Using Toulmin’s Elements of Argumentative Writing in an Iranian EFL Context: Gender Differences and Age Variations

This study attempts to examine whether gender and age could be considered as determining factors affecting the participants’ argumentative writing with regard to the adapted Toulmin (1958, 2003) model of argument structure. As such, the corpus of argumentative essays written by 250 Iranian male and female graduate English language learners was collected. The participants’ age and gender were considered as the independent variables. Six major categories of argumentative structure were examined in the learners’ argumentative writing tasks and the observed frequencies were analyzed using MANOVA. The results revealed that there are no statistically significant differences between the age and gender of participants and the type and frequency of Toulmin elements of argumentation. The pedagogical implications on the use of these elements of Toulmin model are discussed.