I used to be one of the persons who assumed that written expression was a minor matter compared to "the facts" and "the findings of my research" (Barzun,1975). Taking some graduate writing courses at school and reading books like Simple and Direct (Barzun,1975) and The Craft of Research (Booth et al, 2008) changed my thought completely. Though my professors acknowledged that I have made progress in academic writing, I know there is much to learn and some seemingly impassable barrier lurking on the way. To be honest, I cannot say the process of studying to write is full of pleasure. When the composition on which I've spent hours drafting and revising was criticized here and there, I doubted my eligibility for graduate school. After all, writing is the most common task students would face in graduate school, especially for those who are majoring in humanities. That being said, I still cherish the harsh and direct feedback and contemplate how to improve my writing as well as why my carefully-worded work does not meet the standard.
The first reason for my work not meeting the academic standard is that I failed to use academic words and their derivatives. As long as my meaning is clearly expressed, the diction does not matter that much to me, so the style of my work does not seem scholarly. Since my first language is Chinese, a language is not cognates with English at all. (Cognates, as defined by Moss (1992) in the Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, it refers to “Akin, descended from a common ancestor.”) Route learning is the principal way for me to learn the vocabulary. The accompanying side-effect of mere memorizing is semantic mistakes and collocation misuse. I did well in English exams where the items being tested are something I've learned before, but when it comes to the output part that I am required to write something on my own, things are quite different from the test. Besides, the structure of my article is problematic as well. Though I have a clear framework of the thesis statement and supporting points in mind, the sentences become discursive when the idea comes to words. My meandering paragraphs lead readers to circle at the same point rather than move back or forward. Once I learned that I have such problem in writing, I have been trying to correct myself, but it does not seem to work well. Then I started wondering if there was something different in the way of thinking between the westerners and me, and if thinking should go before writing or the other way around. Thanks to Rachel Cayley's blog, I confirmed that the thinking before writing totally makes sense. Therefore, I am more committed to looking for the answer for the first question. The concept of Kaplan's contrastive rhetoric happened to popped up in my view when I was browsing online for solutions. Kaplan saw that "cultural differences in the nature of rhetoric supply the key to understanding the difference in international students' writing" (Connor, 1996: 11). Many scholars, like Spack, Zamel, and Scollon, later criticized the contrastive rhetoric because its stress on differences tended to apply polarized characterizations to cultural difference. Connor improved the traditional contrastive theory by bringing up the intercultural rhetoric. In her 1996 book Contrastive Rhetoric: Cross-Cultural Aspects of Second-Language Writing, she described the intercultural rhetoric from three aspects: culture is a complex intersection of national, disciplinary and other cultures; texts must be studied in the social contexts in which they were written and spoken; written discourse encounters necessitate negotiation and accommodation. Case studies carried out in China are also introduced in the book, which confirms the existence of differentiation between Chinese students' writing with westerners' writing. Having read the theories and studies, I think that it is not my ability that should take the blame. Rather, it could be the deep-rooted Chinese cultural background guide me to write in a different way. Using euphemistic sentences to support my idea is a habit just like using chopsticks to have meals for me. Though I feel relieved to a certain extent, cultural difference cannot be the excuse keeping me stop trying to better my writing skills to present appropriate scholar works. If you have encountered similar situations, say, not sure about the usage of collocations, you may would like to refer to this website http://ozdic.com/ . If you have make semantic mistakes too, broadly reading good works might help. Even if it takes time to make a difference in writing, I'm sure such skill will be collected into our arsenal in the end. References: Barzun, J. (1975). Simple & direct: A rhetoric for writers. New York: Harper & Row; Booth, W. C., Colomb, G. G., & Williams, J. M. (2008). The craft of research. Chicago: University of Chicago Press; Cayley, R. (2014, April 23). Writing as Thinking. [Web log]. Retrieved from: https://explorationsofstyle.com/2014/04/23/writing-as-thinking/ Connor, U. (1996). Contrastive rhetoric: Cross-cultural aspects of second-language writing. Cambridge Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Connor, U. (2003, March 08). New Directions in Contrastive Rhetoric. Tesol Quarterly, 36, 4, 493-510. Connor, U., Nagelhout, E., & Rozycki, W. V. (2007). Contrastive rhetoric: Reaching to intercultural rhetoric. Philadelphia: J. Benjamins Pub. Co. Moss, G. (1992). Cognate recognition: Its importance in the teaching of ESP reading courses to Spanish speakers. English for Specific Purposes 11:141–58.
1 Comment
Mela Sarkar
12/13/2016 05:32:48 pm
This cross-cultural rhetoric stuff is fascinating. I'm also fascinated by the different ways different writers (within AND across cultures) use metaphor. Metaphor is incredibly important. Your last sentence contains the word "arsenal", used metaphorically of course, which really brought me up short!
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