Modelo de Razonamiento Algebraico Elemental: Niveles de algebrización

In contrast to English FAL, a frequency analysis reveals that the two final exam papers that comprise matric History are virtually identical in terms of their structure and question-types.32 Specifically, both History papers contain two broad types of questions (contextual questions and essay questions), and both papers give learners the option of either writing two essays and one contextual question, or one essay and two contextual questions.

With regard to the History essay, it is possible to develop an essay writing methodology that can be applied to any essay topic and that would take full advantage of some of the more complex writing skills that the learners acquired in the first part of the EAP course. Amongst other things such a methodology would involve

1. ‘Higher Order Thinking’ [HOT] words and phrases (e.g. words and phrases like ‘however’ and ‘despite appearances’) to emphasise (1) the complexity of the students’ argumentative strategy and (2) the fact that they would be arguing for a non-obvious interpretation of events.

2. Conclusions, in which two different interpretations of events are compared to one another, and reasons are provided for why one of these interpretations is superior to the other.

32 _{This frequency analysis was only applied from 2014-2015, as, with the commencement of the 2014} History exams, significant changes were introduced to the structure and content of the exam papers. Importantly, these changes were not random. Instead, they ushered in a set of new regularities with regard to both question types and content.

126 All of these skills featured prominently in the EAP course. Specifically, in the course’s latter stages, learners had to use HOT words (like ‘however’) to acknowledge when texts had two themes or arguments that were in tension with one another. In addition, learners were required to resolve these thematic and argumentative tensions through providing their own reasons for the ultimate validity of one of the opposing themes or arguments.

Importantly, this approach to the History essay has not been formulated in order to contrive a connection between the EAP course and the matric History syllabus. Rather, it has been formulated due to the self-evident ways in which it potentially allows learners to be fully responsive to the criteria for a successful essay that features in the rubric used to assess the matric History essays. These criteria are the following:

Very well planned and structured essay. Good synthesis of information. Developed an original, well balanced and independent line of argument with the use of evidence and sustained and defended the argument throughout. Independent conclusion is drawn from evidence to support the line of argument.

Seen in this light, the convergence between the EAP course and this approach to the matric History essay has not been manipulated. Rather it developed organically, due to the manner in which there was an unpremeditated overlap between the marking criteria for the matric History essay and the writing skills developed in the EAP course. Below I provide an example of an essay writing template that could be used to answer a matric history essay on any topic (and which requires learners to execute the writing skills mentioned above). In the template, an actual matric essay question on the Cuban Missile crisis is often referred to in order to clarify some of the instructions:

127 Matric History Essay Template:

1. The first sentence of your introduction should establish that you are going to directly answer the essay question. So, for example, if the essay question is “How did the Cuban missile crisis intensify tensions between the USA and USSR”, your opening sentence should be “In this essay I shall explore how the Cuban missile crisis intensified cold war tensions between the USA and the USSR.”

2. The second sentence of your introduction should contain a HOT word or phrase, and it should establish that – despite appearances – you are going to offer an argument or interpretation of events that questions a popular view of the essay topic. So, for example, my HOT second sentence was: “Although it is easy to depict the Soviet Union as the aggressive, primary instigator of the missile crisis, I shall defend the view that the soviet premier Khrushchev (rather than Kennedy) played a more conciliatory and peace-friendly role in the crisis.”

3. Your second paragraph should begin with a background contextualising sentence. This sentence informs your reader that you are providing necessary background information. In the example essay, my background contextualising sentence was “A number of events need to be taken into account to understand the political identity of Cuba and the origins of the missile crisis.” After inserting this

sentence describe these background events. These description sentences should be as concise as possible, and should always contain dates.

3. The first sentence of your third paragraph should inform your reader that you have finished providing background info and that you are now examining the main topic of your essay. In the example essay, I used the following sentence to accomplish this, “The missile crisis itself can be succinctly described through making reference to a number of key events.” After inserting this sentence describe the events that ‘constitute’ or make up your essay’s main topic. This description sentences should be as concise as possible, and should always contain dates. Sometimes you will need more than one paragraph do to this (for example, in the example essay, I needed two paragraphs in order to explain how the missile crisis intensified tensions between the USA and USSR).

