Writing in Foreign Language Contexts

Learning, Teaching, and Research

Rosa Manchón, Rosa Manchón

• Publisher: Multilingual Matters
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781847699022
• Topic: Lingue e linguistica
• Subtopic: Psicolinguistica

This book represents the most comprehensive account to date of foreign language (FL) writing. Its basic aim is to reflect critically on where the field is now and where it needs need to go next in the exploration of FL writing at the levels of theory, research, and pedagogy, hence the two parts of the book: 'Looking back' and 'Looking ahead'. The chapters in Part I offer accounts of both the inquiry process followed and the main insights gained in various long-term research programs. The chapters in Part 2 contribute a retrospective analysis of the available empirical research and of professional experiences in an attempt to move forward. The book invites the reader to step back and rethink seemingly well established knowledge about L2 writing in light of what is known about writing in FL contexts.

Part 1

Looking Back. Research Insights

Chapter 1

Situated Writing Practices in Foreign Language Settings: The Role of Previous Experience and Instruction

CAROL RINNERT and HIROE KOBAYASHI

Introduction

An English as a foreign language (EFL) setting epitomizes the situated nature of writing. The writing of EFL students is affected not only by their first language (L1), but also by the educational context where they learn to write. This socially and culturally characterized context provides metaknowledge about writing (i.e. view of audience and goals of writing) as well as linguistic and textual knowledge, affecting the ways in which students process and produce writing.

Recognizing that L1 writing instruction/experience plays an important role in the development of students’ writing in an EFL situation, for the last decade we have conducted a number of studies to examine possible effects of such experience. These studies have evolved under the influence of major writing theories in the field of second language (L2) writing, including contrastive rhetoric, cognitive-process approaches, genre theory and sociocognitive theory. Along with this evolution, the methods adopted have changed from large-scale experimental and questionnaire survey studies to a case-study approach based on a variety of data sources, including in-depth interviews.

In order to elucidate this evolution, we have selected the 12 studies shown in Table 1.1. These studies focus primarily on two of the three dimensions of L2 writing that characterize the knowledge that students are expected to acquire: the features of texts they produce, and the sociocultural context where writing takes place (Cumming, 2001). The studies highlight a relationship between these two dimensions; that is, the students’ perceptions and use of L1 and L2 rhetorical patterns tend to change through writing training and experience, as well as with changing social-cultural contexts. While the chosen studies do not deal directly with composing processes such as planning and revising (a third dimension in Cumming’s [2001] terms; see contributions by Manchón et al. and Schonnen et al., this volume), those conducted at the latest stage show how EFL students in Japan respond to given writing tasks and construct texts in Japanese and English. The conceptual, linguistic and rhetorical choices individual writers make when writing essays constitute part of the composing process, which reflects ‘ideational, interpersonal and textual positions arising from the writer’s experience in participating in genres and discourses’ (Roca et al., 2002: 47). From a sociocognitive approach, the studies have looked at both macro- and micro-level discourse/rhetorical choices that students have made in constructing L1 and L2 texts.

Table 1.1 Main studies for analysis

	Reference	Title
Stage 1
1	Kobayashi (1984a, 1984b)	Rhetorical patterns in English and Japanese
2	Kobayashi and Rinnert (1996)	Factors affecting composition evaluation in an EFL context: Cultural rhetorical pattern and readers’ background
3	Rinnert and Kobayashi (2001)	Differing perceptions of EFL writing among readers in Japan
Stage 2
4	Kobayashi (2002)	L1 Japanese high school literacy training: Student and teacher perspectives
5	Kobayashi and Rinnert (2002)	High school student perceptions of first language literacy instruction: Implications for second language writing
6	Rinnert and Kobayashi (2004)	Japanese university teachers’ perceptions of L1 academic writing across disciplines
7	Rinnert and Kobayashi (2005)	Borrowing words and ideas: Insights from Japanese L1 writers
Stage 3
8	Kobayashi and Rinnert (2004a)	Composing competence: How L1 and L2 writing experience interact
9	Kobayashi (2005)	Rhetorical decisions in L1 and L2 writing: How do novice writers differ?
10	Rinnert and Kobayashi (2007)	L1 and L2 preuniversity writing experience: What effects on novice Japanese EFL writers?
11	Kobayashi and Rinnert (2008)	Task response and text construction across L1 and L2 writing
12	Kobayashi and Rinnert (2007)	Transferability of argumentative writing competence from L2 to L1: Effects of overseas experience

