«Is There a Place for Cross-cultural Contrastive Rhetoric in English Academic Writing Courses?»

Lin Zhou
«Is There a Place for Cross-cultural Contrastive Rhetoric in English Academic Writing Courses?»
Bellaterra. Journal of Teaching & Learning Language & Literature

Bellaterra. Journal of Teaching & Learning Language & Literature | Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona | Facultad de Ciencias de la Educación | Departamento de Didáctica de la Lengua, la Literatura y las Ciencias Sociales | Bellaterra (Cerdanyola del Vallès) | ESPAÑA


Extracto de páginas 48-49 y 67-68 del artículo en PDF

«The theoretical basis for the thesis is contrastive rhetoric—the study of how one’s first language influences his/her writing in a second language (English in this study) and the dynamic model of academic writing that calls for students’ metacognition instead of prescriptive pedagogies. The focus of the article is not on looking for the differences between students’ L1s and English in the areas of academic writing, but the pedagogical applications based on the existing studies of contrastive rhetoric studies. The subjects of the study are students in the Writing Service Courses in the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, which according to the university official website, has the largest international student population of any public institution in the U.S. with almost 10,000 students from abroad on campus. According to International Student Scholar Services of University of Illinois, the total number of international students in Fall 2014 is 9824.

»As is indicated in the literature review below, the detected limitations of traditional contrastive rhetoric have led to a new model and approach towards contrastive rhetoric in teaching students to write in a foreign language. Kubota and Lehner (Kubota, R., & Lehner, A. (2004). Toward critical contrastive rhetoric. Journal of Second Language Writing, 13(1), 7-27) have suggested critical contrastive rhetoric, which recognizes students’ identities, the rhetorical forms and multiplicity of languages, which is in line with the dynamic model of L2 writing employing contrastive rhetoric. This call for a new perspective of the contrastive rhetoric emphasizes the cultural aspect. Thus, this research defines the dynamic cross-cultural contrastive rhetoric (CCCR) as the explicit instruction of students on the similarities and differences between their L1 writing and L2 writing and actively involving them in the finding of such similarities and differences in their academic writing in their L1s and English academic writing.

»The instruction of dynamic CCCR does not aim to teach the cross-cultural differences in rhetoric as a fact but as a starting point for students to reflect on their past experience of writing in both their L1s and L2. The instruction covers both the similarities and differences to craft a general picture of CCCR of both languages to students so that they could understand that academic writing is not only about following templates or rules. The areas for investigation include both the study of the organization and the language because, as Quinn (Quinn, J. M. (2012). Using contrastive rhetoric in the ESL classroom. Teaching English in The Two-Year College, 40(1), 31-38) has concluded, the direct learning of rhetorical patterns can benefit students’ L2 writing in English and allow them to function better in the new discourse community.

»Following these lines of inquiry, this study investigated whether cross-cultural contrastive rhetoric activities would facilitate ESL students in understanding the possible gap between their understanding of English academic writing and the expectations of English academic writing, and whether a pedagogical approach employing CCCR activities would improve students’ metacognition and prompt them to change their previous ways of writing.

»The research used an existing ESL writing service course as the experimental group, and another class of the same level that followed the same curriculum as the control group. All students in the control group received cross-cultural contrastive rhetoric (CCCR) lessons as part of their instruction. Pre-instruction surveys, unit feedback, and post-instruction interviews supplemented the instruction over the course of the semester. The question of the research is whether students’ awareness of cross-cultural contrastive rhetoric of Academic Writing in students’ L1s and English Writing has a positive correlation with the performance of English writing.

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»The results indicate that the pedagogy exploiting cross-cultural contrastive rhetoric could be implemented as a model for various courses of English academic courses. CCCR instruction and discussions recommended by this study is student-centered. Instead of providing students the model, rule and formulae to follow, the instructor facilitates students in the process of finding and recognizing similarities and differences between English academic writing and academic writing in their L1s in different aspects including rhetorical styles, rhetorical organization, and use of English language such as dependent clauses and cohesive devices.

»The growth of students’ metacognition reflected students’ knowledge of their own thinking (Kellogg, R. T. (1994). The psychology of writing. New York: Oxford) and the trajectory of their discovery of contrastive rhetoric throughout the semester traces their metacognition development which in turn helps them see how English academic writing could be shaped using their knowledge and experience of their native languages and academic writing in their native language. Future possible research could be generated based on this study: as this study lasted only one semester, students’ further writing performance could not be reported. For some students, it takes longer to internalize the findings and discoveries from CCCR activities.»