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Volume 4
August 2009
Article 4

Formats
PDF

Title
Intercultural Rhetorical Pattern Differences in English Argumentative Writing

Author
Jack Jinghui Liu.

     Biodata

Dr. Jack Jinghui Liu is Assistant Professor in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at California State University, Fullerton. Dr. Liu earned his PhD in foreign language education at Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana State. His research interests include intercultural rhetoric, heritage language learning, and curriculum development. Dr. Liu also served as reviewers for international conferences and academic publishers, such as Yale University Press.

Abstract
Although there have been many contrastive studies of English writing in college context, little attention has been paid to the empirical research on argumentative English writing composed by contemporary adolescent English writers. The present empirical study examined the rhetorical pattern differences in English argumentative essays written by high school juniors in China and the United States from the perspective of intercultural rhetoric. Data was collected from 60 essays written by Chinese EFL students and 50 essays written by American native-English students by using same writing topic. The findings revealed that the rhetorical patterns were flexible, as both Chinese and American students placed their thesis statements in four different places. The deductive pattern was most frequently employed for both groups, followed by the inductive pattern, and the non-deductive and non-inductive pattern.  Even though both groups preferred deductive patterns, American students preferred showing the thesis statement as the first sentence, and Chinese students preferred placing the thesis statement anywhere in the first paragraph. The findings indicated that English writing instruction and textbooks were the most significant factor of influencing rhetorical patterns in both contemporary Chinese and American students’ English essays. Further intercultural rhetoric research on ESL teaching is suggested.

Keywords: intercultural rhetoric, argumentative writing, pattern, Chinese EFL learners Introduction