Argumentative techniques used in argumentative essay-writing by French students at colleges of education level in Ghana: A case study in three colleges of education in Ghana

This study looks at argumentative essay-writing by students of French at the colleges of education in Ghana. It identifies and analyzes argumentative techniques as well as difficulties found in the students' essays and proposes solutions to them. The research instrument used to collect the data is an argumentative essay test in French. A systematic sampling technique was used to select forty (40) Level 200 students of three (3) colleges of education teaching French as a foreign language namely Bagabaga College of Education, Tamale, Wesley College of Education, Kumasi and Mount Mary College of Education, Somanya. The study shows that textual argumentative techniques such as stance taking either by agreement or refusal, defense of stance and synthesis characterized the essays. Also, most of the students lacked textual argumentative technique competence. Methodological techniques suggested as solutions to these problems include but are not limited to the following: systematic and thorough teaching of the concepts of argumentation, cohesion and argumentative approaches at the colleges of education. It is also recommended that, in class, teachers should introduce/adopt practical activity-based training on argumentative techniques examined in this article and regular exercises on argumentative essay-writing which lead to the development of competence in argumentative techniques. Keywords: Argumentation, Argumentative Essay, Argumentative Techniques. Argumentative Essay, Argumentative Techniques.