Abstract
This chapter examines the issues faced by East Asian learners of English in learning to write effective academic prose in English. It begins with a look at how different cultures can define writing tasks in starkly opposite ways, thereby negatively impacting students’ abilities to effectively employ “top-down” processing skills in the writing task. The necessity of content, context, and culture knowledge is discussed. The author then defines the basic template of English academic essays, and engages in contrastive analysis with the preferred templates of East Asian writers, examining both regional and language-specific features in order to illustrate the depth of the informational gap which must be bridged in order to enable East Asian students to write effectively in English. Finally, the author again offers two contrasting lesson plans, along with analysis regarding their effectiveness for teaching L2 writing skills.
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Notes
- 1.
This distinction is equally true in between listening and speaking.
- 2.
This is a Buddhist festival wherein Japanese people commemorate and honor their ancestors.
- 3.
This was pointed out to me by a professor-colleague who was a non-native English speaker, and since I started paying attention to the phenomenon, it has been amazing to realize how pervasive the pattern is in English conversations and arguments.
- 4.
Many dictionaries and reference books list this as “turn,” but in the context of writing, I think “reversal” is actually a clearer description to English-speaking audiences.
- 5.
Counterpoints, of course, are permissible in English writing; however, they are typically only employed when the author can specifically rebut them.
- 6.
Although, for the record, it should be noted that it’s also entirely possible in a Chinese essay to omit any explicit thesis entirely.
- 7.
Except, perhaps, grocery lists???
- 8.
I have personally received many emails from my Japanese students, written in English, which start out with offhand comments about the changing seasons or the weather.
- 9.
Note to native English speakers reading this: East Asian students initially find English essays every bit as crazy and ill-structured as you probably would find a translated copy of an East Asian essay to be. Rhetorical styles only seem “logical” once one has been thoroughly trained in them.
- 10.
Where, at the time of this writing, the author is happily employed.
- 11.
One can well imagine that the next lesson, if not a follow-up on body paragraphs, will almost certainly be about conclusions.
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Williams, C.H. (2017). Writing English in the East Asian Classroom. In: Teaching English in East Asia. Springer Texts in Education. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-3807-5_7
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