The author examines the essays written by 40 S.6 students in order to compare how argumentative composition expressed in Chinese as the first langauge differs that in English as the second language, and finds that students express more effectively in their first language.

The author reports that a two-week intensive instruction on argumentative writing was given to a group of F.6 students in a Hong Kong secondary school, that they were asked to write essays before and after the training and that, when compared with a control group of students, the students who had received the training performed much well in the post-training writing.