EFL university students’ challenges in structuring argumentative texts: A systemic functional linguistics genre perspective

Abstract

Argumentative writing is important for academic success at the tertiary level in both Anglophone and EFL contexts. Being able to argue in English, however, presents significant challenges for EFL students, particularly those with low English proficiency and limited exposure to academic argument genres and rhetorical conventions. This study explores the structure of argumentative texts produced by Vietnamese EFL university students from a Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) genre perspective. SFL provides analytical systems for the qualitative analysis of 18 texts constructed at the beginning of an academic writing course. This SFL-based analysis, corroborated by students’ perspectives, reveals considerable difficulties faced by Vietnamese EFL university students in producing the typical generic stages of argumentative texts and demonstrates their limited ability to instantiate generic phases, particularly in providing evidence to support arguments. The study has meaningful pedagogical implications for the content and pedagogy of EFL argumentative writing.