Teaching Argumentative Writing to International Students through the Self-Regulated Strategy Development Model

Overview

This study examined the efficacy of the Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) model in teaching argumentative writing to international students learning Turkish as a foreign language. The research addresses a documented gap between conversational and academic language proficiency among international learners in Turkish higher education, where over 300,000 international students are currently enrolled. Argumentative writing proficiency serves as a foundational competency for broader academic writing competence, requiring students to integrate claim formulation, justification provision, and counterargument engagement within coherent textual structures. The investigation centered on whether structured, strategy-based instructional approaches could enhance this critical academic literacy subskill.

Methods and approach

A quasi-experimental design was employed with 39 C1-level learners of Turkish as a foreign language. The experimental group received six weeks of argumentative writing instruction explicitly grounded in the SRSD model, which emphasizes metacognitive strategy development and self-regulation in writing processes. The SRSD framework systematized instruction around identifying and producing key argumentative text components, including topic establishment, claim articulation, justification development, counterclaim recognition, counterargument incorporation, rebuttal formulation, and conclusion structuring. Data collection occurred at two temporal points—pre-intervention and post-intervention—to capture changes in writing performance following the instructional period.

Key Findings

The experimental group demonstrated statistically significant improvements in argumentative writing performance following SRSD-based instruction. Post-intervention analysis revealed that students exhibited more functional and structurally coherent deployment of argumentative text components. Specifically, students showed enhanced capacity to incorporate topic statements, claims, justifications, counterclaims, counterarguments, rebuttals, and conclusions within unified argumentative structures. The improvements reflected not merely the presence of these components but their strategic integration within argumentatively sound and rhetorically organized texts.

Implications

The findings provide empirical support for strategy-based instructional models in second and foreign language writing pedagogy. The SRSD approach appears particularly well-suited to scaffolding the acquisition of genre-specific conventions in academic writing contexts, where explicit attention to component identification and organizational principles facilitates learner independence in strategy application. These results have direct relevance for curriculum design in institutions serving international student populations, suggesting that structured intervention protocols can yield measurable gains in academic writing competence within relatively brief timeframes.

For Turkish higher education specifically, the study indicates that targeted argumentative writing instruction offers a viable mechanism for supporting international student academic success. Given the scale of international enrollment in Turkish institutions, systematic implementation of SRSD-based or comparable structured approaches may address persistent academic language gaps that emerge despite adequate conversational proficiency. The transferability of strategic competencies developed through such instruction likely extends beyond argumentative writing to other academic writing genres requiring similar rhetorical operations.

Scope and limitations

This summary is based on the study abstract and available metadata. It does not include a full analysis of the complete paper, supplementary materials, or underlying datasets unless explicitly stated. Findings should be interpreted in the context of the original publication.