) 3.42 (.44)
Preposition errors 0.41 (.07) 0.29 (.07) 0.53 (.09) 0.41 (.09)
Cohesion Transition markers 4.89 (.67) 6.23 (.67) 5.90 (.87) 6.49 (.87)
Frame markers 0.71 (.19) 1.91 (.19) 1.10 (.25) 0.65 (.25)
Gloss markers 0.52 (.14) 0.66 (.14) 0.53 (.18) 0.55 (.18)
Conclusion markers 0.10 (.04) 0.45 (.04) 0.12 (.06) 0.20 (.06)
Diversity type 1.80 (.11) 2.67 (.11) 1.98 (.14) 1.88 (.14)
Diversity token 4.23 (.52) 7.22 (.52) 5.36 (.68) 5.03 (.68)
Note.MLT=number of words per T-unit; MLC =mean length of clauses; C/T =mean number of clauses per T-unit; MLTD =measure of textual lexical diversity; EFCs =
error-free clauses.
Abid el Majidi, Rick De Graaff, and Daniel Janssen 813
TABLE 3
Multilevel Analysis Results
Fixed effects Random effects
Measures Index Denominator df FP(one-tailed) d
Varianc e wi th in
class
Variance between
classes
Fluency Number of words 284.136 4.523 .017 0.44 4162.40 1477.48
Syntactic complexity MLT 283.872 .949 .166 8.96 1.18
MLC 292 5.409 .011 0.57 1.31 .00
C/T 284.043 .560 .228 .13 .01
Lexical complexity MLTD 292 .690 .203 272.77 .00
Word frequency 283.783 1.542 .108 .01 .00
Word length 284.359 4.143 .022 0.52 .06 .00
Accuracy Error free clauses 283.294 3.112 .040 0.41 .02 .00
Lexical errors 282.527 4.078 .022 0.48 1.60 .14
Syntactic errors 282.983 1.978 .081 .64 .03
Morphological errors 284.575 3.474 .032 0.45 5.54 .24
Preposition errors 285.315 .000 .498 .31 .00
Cohesion Transition markers 284.226 .939 .167 9.90 1.68
Frame markers 284.151 32.557 .000 1.35 1.39 .10
Gloss markers 284.244 .397 .133 .57 .06
Conclusion markers 292 7.137 .004 0.63 .18 .00
Diversity type 284.394 28.190 .000 1.27 .56 .28
Diversity token 284.018 37.492 .000 1.36 4.89 1.07
Note.MLT=number of words per T-unit; MLC =mean length of clauses; C/T =mean number of clauses per T-unit; MLTD =measure of textual lexical diversity. Numerator df
=1.
814 The Modern Language Journal 104 (2020)
posttest (see Table 2); however, this improvement
fell short of signicance.
With regard to accuracy, we found that the de-
bate intervention affected various aspects of ac-
curacy to different degrees. Although learners
in both groups displayed improvement across al-
most all accuracy measures, MLA revealed that
the greater improvement was experienced by the
intervention group. It was found that the inter-
vention group signicantly improved in terms of
EFCs, F(1,283.294) =3.1, p=.040, with a moder-
ate effect size, d=.41. The analysis also revealed
signicant improvement in favor of the interven-
tion group in terms of lexical, F(1,282.527) =4.1,
p=.022 and morphological errors, F(1,284.575)
=3.5, p=.032, with moderate effects on both in-
dices, d=.48 for lexical errors and .45 for mor-
phological errors. No signicant differences were
found in syntactic errors and preposition errors.
Note that the majority of the errors made in both
groups concerned morphological and lexical er-
rors, and that this distribution of errors remained
stable over time.
As for cohesion, MLA revealed that the inter-
vention group signicantly improved compared
to the control group in terms of the use of frame
markers, F(1,284.151) =32.6, p<.001, with a very
large effect size, d=1.35; conclusion markers,
F(1,292) =7.1, p=.004, with a moderate to large
effect size, d=0.63; diversity of type, F(1,284.394)
=28.2, p<.001, with a very large effect size,
d=1.27; and diversity of token, F(1,284.018) =
37.5, p<.001, also with a very large effect size,
d=1.36.
An important note should be made regard-
ing the use of transition markers. Though both
groups improved from pretest to posttest, with the
intervention group improving more, the interven-
tion group used far more sophisticated transition
markers at posttest, as Table 4 displays.
