Disfluencies in Comprehending Argumentative Texts

In two experiments, we examine university students’ ability to comprehend authentic argumentative texts and factors that influence their application of this skill. Participants read several relatively lengthy arguments and identified the main claim and reasons. Experiment 1 shows that participants are not skilled at identifying key elements from an argumentative text (only 30% accuracy). The performance of participants of all skill levels was aided by explicit markers to signal the critical elements. Claim and reason identification errors showed interesting patterns such as identifying either an uncontroversial statement of the theme or a counter-argument as the claim. Based on the results from Experiment 1, a short argument tutorial was created and tested in Experiment 2. The tutorial was helpful when readers were reading simply to comprehend but not when they were reading to rebut. The results point to the need for further instruction in argument comprehension skills and the need for additional research into the processes involved.