Argumentative Recurrences and Issues in Undergraduate Degree Theses: Input for Designing Argumentation Studies in Undergraduate Courses

Abstract

The teaching of argumentation at university level has played a critical, crosscurricular role in both undergraduate and graduate courses. It has been inherent to them from the emergence of universities, during the Middle Ages. As a matter of fact, it is exercised—and sometimes measured—in increasing degrees of complexity during the whole undergraduate formation cycle, with different assessment tools, being the most outstanding ones academic essays and their highest expression: the undergraduate degree thesis. This paper is part of a larger research, where the authors gather relevant input for planning argumentation studies at the university level. Consequently, the results presented here are not definite. The authors have selected those associated to
recurrent issues in the arguments preferred by students when writing their thesis. We found serious gaps in students’ argumentative formation, as well as a poor use of the resources available.