Argomentare all’università. Un’analisi delle prove a risposta aperta della sperimentazione TECO 2015

This article presents the analysis of the Performance Task (PT) of the TECO test, developed from the Council for Aid to Education's Collegiate Learning Assessment Plus (CLA+) and administered in 2015 by the Italian National Agency for Evaluation and Research (ANVUR) to 6323 university students enrolled in the third year of the bachelors' degree. The objectives of this contribution are twofold: one the one hand, through lexicometric analysis, it aims at providing an overview of students' written texts with a focus on lexicon. On the other, it offers an in depth investigation of the manuscripts in order to highlight strengths and weaknesses of the argumentative essays students were asked to draft for the test. Results highlight students' difficulties in analysing critically the information provided, in adopting the appropriate lexicon and, more in general, in developing an argumentative essay following its main features. Finally, some recommendations on the enhancement of university students' writing skills are provided.