Improving Chinese College Students’ Argumentative Writing: A Presentation-Assimilation-Discussion-Exercise Approach

This study implemented the Presentation-Assimilation-Discussion-Exercise (PADE) model, a student-centered teaching model that originated in China, and examined its effect on college students’ argumentative writing. Quantitative method was used in this study following a teaching practice of 14 weeks. A total of 76 Chinese first-year university students of intermediate English level with 38 students in an experimental class and 38 students in a comparison class took part in the study. Students from the experimental class received the PADE model, and the comparison class received traditional teaching. Students from both classes were asked to compose two argumentative essays before and after the treatment. At the end of the treatment, students completed questionnaires on the PADE teaching model. Students’ writings were evaluated on aspects of linguistic quality and argumentative structure. The results indicated that students who learned in the PADE teaching environment outperformed students who followed traditional teaching method in the post-writing, and significant differences were shown in all aspects except organization and grammar. The questionnaire finding suggested that students from the experimental class held a welcoming attitude toward the PADE model and benefited from it from the perspectives of course design, teaching arrangement, and learning effect. The PADE teaching has implications for teaching writing in contexts that share many similarities.