DISCUSSION
The main goal of the present study was to as-
sess the impact of an in-class debating interven-
tion on L2 learners’ written performance. Results
showed that L2 learners of the intervention group
signicantly improved their writing performance,
displaying an increase in uency and a number of
measures of syntactic and lexical complexity, accu-
racy, and cohesion after the intervention. These
ndings indicate that the use of in-class debates
as a teaching tool is indeed effective in improving
L2 writing in secondary education.
The debate intervention offered students op-
portunities to practice writing before and during
debates. The case was written and rewritten in
an attempt to convey arguments in concise, clear,
and powerful language that would convince op-
ponents during debates. In addition, we believe
that the repetitive process of case writing (prior to
each debate) created the opportunity for students
to carry over what they gained from one debate
to the next (in terms of language development),
and hence reinforce these gains. This nding is in
line with previous research that showed that learn-
ers improve their L2 performance when repeat-
ing the same or similar tasks (Qiu & Lo, 2017).
Furthermore, the components of our debate
task design—which range from reading articles
and summarizing them to writing cases, engag-
ing in actual debates, and processing the instruc-
tor’s feedback on written cases—form a coherent
whole which smooths the path for the transfer
of gains. This would be expected to enable stu-
dents, for example, to employ some of the words
they learn from articles in the cases they subse-
quently write. Earlier research documented trans-
fer patterns in tasks whose activities are closely re-
lated (Jianling, 2018) and tasks that have a generic
relationship (Hyland, 2007; So, 2005). In our
TABLE 4
Frequency of the Use of Sophisticated Connectives
Control (n=51) Intervention (n=95)
Measure Pretest Posttest Pretest Posttest
Moreover 0 2 1 32
Furthermore 1 2 4 44
Besides 5 3 0 16
In addition 0 2 1 7
Additionally 0 1 0 4
However 0 1 4 7
Therefore 1 4 2 12
Abid el Majidi, Rick De Graaff, and Daniel Janssen 815
intervention, the preparatory articles that the in-
tervention students read overlapped quite signif-
icantly with the written texts produced in terms
of their genre and communicative purpose (con-
vincing someone of a particular standpoint).
Now we will look at our ndings in more detail.
Fluency
The participants in the intervention group
showed signicant improvement in their writing
uency (measured via text length) compared to
the control group. Though the control group also
practiced writing, the intervention group, quanti-
tatively speaking, practiced slightly more, and this
may have impacted their writing uency. How-
ever, there are many relevant intervention-related
factors that have arguably contributed to this sig-
nicant improvement. Writing in the debate en-
vironment is a socially oriented activity and pro-
vides learners with a meaningful and functional
purpose, as well as an authentic audience. Stu-
dents write cases about topics that are relevant to
their interests and which they can relate to and
deliver to an authentic audience. Research has
demonstrated that such a learning environment
motivates students and enhances their writing u-
ency (e.g., Albadi, 2016). In addition, it seems that
the repeated purposeful practice of writing in the
debate intervention may have facilitated the pro-
cess of automatization of at least a number of for-
mulaic expressions and cohesive devices. As a re-
sult, the debaters might have developed a degree
of automaticity in these expressions (e.g., Iamin
favor of the death penalty because of the following rea-
sons…; see DeKeyser, 2007).
Note also that the learners were instructed to
read at least two argumentative articles prior to
each debate. It seems that the learners proted
from the recurrent process of reading and writing
that enabled them to leverage these resources bet-
ter and better, and hence enhanced their writing
uency. Earlier research has demonstrated the ef-
fectiveness of L2 reading-to-write pedagogy, nd-
ing that extensive reading helps students to im-
prove their vocabulary (lexical complexity) and to
write better (e.g., Hirvela, 2016; Hyland, 2019),
as “extensive reading can furnish a great deal of
both tacit and conscious knowledge of conven-
tional features of written texts, including gram-
mar, vocabulary, organizational patterns, interac-
tional devices and so on” (Hyland, 2019, p. 17).
Accuracy
The debate-based instruction also appears to of-
fer some advantages in terms of promoting learn-
ers’ writing accuracy. We found that the interven-
tion group made more improvements than the
control group in four (out of ve) indices of ac-
curacy, with three measures reaching statistical
signicance (EFCs, lexical errors/100 and mor-
phological errors/100). The control group also
received feedback on their writings, which may
have led to some improvement (see Table 2).
However, the feedback environment in debate
seems to be more effective. At the end of each de-
bate, the participants in the intervention group
submitted their written cases, on which they re-
ceived feedback from the instructor. Some stu-
dents revised and resubmitted their work the
following week. Additionally, during debates, the
participants were instructed to note the mistakes
their classmates made and improve them. More-
over, the instructors occasionally discussed some
of the commonly made mistakes during actual de-
bates. Through this rich feedback environment,
the learners had the opportunity to monitor their
progress, recognize gaps in their output, and re-
ect on their writing performance. The recurrent
process of crafting a case prior to each debate and
receiving feedback on it seems to have enabled
the debaters to apply the knowledge they gained
from feedback on a particular case when writing
a new one.
It is worth noting that speech delivery and the
exchange of arguments in front of classmates may
have put some pressure on students to try their
best not to make embarrassing grammatical mis-
takes. Also, the debate environment seems to raise
awareness of the importance of grammatically ac-
curate language in conferring cogency on argu-
ments. Past research has shown that when learn-
ers’ writing is aimed at an authentic audience,
they tend to be more precise and accurate (Al-
badi, 2016) and “to craft higher quality and more
sophisticated arguments” (Chen, Hand et al.,
2016, p. 308).
Syntactic Complexity
Results indicate that the debate intervention re-
sulted in improving one measure of syntactic com-
plexity, MLC, which taps complexity at the clausal
and phrasal level (Pallotti, 2015). Research on
syntactic complexity has identied this index as
one of the strongest measures to capture syntac-
tic complexity development (e.g., Lu, 2010; Nor-
ris & Ortega, 2009). MLT and CT measures did
not reach signicance. The mean of MLT pro-
duced at pretest and posttest for both groups
did not change greatly. This nding is in line
with the ndings of previous studies (e.g., Knoch,
816 The Modern Language Journal 104 (2020)
Rouhshad, & Storch, 2014; Ortega, 2003; Storch,
2009). Ortega (2003), for example, speculated
that it takes 12 months of language instruction
for MLT to improve substantially. As for subor-
dination (i.e., C/T), while its mean remained al-
most the same for the control group (pretest: M
=1.85; posttest: M=1.83), it slightly decreased
for the intervention group at posttest (pretest: M
=1.84; posttest: M=1.76). Some scholars have
associated subordination decrease with L2 pro-
ciency increase as other forms of complexity (e.g.,
phrasal complexication) increase (Norris &
Ortega, 2009).
Lexical Complexity
The intervention group gained the most im-
provement in all measures of lexical sophistica-
tion, with WL reaching signicance. Both WF and
WL were found to be effective predictive indices
of essay writing quality (McNamara et al., 2010).
Also, WL and WF have been regarded as indica-
tors of lexical prociency, as learners who pro-
duce less frequent words (Crossley, Salsbury, &
McNamara, 2014) and longer words (Yoon, 2017)
are judged to be more lexically procient.
One interpretation of the positive effect of in-
class debates on lexical complexity might be at-
tributable to the lexically rich environment in
which the debates engaged the students. Debate
seems to be fertile ground for the acquisition
of new vocabulary and its active implementation.
Prior to each debate, the participants were asked
to read at least two articles. The participants were
instructed to read these carefully in order to nd
relevant arguments. To do this, it was essential to
understand, if not all, at least the majority of the
vocabulary. Such a process led to deciphering the
unknown words in a context relevant to them. Im-
portantly, case writing created an opportunity to
use the newly learned words and hence increased
their retention. Furthermore, the debate environ-
ment invited the implementation of these words,
a fact that further reinforced the students’ grip
on these lexical gains. The contribution of debate
to lexical enhancement is consistent with past re-
search (e.g., el Majidi et al., 2018) in which the
debaters reported improvement to their vocabu-
lary after participating in L2 debates.
Cohesion
Beyond the well-known areas of uency, accu-
racy, and lexical and syntactic complexity, this
research documents another performance area
that is critical to persuasive texts—namely, the
use of a specic set of organizational markers
that explicitly signal conceptual relationships be-
tween clauses and text fragments. Well-structured
texts and coherent arguments are important
distinguishing traits of ‘good academic writing’
(Storch, 2009).
