Influence of oral discussion on written argument

This article examines the effects of participation in oral argumentation on the development of individual reasoning as expressed in persuasive essays. Engagement in oral argumentation is the essential feature of a classroom discussion method called collaborative reasoning. A premise of this method is that reasoning is fundamentally dialogical and, hence, the development of reasoning is best nurtured in supportive dialogical settings such as group discussion. Students from 3 classrooms participated in collaborative reasoning discussions for a period of 5 weeks. Then, these students and students from 3 comparable classrooms who had not engaged in collaborative reasoning wrote persuasive essays. The essays of collaborative reasoning students contained a significantly greater number of relevant arguments, counter-arguments, rebuttals, formal argument devices, and uses of text information.