Argumentative Questions in an EFL Material: Fostering Students’ International Mobility

Resumo

This paper aims at analyzing and categorizing the questions in an EFL teaching material[1](RICHTER, 2015), in accordance to the categories created by Ninin (2013). The material was designed for the subject “English for Computer Studies” at a federal university in the northeast of Brazil. We discuss how the questions used in the material provide learners with opportunities to become professionals that act argumentatively and revise their own points of view in the research they developed during the course and outside the classroom. The material, which was designed by the researcher, focuses on the participation of students in international academic events.  Grounded in the lineage of Socio-Cultural-Historic Activity Theory (SCHAT) (VYGOTSKY, 1934/2007; LEONTIEV, 1977/1997; ENGESTRÖM, 1987/1999), this paper is based upon the Critical Collaborative Research (CCR) and is fundamentally rooted in Applied Linguistics (LA) for this is a study of language in the Academic realm that promotes changes in the social roles. Questions used in the teaching material (RICHTER, 2015) were analyzed according to categories such as: form, type, nature, thematic conduction and structure (NININ, 2013). Three versions of the same abstract written by students were also examined so as to check how the teaching material questions impacted on learners’ writing. Data analysis suggested that the type of questions may contribute to argumentation, to the exhibition of points of view, as well as to the dialogic expansion of knowledge in students’ writing. In addition to that, the choice of questions may encourage learners to take part in the dialectic organization of the text. (NININ, 2013).