Lia Litosseliti

Argumentation Skills as Prerequisites for Collaborative Learning among Finnish, French, and English Secondary School Students.

Argumentation skills of secondary school students were evaluated in Finland (n = 290), France (n = 54), and England (n = 41). The data were collected from 4 tasks comprising 7 variables. The results indicated that most of the students had correctly justified arguments and conclusions, and composed clear claims and relevant arguments. However, many students had difficulties in recognising the main claim and arguments for it in an expository text, and in commenting analytically on an argumentative text. Thus the students possessed the prerequisites for argumentative reasoning and writing but need further practice in analytical and critical reading.

Information needs after stroke: What to include and how to structure it on a website. A qualitative study using focus groups and card sorting

Background: Use of the Internet to obtain health and other information is increasing. Previous studies have identified the specific information needs of people with stroke but not in relation to the Internet. People with aphasia (PwA) may face barriers in accessing the Internet: Navigating websites requires an ability to categorise information and this ability is often impaired in PwA. The website categorisation preferences of people with stroke and with aphasia have not yet been reported. Aims: This study aimed: (a) to determine what information people who have had a stroke would like to see on a website about living with stroke; (b) to determine the most effective means of structuring information on the website so that it is accessible to people with stroke; and c) to identify any differences between people with and without aphasia in terms of preferences for structuring information on the website. Methods & Procedures: Participants were recruited from a hospitals Stroke Database. Focus groups were used to elicit what information participants wanted on a website about living with stroke. The themes raised were depicted on 133 cards. To determine the most effective way of structuring information on the website, and whether there were any differences in preferences between PwA and PwoA, participants used a modified closed card-sorting technique to sort the cards under website categories. Outcomes & Results: A total of 48 people were invited, and 12 (25%) agreed to take part. We ran three focus groups: one with PwA (n = 5) and two with people without aphasia (PwoA) (n = 3, n = 4). Participants wanted more information about stroke causes and effects (particularly emotional issues), roles of local agencies, and returning to previous activities (driving, going out). All participants completed the card-sorting exercise. Few cards (6%) were categorised identically by everyone. Cards relating to local agencies and groups were not consistently categorised together. Cards relating to emotions were segregated. The categorisation preferences for PwA were more fragmented than those for PwoA: 60% of PwA agreed on the categorisation of 51% of the cards, whereas 60% of PwoA agreed on the categorisation of 76% of the cards. Conclusions: Information needs covered all stages of the stroke journey. The card sorting was accessible to everyone, and provided evidence of structuring preferences and of some of the categorisation difficulties faced by PwA. More research is needed on what an accessible website looks like for PwA.

Computer‐based and Face‐to‐face Collaborative Argumentation in Secondary Schools in England and Finland

Abstract This article focuses on the analysis of secondary school students’ argumentative interactions in England and Finland, within specific face‐to‐face and computer‐based environments. We propose that a combination of learning environments, in conjunction with teacher input and support, is important for developing argumentation skills in the classroom. Face‐to‐face argumentation, in particular, offers ample opportunity for concentrating on the quality (through deeper exploration) of arguments; such learning can enhance the construction of well‐structured arguments often associated with some computer‐based environments, such as synchronous computer chat.

Constructing Gender in Public Arguments: The Female Voice as Emotional Voice

This chapter explores the discursive construction of the female voice as emotional voice in public arguments (i.e. arguments produced in public). In particular, it uses examples of argument from the British media, together with examples from work in this area within different disciplines — in order to theorise some of the diverse ways in which assumptions about gender and emotion are enacted in discourse, and shape discourse. Further, the chapter deals with the links between the discursive construction of the female as emotional and women’s social positions in the public sphere. Given the political agenda of feminist linguistics, a robust analysis of such discursive construction, particularly as it is used in prevalent public arguments about social politics and ethics, is an important way of identifying and problematising these links.

Going ‘Back to Basics’: Moral Panics about Heterosexual Relationships

This chapter examines the increasingly heightened anxiety or ‘moral panic’ surrounding heterosexual relationships in Britain, in the context of women and men’s shifting roles, identities and relations in a rapidly changing, so-called ‘risk’ society (Beck, 1992). It focuses on the discursive construction of deviance (Goode and Ben-Yehuda, 1994), of perceived threats to a ‘moral’/‘normal’ heterosexual life, and to the social order itself (Thompson, 1998). Such threats typically include family breakdown (divorce, cohabitation, single parenthood), homosexuality, feminism going ‘too far’, and a ‘crisis of masculinity’. Within the specific British sociocultural context, the chapter uses an example from written media as well as an extract of spoken interaction, to illustrate how dominant, resistant and alternative heterosexual identities are discursively constructed. The use of language (e.g. metaphors, exaggerated vocabulary, discourses of prediction, symbolisation and prescription) and culturally charged repertoires (e.g. about moral decline, and the individual and collective good — see Litosseliti, 2001, 2002a, b) construct particular representations, social identities and relations: for heterosexual men and women, for homosexuals, for married and cohabiting couples — and representations of the culture in general.

A Collaborative Tool for Argumentation-Based Learning: Examining Face-to-Face and Computer-Based Approaches in a UK Secondary School

This paper presents research conducted in the UK, as part of the threeyear research project called “Internet-based intelligent tool to Support Collaborative Argumentation-based Learning in secondary schools (SCALE).” The project looks at how secondary school students learn how to argue or debate, and at the role software can play in facilitating and developing this process. Classroom studies have been carried out in five partner countries (UK, France, the Netherlands, Finland, Hungary), and in this paper we are focusing on those conducted in the UK, at Royal Holloway University of London. We aimed to address the following research questions: