Argument structure as an interactive resource by undergraduate students

The present study compares high-graded essays (HGEs) with low-graded essays (LGEs) as well as essays written by international students from East-Asian countries with those written by local students in Australia in terms of their use of structures. An Australian genre-based approach within a Systemic Functional Linguistics framework was basically utilized to analyse the undergraduate students' construction of argument structure. However, in the process of applying the existing frameworks to the given contexts, some revisions were required to analyse the delicate levels of schematic structure. Further, social approaches in writing were incorporated to stress an interpersonal perspective of genre termed interactive resources. Analysis results along with ethnographic data reveal that while not many differences between L1 and L2 writers were identified, significant structural differences were found between HGEs and LGEs. HGEs display a much more direct way of organizing information than LGEs, in particular, within the discourse semantic or paragraph level of the structure. The educational and theoretical implications of using structure as an interactive resource are discussed in relation to teaching an academic argument in EAP (English for Academic Purposes) courses at university.