In relation to the acquisition of EFL students’ academic writing ability, we are greatly concerned with the issue of transfer of writing skills across languages, not only from L1 to L2, but also the reverse direction, from L2 to L1. A number of studies have investigated the transfer of writing ability from L1 to L2 (Cumming, 1989; Kobayashi, 2005; Sasaki & Hirose, 1996), and also from L2 to L1 (Berman, 1994; Shi & Beckett, 2002). However, few studies have approached the issue to clarify how previous writing instruction and experience affect the occurrence of transfer and even fewer have taken a close look into the direction of such influence.

In this chapter, we categorize our studies into three stages, which constitute a logical continuum, and attempt a critical examination of the research conducted in each stage. In the sections below, we summarize, evaluate and reinterpret the major findings of the studies shown in Table 1.1, while drawing logical connections among them. In the conclusion, we synthesize the findings and discuss their significance in relation to L2 writing theory, research and pedagogy.

Stage 1

The initial studies, especially two evaluation studies (2 and 3 in Table 1.1), were framed in terms of traditional contrastive rhetoric, which assumed that the rhetorical aspects of each language are culturally unique and preferred (Kaplan, 1966) and suggested that differences in organizational patterns between students’ first and second languages cause difficulties for L2 learners (Casanave, 2004; Kubota, 1997). These two evaluation studies were designed on the basis of the findings of Kobayashi’s (1984a, 1984b) study, which compared four groups of students (American college students, advanced Japanese ESL students in America and two groups of Japanese college students in Japan) in their use of rhetorical patterns. The study found a consistent tendency among the four groups: Whereas American students writing in English often used a general-to-specific (‘deductive’) pattern, Japanese students writing in Japanese frequently employed a specific-to-general (‘inductive’) pattern, and the two Japanese groups writing in English differed from each other, the group in Japan being substantially close to the group writing in Japanese and the group in the USA, relatively close to the American group. These findings confirmed what contrastive rhetoric had argued, but they also clearly suggested that the writing instruction and experience the Japanese advanced ESL students in the USA received influenced their frequent use of the general-to-specific pattern. In terms of research design, the study has strongly affected our subsequent research, in that we have continued to assume that a multiple group comparison can provide more insight than a single or two-group comparison in the investigation of the effects of such factors as writing experience on EFL students’ writing.

Method

Whereas Kobayashi’s (1984a, 1984b) study investigated the use of culturally preferred rhetorical patterns in the L1 and L2 writing of Japanese EFL students, the two evaluation studies examined the perceptions of L2 writing containing such patterns in a Japanese EFL context. More specifically, these large-scale experimental studies investigated how readers’ background (differing L1, academic status and amounts of writing instruction) influenced the evaluative judgments of essays with contrasting rhetorical patterns. We assumed that the findings of the studies would benefit both sides (students and teachers) instructionally, in that students might learn about reader’s expectations, and teachers could find out what features need to be taught in class on the basis of students’ perceptions.

In these studies, the term ‘culturally preferred patterns’ was carefully rephrased as ‘culturally influenced patterns’ as an attempt to avoid essentializing cultural rhetorical patterns (Kubota, 1997, 1998a). Each of the two ‘culturally influenced patterns’ was a collection of rhetorical features taken from a variety of sources, including research findings, professional writing and composition textbooks (e.g. for Japanese, ‘inductive’ with loose transitions among paragraphs; for American, ‘deductive’ with explicit transitional markers). In addition to these rhetorical differences, the two other features of coherence breaks and language use errors were also included as text characteristics, and four groups of readers with different backgrounds (n = 465) were asked to evaluate two essays, one with a Japanese rhetorical pattern and one with an American pattern.

Findings

The analyses of the readers’ evaluative judgments in the two studies yielded the same overall tendencies among the four groups. The 1996 study found that on one of the expository topics (TV’s effects on family life), Japanese EFL students who had not received English writing instruction (‘inexperienced students’) preferred the Japanese rhetorical pattern; native English teachers favored the American rhetorical pattern; Japanese teachers and Japanese EFL students who had received English writing instruction (‘experienced students’) valued features of both patterns. The 2001 study went further to analyze both evaluative criteria and comments by the same readers and showed clear parallel tendencies between the two sets of data: while inexperienced students attended predominantly to content in judging and commenting on essays, experienced students and Japanese teachers focused on clarity, logical connection and organization. The experienced groups’ perceptions tended to be more similar to the perceptions of the native English-speaking teachers, which may suggest that with more L2 writing experience, EFL readers’ perceptions of English essays change gradually from preferring L1 writing features to preferring many of those of L2 writing.

