How L1 Rhetoric Influences Chinese ESL/EFL Writing in English
Two events converged to bring this paper to my attention. I recently witnessed a Chinese friend’s struggles writing his TEFL Master’s project. It was arduous and exhausting, thinking in Mandarin and trying to wordsmith those rhetorical ideas into English, and sometimes seemed nearly impossible. Coincidentally, I presented at CATESOL 2010 and was pondering whether to write something for the post-conference proceedings. As I perused earlier years’ conference proceedings for some models of how it should be written, I noticed this contribution from 2006:
“Why Does My English Writing Sound So Chinese?”
by Chingting Chen
The author provides two short essays for us to compare and contrast, one written following Chinese rhetorical patterns, and the other written following English rhetorical patterns (both papers and the proceedings are in English). Ms. Chen discusses 9 rhetorical differences, some related to the fundamental differences in composition structure, i.e. English uses “intro-body-conclusion”; Chinese uses “beginning-following-turning-concluding.” Other points of contrast include tone, induction vs deduction, responsibilities of readers vs writers, and social/cultural priorities.
It’s a nice piece of English writing, by the way. Clear, easy to follow, and accompanied by a list of references that will take you to more extensive treatises.