Results revealed improvement in the majority
of the assessed cohesive devices in the interven-
tion students’ texts. One interpretation of these
results might be attributable to the fact that the
students in the intervention group received a list
of common cohesive devices and were asked to
use them in their written cases to establish co-
hesion between the adduced arguments.5More
importantly, the debate context seems to pro-
vide a natural and fertile ground for the devel-
opment of this important area of writing pro-
ciency. Debate-case writing prompts students to
generate a logical and coherent text by interrelat-
ing arguments in a coherent manner and organiz-
ing them in a stepwise hierarchical format. For ex-
ample, presenting different arguments requires
the use of transition and frame markers to mark
progression and a shift from one argument to an-
other. Through recurrent practice, we believe that
the debate environment instilled in the debaters
the need to make explicit relations between ar-
guments if they were to persuade and outsmart
their opponents. Research revealed that embed-
ding transitional markers in engaging, interest-
ing, and challenging content stimulates their de-
velopment (Crosson & Lesaux, 2013).
The growth in the use of transitional markers in
terms of quality and sophistication further makes
a case for the impact of in-class debates on writing
prociency. Past research has demonstrated that
cohesive markers, in particular their diversity, are
predictive of the quality of argumentative writing
(e.g., Qin & Uccelli, 2016; Uccelli et al., 2013). Re-
search has also correlated the use of sophisticated
markers with higher quality writing (e.g., Ho & Li,
2018).
CONCLUSION AND LIMITATIONS
Our current ndings offer a modest but promis-
ing step forward in unravelling the potential of
in-class debates for improving L2 writing pro-
ciency. The results revealed that the students in
the intervention group tended to write signi-
cantly longer texts that exhibited more syntactic
complexity in terms of phrasal and clausal com-
plexity, included more sophisticated vocabulary,
demonstrated better grammatical accuracy, and
contained a more sophisticated and wider range
of indices of cohesion after the intervention than
Abid el Majidi, Rick De Graaff, and Daniel Janssen 817
their counterparts in the control group. The sig-
nicant increase in the majority of the measures
employed after the intervention indicates that the
debate environment can be a privileged site for
developing various linguistic aspects of writing.
This study provides insights into some of the
pedagogical merits of the debate environment
that can affect L2 writing development. The de-
bate environment (or, at least, our debate inter-
vention) allows learners to learn language and
writing through the medium of writing about pur-
poseful content of relevance to them. In other
words, it enables the interface and synergy of the
three writing perspectives of LW, WLC, and WLL
(see Manchón, 2011; Ortega, 2011). Moreover,
it promotes an effective interplay between speak-
ing and writing in a way that scaffolds writing de-
velopment (Yang, 2008) and it lends itself read-
ily to reading-to-write pedagogy, which empowers
learners to write better (Hirvela, 2016). Addition-
ally, it allows an iterative cyclic process of writing,
feedback processing, and rewriting as well as pur-
poseful and meaningful practice that facilitates at-
tending to linguistic processes that enhance L2
writing development. Furthermore, the debate
environment in the intervention seems to stimu-
late the development of students’ metacognitive
awareness of processes that lead to writing de-
velopment. For example, this environment seem-
ingly instills in learners the awareness that the use
of sophisticated, coherent, and accurate language
enhances the persuasiveness of their discourse.
Finally, learners’ positive attitude toward debat-
ing, its competitive atmosphere, and the pres-
ence of a real audience (i.e., teacher and class-
mates/opponents) seem to provide learners with
extra stimuli to pay more attention to different di-
mensions of language use and content (argumen-
tation).
The ndings of this study break with the com-
mon view that debates are only suitable for
extracurricular activities or in the competitive
sphere. We hope that the potential for in-class
debates to enhance written performance in L2
teaching contexts will be recognized and that L2
instructors will consider employing them on a reg-
ular basis in their teaching practice. As it may not
be feasible to plan debates on a weekly basis, we
recommend scheduling them biweekly or once
every 3 weeks. Debates are favored by students and
hold potential for honing other skills. In other
words, there is more than one reason to engage
students in debates on a regular basis.
