TEXTUAL IMPACT OF THE ORGANIZATIONAL PATTERNS ON PAKISTANIARGUMENTATIVE ESSAYS

Abstract

Coherence is an essential attribute of a successful piece of academic writing. When a learner produces an essay that
is inconvenient for a reader to follow, the comprehensibility of the text is compromised despite the merit of its ideas.
According to Eggins (2004, p.54), coherence can be achieved through scaffolding the generic phases of the text
according to its cultural purpose. This research aimed to investigate the organizational patterns of argumentative
essays and the organizational challenges faced by undergraduate Pakistani English Language Learners. For
accomplishing the research purposes, Hyland’s model of the argumentative genre (1990) was deployed to identify
the organizational patterns of the Pakistani learners’ essays, and the genre theory proposed by Martin and Rose
(2007) was selected to categorize the organizational challenges confronted by Pakistani learners in attempting to
write the argumentative essays. For the analysis, 50 argumentative essays were retrieved from the International
Corpus of Learner English (ICLE). The findings reveal that Pakistani learners possessed a limited understanding of
argumentative essay writing on account of skipping the obligatory phases of the argumentative essays and facing
the challenges of fronting, inconsistency, and generality in the phases of the thesis, argument, and conclusion
stages. It is reasonable to assume that Pakistani learners need explicit instructions and practice to improve the
organizational structure of the argumentative essay.