Assessing L2 Argumentation in the UAE Context

In this rapidly changing world, argumentation and critical thinking skills are undeniably crucial for new generations of Emirati students. These skills lay the groundwork for a competitive economy, which is a priority for the UAE in its Vision 2021. Specifically, today’s modern workplaces require workers to evaluate different propositions and develop their own after weighing up these various ideas, and thus the ability to defend arguments in English has become increasingly important for UAE university students in English-medium universities as well as their future professional contexts. Despite this importance, research regarding argumentation and the related critical thinking skills is sorely lacking in the UAE. This chapter delineates how written argumentation was assessed in a timed essay in a mandatory argumentative writing course taken by university freshmen in a government university in the UAE, and how the feedback gleaned from this common assessment was mapped to the teaching curriculum to shed light on the teaching effectiveness and to provide directions for future teaching.