To the best of our knowledge, this is the rst
study that has empirically investigated the impact
of in-class debates on writing prociency in the
L2 or FL context. As such,it lays the groundwork
for future work that may further explore the po-
tential of these ndings and their implications for
L2 writing teaching and learning. Therefore, the
contribution of the present study should nd con-
tinuation in further research.
While promising, the study must be viewed in
light of some important limitations that might
preclude the wide generalizability of our ndings.
Although signicant results were found, our sam-
ple is not representative of all secondary-school
students. Analysis of additional writing samples
from a larger variety of schools and students
would be necessary to accurately measure the
effects of debate-based instruction on writing pro-
ciency and conrm these ndings.
An additional note of caution is required: This
study assessed students’ written performance in
a task that may have slightly favored the inter-
vention students over their control counterparts.
Though the control group also practiced writ-
ing tasks that were argumentative in nature (writ-
ing persuasive essays and letters), the intervention
students were engaged in a pedagogical environ-
ment that more strongly supports the expression
of opinion. Since writing performance tends to
vary signicantly across task types and genres, fu-
ture studies should consider assessing prociency
using a variety of different and independent writ-
ing tasks to test to what extent the effects are
transferable. To assess carryover effects, we have
gathered additional writing samples (essays and
letters) from both groups, which we will analyze in
a future study with the same genre-independent
measures used in this study.
Last, this study elicited data from two time
points (pre- and posttest). Future studies would
also benet from a delayed posttest time point.
This third time point would yield insight into the
durability of the potential effects and hence pro-
vide additional evidence for the performance pat-
terns observed.
NOTES
1In debate, a case is “a cohesive set of [written] argu-
ments [prepared beforehand] that justify the side of the
topic that they have been assigned” (Snider & Schnurer,
2006, p. 26). Students draw on cases during debates.
2For more information about the Dutch educa-
tion system see: https://www.nufc.nl/en/subjects/
education-in-the-netherlands/#secondary-education
3Dobbs used persuasive tasks to represent opinion
tasks.
4Unlike Yoon and Polio (2017), we included lexical
errors, which we dened as errors in word choice or
818 The Modern Language Journal 104 (2020)
word form. As for prepositional errors, we included er-
rors in all types of constituents.
5It is important to note that the students were not
given instructions about different sorts of transitional
markers. Also, note that the students were not asked to
use these connectors during pretest and posttest opin-
ion tasks.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work has been nanced by the Netherlands Or-
ganization for Scientic Research (NOW; grant number
023.009.059).
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APPENDIX
An Example of the Analysis of a Text Produced by a Participant
I am in favor of the death penalty. and I have a few argumentmor to support my side. First of all, the
death penalty is a good way to scare criminals off and makes them think twice before they commit a
crime. Also, in my opinion, criminals don’t deserve to stay alive if they took another person’s life or did
something terrible to another human being. The people who have been murdered were not given a
second chance. So why should themor murderers get one. Furthermore, as cruel as it may sound, making
the death penalty a form of punishment again will save us a lot of money. We wouldn’t have to pay for
cells, food and facilities for themor prisoners anymore, which will make our taxes much lower. Lastly, the
death penalty will make grieving easier for family and friends of victims of murdermor or for the victims of
rape or robbery. Knowing that the person who did something to you or a loved one, won’t walk around
on the streets anymore will make you feel a lot safer.
Note: mor =morphological error
Abid el Majidi, Rick De Graaff, and Daniel Janssen 821
Measure Index Value
Fluency Number of words 184
Syntactic complexity MLT 18.40
MLC 1.80
C/T 10.22
Lexical complexity MLTD 95
Word fr equency 2.99
Word length 4.14
Accuracy EFCs 0.84
Lexical errorsa0
Syntactic errorsa0
Morphological errorsa2.17
Preposition errorsa0
Cohesion Transition markers 3
Frame markers 2
Gloss markers 0
Conclusion markers 0
Diversity of type 2
Diversity of token 5
Note.MLT=number of words per T-unit; MLC =mean length of clauses; C/T =mean number of clauses per T-unit;
MLTD =measure of textual lexical diversity; EFCs =error-free clauses.
aPer 100 words.
SUPPORTING INFORMATION
Additional supporting information may be found online in the Supporting Information section at the
end of the article.
