Culture and written discourse: Cross-cultural writing

This week's readings were filled with powerful information. I would be lying if I said I understood everything 100%, but what will do my best to explain what I got out of it. To start out, I think it is important to discuss the contrastive rhetoric hypothesis (CRH). This hypothesis focuses on the research and teaching of writing among different international students and cultures in English as a second language. According to Hinkel in chapter 4, "The major theoretical claim of the CRH is that different speech communities have different ways of organizing ideas in writing." Hinkel further goes on to explain that this piece of information results in the language learner to have a "basic" or even "unskilled" level of writing, and that it is necessary for them to follow a specific paradigm if they wish to "contribute to the pool of scientific and technological knowledge."

Before further reading this chapter, I was skeptical on whether or not this was true. I felt as though I know several people who's second language is English and they are just as capable as forming an intelligent paper as I am. However, it is important to take into account their culture and how it may affect their thinking process and style of writing. According to Halliday (1985), "People express meanings to realize some social goal. Evaluation of texts rests on interpretation of the context of situation and the context of culture." What this makes me wonder is two non-native English speakers from two separate cultures would take away a message in English the same way. They would be both reading something in a language non-native to their own, and even though they would be reading the same thing, would their culture affect how they interpret it? This is something we have previously discussed, and is still something that really interests me.

The main focus in Hinkel's chapter 6 seemed to me to be the varying cultures that we might have in our ESL classrooms and how to go about dealing with that and teaching our students in an effective manner. Hinkel states, "there is a thin line between informing students of cultural norms that will further their L2 writing development and ability to function as L2 writers in academic contexts, and prescribing and enforcing dominant cultural norms in and through writing." I think this is an important piece of information to know, because what he is saying is that as teachers we must make sure that we don't force our students to focus on just one culture in the classroom but to inform them of all cultural norms and help them develop a steady writing pattern in their second language. I am determined to make sure I do this in my future classroom!

Kubota and Silvia's readings also mention constrastic rhetoric and how the thought process of each culture can create negative transfer while learning a second language and interfere with the learning process. I enjoyed the writing style of Kubota's article, and Silvia's reading offered many helpful tips to help students with their writing in an ESL class, and I look forward to taking advantage of those in the future.