The written production of argumentative and dissertation text: a didactic project based on Bakhtin's philosophy

This article is characterized as a theoretical and practical research related to a project developed during the year 2015 in two schools - one public, the other private- , in the city of Birigui, State of São Paulo, Brazil. The main goal of the study was to analyze: the pedagogical project and the teachers’ activities oriented towards teaching and learning of argumentative and dissertation texts. The methodology used in this research comprised: (i) visiting both schools, (ii) producing a description of ongoing school practices, with focus on the teaching of argumentative and dissertation texts, (iii) suggesting a teacher’s activity to improve this apprenticeship, (iv) putting this activity into practice and (v) analyzing obtained results. The theoretical framework used for this study was the Bakhtinian philosophy (BAKHTIN, 2013; 2006a; 2006b; 2006c; 2006d; 2010; 2013; VOLOSHINOV, 1986). This theoretical approach was chosen due to the importance of comprehension of the text not just as an amalgamated set of words, phrases and paragraphs; other than that, we understand it as a structure of meaning, in which we encounter linguistic forms, ideologies and discursive stance. At last, we can say the results show that the argumentative texts render assistance to the development of the students’ argumentative competence and skill, that is, in their ability to argue and organize ideas in a communicative situation

Creativity in the Philosophy Class. Concrete Research

The issue of creativity among teachers and pupils in terms of the dialogical praxis represented a real challenge concerning the research that we have done in high school classes in which philosophy is being taught. We have come to the conclusion that there is a direct linking between the diversity of the dialogical forms which pupils and teachers use and the forms of expression of creativity that are used during philosophy classes. Philosophical themes seem more attractive and interesting if the working methods in classes are modified and if pupils have to evaluate critically their own knowledge. (DIPF/Orig.)Die Kreativität der Schüler und Lehrer in der Methode dialogischer Praxis während des Philosophieunterrichts von Oberschulklassen stellte im Kontext dieser repräsentativen Untersuchung eine Herausforderung dar. Unsere Feststellungen zeigen die direkte Verknüpfung zwischen der Vielfalt dialogischer Formen, welche die Schüler und Lehrer übernommen haben und den Formen und Ebenen der Kreativität der Schüler während des Philosophieunterrichts. Philosophische Themen gewinnen an Attraktivität, wenn die Arbeitsmethoden in der Klasse dahin gehend geändert werden, dass die Schüler gefordert sind, ihre Kenntnisse kritisch zu bewerten und ihre Position aus einem philosphischen Blickwinkel zu überprüfen. (DIPF/Orig.

First Steps towards an Argumentative Dialogue System for Oracy Skills Development in Schools

[EN] There is academic and institutional interest in implementing dialogic approaches to teaching, as dialogue has been shown to be both a means towards learning and a goal in a global society where oracy skills are crucial. Some technologies have already proven useful in dialogic teaching. However, no link has been established between dialogic teaching and dialogue systems, which might be suitable for this approach. We thus analyze the literature on dialogic teaching, dialogue systems for education, and dialogue-system design to describe the features that could result in a successful argumentative dialogue system for dialogic teaching. We propose an example system and compile a dataset of possible student input. Tests performed on the dataset reveal that basic text annotation and a semantic similarity tool may be useful for assessing students' performance on the analytical part of the proposed task; further data gathering and tests are needed to draw conclusions for the remainder of the task

Needs before means: the dialectics of learning and technology

The general argument advanced in this paper is that in the changing context of present-day higher education it is vital that our educational purposes and student needs are clarified before decisions are taken about the means, including the use of learning technology, of satisfying those purposes and needs. The development of a critical understanding is still seen as the central purpose of higher education even in the context of a more vocationally relevant mass higher education. It is argued here that dialogue is the key to critical learning based on a process of dialectical communication. The task then is to construct an understanding learning environment which fosters interaction between students, staff and resources, reconciling individual needs with collective purposes. The specific role of learning technology as a means of encouraging dialogue within a learning environment is illustrated through examples of language learning such as TLTP CKS33 and the RACE Hipernet Project. Through a dialectical process, the appropriate use of learning technologies in meeting students' changing needs can be progressively refined

Parsing Argumentation Structures in Persuasive Essays

In this article, we present a novel approach for parsing argumentation structures. We identify argument components using sequence labeling at the token level and apply a new joint model for detecting argumentation structures. The proposed model globally optimizes argument component types and argumentative relations using integer linear programming. We show that our model considerably improves the performance of base classifiers and significantly outperforms challenging heuristic baselines. Moreover, we introduce a novel corpus of persuasive essays annotated with argumentation structures. We show that our annotation scheme and annotation guidelines successfully guide human annotators to substantial agreement. This corpus and the annotation guidelines are freely available for ensuring reproducibility and to encourage future research in computational argumentation.Comment: Under review in Computational Linguistics. First submission: 26 October 2015. Revised submission: 15 July 201