4. The opening sentence of your concluding paragraph should provide a clear and emphatic answer to the essay question. For example, if the essay topic is “Did the Cuban Missile Crisis increase tensions between the USA and USSR”, such a sentence could be “In conclusion, it should be quite obvious that the missile crisis almost resulted in nuclear war and sharply escalated tensions between the US and USSR.” The remainder of your conclusion is perhaps the most

important part of your essay. In this part of your essay you need to explicitly justify why you disagree with the orthodox view. Here is the argumentative section of my conclusion (it argues against the orthodox view that the Russians were the primary aggressors in the missile crisis):

128

4.3.1 History Papers 1 & 2 (Source-based questions)

In both matric History papers, it is impossible to predict the precise content that source- based33 questions will ask learners to focus on. This is because source-based questions often require learners to analyse particular elements of photographs, articles, biographies and cartoons that they have never seen before. However, despite this, it is still possible to make certain broad predictions about source-based questions. This can be done because there are certain kinds of source-based questions that always appear in matric history exams. Thus, even though we cannot predict very much about the material that source-based questions will ask learners to focus on, there is a lot that we can predict about the source-based questions themselves. In what follows, I shall (1) briefly describe frequently occurring question categories in the source based section, and (2) explain how the writing skills needed to answer these questions draw upon writing skills that were transmitted in the EAP course.

33 _{Source-based questions require learners to answer questions which are based on textual extracts} (provided in the exam papers). They therefore bear a close resemblance to the kinds of comprehension questions that feature in English exams.

Matric History Essay Template (cont.):

Since US missiles in Turkey did present a potential threat to USSR security, Khrushchev’s decision to put missiles in Cuba can feasibly be seen as retaliatory rather than aggressive. Furthermore, Kennedy’s decision not to withdraw missiles from Turkey arguably shows that the US was perhaps the more aggressive party in the conflict. This is because US missiles in Turkey presented as much of a threat to the USSR as USSR missiles in Cuba presented a threat to the US. Khrushchev’s insistence that the US remove their missiles from Turkey can therefore be seen as entirely reasonable. In contrast, Kennedy’s refusal to dismantle US missiles in turkey can be seen as unreasonable. Thus, although such an interpretation is no doubt questionable, it could be argued that Khrushchev was the real hero during the crisis. By backing down despite the fact that the US retained a military advantage over the USSR, he was arguably prepared to set aside the immediate political interests of the USSR in order to avoid full-blown nuclear war.

129 Comprehension style source – based questions are very common and easy to answer. They are easy to answer because the answer they require is contained in the source – based material. Thus, to answer such a question, learners just have to understand the question, read through the source and write out their answer(s). Furthermore, unlike the comprehension style questions in English FAL Paper 1, learners do not need to paraphrase the part of the text that answers the question (it can, instead just be copied). In the EAP course learners were required to quote sections of texts to support their main claims, a skill that (self-evidently) requires almost identical reading and information extractions skills to the ones required by the comprehension style source- based questions.

‘Information bias’ questions also occur frequently in the source-based sections of the exam. As the name suggests, these questions require learners to assess whether source material (usually textual, but sometimes picture -based) is biased or – alternatively – reliable and objective. Although bias can be detected through a learner isolating and analysing a particular word or phrase (for example, in the memo of the 2013 exam, a USA source was judged to be biased because it referred to the Kremlin’s “duplicity”), the memorandum states that any relevant response can be used to show that a text is biased. This means that if a learner provides an argument which justifies their interpretation of a text, they will be able to successfully answer such questions. Despite the fact that the EAP course required the learners to use their own arguments to justify a thematic or argumentative interpretation of a text (rather than interpretations which sought to determine the historic reliability of a text), the adoption of an interpretive stance and the use of personalised argumentation to support such a stance clearly contain many underlying congruencies with the writing and thinking skills needs to answer bias -detection questions.

Finally, source-based questions often require learners to explain a concept in their own words. Importantly, these concepts are usually embedded in texts that provide enough framing information about the concept for a learner to answer the question by

130 paraphrasing this information (and, if necessary, drawing upon their own knowledge as well). The centrality of paraphrasing to the EAP course has already been spoken about in length in relation to English FAL.34