Linguistic/Rhetorical Measures for International Persuasive Student Writing

This research developed linguistic/rhetorical measures to analyze and evaluate argumentative/persuasive student writing. 150 essays written for the IEA International Study of Written Composition by high school students from three English-speaking countries were used to test these measures. In a multiple regression analysis with an impressionistic holistic rating as the dependent variable, 11 independent variables explained 61 percent of the variation in the holistic score. The Toulmin measure, credibility appeal, and the syntactic factor of Abstract versus Situated Style were the best predictors of writing quality. Implications of this research for the evaluating and teaching of argumentative/persuasive writing are discussed.