Organizational Patterns in Argumentative and Expository Writing

This study was conducted with the intention of analyzing organizational patterns of writing in two argumentative and expository writings. The papers were analyzed bead on the framework of Hirose (2001), Hirose (2003), and Hirose (2014) which analyzed writing in terms of location of main idea, macro-level rhetorical pattern, and summary statement. Specially, the study investigated: a) weather some patterns in these two different writings are more frequently deployed than others. B) Can we focus on some differences in the organizational pattern of writing based on gender of writers. 40 students were given one expository and one argumentative writing topics. Two raters assessed the participants’ quality of writing based on the framework of Hirose (2001), Hirose (2003), and Hirose (2014).subsequently, the writings were identified and classified under the educational headings by applying the well-developed taxonomy of Hirose (2001) theory. Then the frequency and chi-square of these writings were calculated. The results indicated that there are not any significant differences between expository and argumentative writings in the location of main idea, macro-level rhetorical pattern, and summary statement. Meaningful differences were found between male and female writing performances in organizational patterns of these two writings in two categories of location of main idea and in macro-level rhetorical pattern.no significant differences were found in summary statement of male and female language learners.

Keywords:

argumentative writing , expository writing , writing