Whereas the method of using manipulated compositions in the evaluation studies drew both criticism and approval (Casanave, 2004; Kubota, 1998a), the three studies (1–3 in Table 1.1) together evidenced that cultural preferences for certain rhetorical features exist. They also showed that writing experience and more exposure to English rhetorical features change student writers’ perceptions, implying that such perceptions or preferences are not static, but dynamic. This part of the findings should have been more strongly stressed, as it was by Kubota and Shi (2005: 101), who took it as suggesting ‘a dynamic and varied nature of cultural and rhetorical perceptions’. The finding, in fact, supports the central criticism against the concept of traditional contrastive rhetoric that emphasizes the uniqueness of culture (Kubota, 1997; Kubota & Lehner, 2004; Matsuda, 1997) and accords with the concept of a new contrastive rhetoric, characterized by Connor (2002, 2005) as being concerned with dynamic interlinguistic/cultural influences.

Although the findings suggest that the writing instruction/experience students receive affects their changing rhetorical perceptions, the studies did not provide any insight into the effects of specific amounts and kinds of previous writing instruction/experience on L2 writing. Thus, we felt it necessary to find out more about Japanese EFL students’ writing training before entering universities. This turned our attention particularly to the current status of L1 literacy being practiced in higher education in Japan, including high schools and universities.

Stage 2

We conducted four large-scale questionnaire surveys to clarify the nature of Japanese students’ L1 writing experience and instruction in both high school and university (studies 4–7 in Table 1.1). In addition to our own research interest, these studies responded to social needs for investigating students’ previous educational training in two academic contexts, Japan and North America. In Japan, many educators have been concerned with how to articulate high school education to the university level in order to deal with the recent problem of declining academic ability among university students (Arai, 2000). Similarly, those in North America have become increasingly concerned with obtaining information about the L1 educational background of their non-native students to assist them with academic difficulties they are likely to face at the university level (e.g. Leki & Carson, 1994).

These questionnaire studies were theoretically grounded in the view of writing as a situated act, which emphasizes the actual performance of writing in a particular context, focusing attention on ‘the experiences of writers and… their understandings of the local features of context they deal with as they write’ (Hyland, 2002: 30). Through the use of a variety of data sources such as questionnaires, observation and in-depth interviews, this approach allows researchers to attain a detailed description of the context that characterizes local writing.

Method

Two of the four surveys (4 and 5 in Table 1.1) elicited Japanese students’ (n = 389) and teachers’ (n = 179) perceptions of current L1 reading and writing instruction in high school, while the other two (6 and 7 in Table 1.1) collected perceptions of students (n = 791) and teachers (n = 90) toward L1 academic writing at university.¹ The sample sizes for the four questionnaire studies were large enough for statistical analyses; however, the method of sampling had a limitation: although the survey for high school teachers employed stratified random sampling to obtain responses nationwide, the other three used convenience sampling, in which questionnaires were distributed through personal contacts around the country, and hence may be less representative. Along with the questionnaire surveys, in-depth interviews were also conducted with university students to take a close look at their writing instruction/experience in high school and university.

Findings

The quantitative and qualitative analysis of the high school responses indicated parallels between the students’ and teachers’ perceptions, particularly that the most important goal of kokugo (Japanese) instruction is to develop an ability to read and understand ‘bunshou’ (texts), and much more time is spent on reading than writing instruction. The overwhelming emphasis on reading over writing appears to be related in part to educational policies stressing historical and cultural heritage through reading classics and modern prose, and also to many teachers’ belief that r...

Table of contents

• Coverpage
• Titlepage
• Dedication
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Introduction: Broadening the Perspective of L2 Writing Scholarship: The Contribution of Research on Foreign Language Writing
• Part 1: Looking Back. Research Insights
• Part 2: Looking Ahead. Issues in Theory, Research and Pedagogy
• Part 3: Coda
• Index