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display knowledge‖
99
. Classroom talk is deeply embedded in culture.
In Western
culture, Kachru et al. continue classroom conversations consist of a tripartite series
of turns in which a teacher initiate, a student replies, and the teacher evaluates the
response. Other minority groups from linguistically diverse backgrounds may not
function well in this type of conversation. Furthermore, research by sociolinguists
on the style and patterns of oral interaction also show interethnic and cross-cultural
differences that often impede communication. He studied cross-cultural interaction
between Athabascan Native Americans and native English-speaking North
Americans, noting frequent conflicts in communication.
However, cross-cultural influences are beginning to be addressed in
collaborative writing groups in ESL and other writing classes. Allaei and Connor
offer suggestions for classroom practice in handling
some of the problems of
international student collaboration and peer response
100
.
Another related area of research is teacher-student conferencing, where
cultural differences may also hinder smooth and productive communication.
Conrad conducted a study that examined the degree to
which active participation
and negotiation were present in teacher-student conferences and what the effect
was on revision and final written products. Large differences were found in the
students‘ participation and negotiation of meaning in the conferences
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.
Emphasizing Anglo-American
patterns of writing, contrastive rhetoric may
encourage students to look down upon their first language writing styles. Kubota‘s
work addresses the issue of Japanese native speakers‘ preference for the linear
pattern of English after their introduction to it,
and Eggington writes
102
about
Korean academics transporting the American way of writing to their native
country.
99
Kachru, Y., 1995. Contrastive rhetoric in World Englishes.
English Today
11, pp. 21–31.
100
Allaei, S., & Connor, U. (1990). Exploring the Dynamics of Cross-Cultural Collaboration in Writing Classrooms.
The Writing Instructor,
10(1), 19-28
101
Connor, U. (2002).New Directions in Contrastive Rhetoric.
TESOL Quarterly,
4(36), 493-510.
102
Eggington, W. G. (1987). Written academic discourse in Korean: Implications for effective communication. In
Conor and Kaplan. (eds).
Writing across
Languages:
Analysis of L2 Text.
Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 153-168
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Advocates of the theory of the social construction of meaning through writing
insist on the importance of helping writers see themselves in reference to their
audience and social context. In addition to emphasizing
the personal growth and
integration inherent in such self-evaluation, social constructionist theory in L1
composition has allied itself with an anti-authoritarian ideology. In a similar vein,
Trimbur recommends a pedagogy that encourages the development of
individualism in students while lessening the authority of teachers.
Such a critical pedagogy, prevalent in many composition classes in L1 instruction
in the United States, has not been embraced by
ESL teachers and researchers,
despite the many studies on writing as a social construction of meaning discussed
above. Santos provides an excellent discussion of the lack of a desirable ideology
in ESL writing classes, a trend she laments. According to her, there are several
reasons for this missing ideology. First, ESL teachers
have been trained in
linguistic-a supposedly objective science that discourages speculation. The
thinking is that teachers teach the language; they do not dwell on feelings. Second,
ESL teachers in the United States have been pragmatics; they want to help students
write according to the expectations of member of their chosen academic discourse
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communities. Third, a great deal of EFL teaching is conducted outside the United
States where the power structures do not follow U.S. pattern. In other words,
teaching at the international level makes the critical pedagogy of L1 composition
in the United States somewhat meaningless when
extended beyond the United
States.
In the end, theory of newly defined contrastive rhetoric can be showed as
Figure 2.
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