Sean Tyler: Blog 5

 

 

 

I think being aware of the possibilities for different writing styles and teaching practices internationally is important. I think intercultural rhetoric gives the opportunity to be aware of protentional issues and plan to deliberately teach the specifics of American academic arguments. I think, as with any Composition 1 or Rhetoric 1 students, international students should be introduced to the style of American academic papers and have them diagrammed. I don’t think that academic papers need to be set as the standard for the most logical or most intelligent form of writing, they’re certainly not the most intuitive, they’re just the standard we happen to have.

The biggest issue I see with Intercultural/contrastive rhetoric, is that it seems very Eurocentric and built on generalizations and untestable assumptions, a criticism that Casanave doesn’t shy away from. I think Kaplan’s original idea that transfer from the language or ‘culture’ was inherently negative was already unnecessarily harsh and Eurocentric.

Based on my own experience tutoring ESL students, I would say it would take extensive experience, if not fluency in the language, to guess what is a transfer issue and what is just something the individual student struggles with. The closest I’ve come to intercultural rhetoric issues in working with ESL students is use and citation of sources. That was the only issue mentioned in the videos or the Casanave research that I have personally experienced, but in this situation it is impossible to tell if that is transfer from the first style of writing they learned or just inexperience in research essays, something plenty of American students struggle with. I think without students explicitly telling instructors what they learned in their primary/secondary education it is functionally impossible to guess if issues students encounter are transfer from their first language, or just normal issues any student may have.

I think that Black English Vernacular probably does have patterns of transfer, at least grammatically, and in that way is similar to L2 writing. I think that much of what intercultural rhetoric tries to measure may be the writing strategies and texts taught in courses focused on writing. Since Black students are taught with roughly the same standardized measures and same classic English texts there will be significantly lower potential for transfer.

I think Wayne Robertson’s version is more useful. Thinking about what actually needs to be adjusted/corrected in the classroom is more practical than overall speculations about how other cultures think and write. I think the point at the end of the second video, of taking into account how small most grammar mistakes are, and how little they effect comprehension, is important. I also think keeping in mind the extreme difficulty of learning a second language and trying not to dishearten or discourage students is the most valuable thing a teacher can keep in mind. The note on timed writing exams is such an important reminder and immediately struck me as something that instructors need to adjust for ESL students or just eliminate entirely.

Comments

  1. David KimeSeptember 29, 2020 at 7:52 PM

    I completely agree with much of what you wrote here. Timed writing induces quite a bit of anxiety in most students, and I imagine that it would be much more difficult for students who have to process that information a bit longer to get their wording right.

    Also, I thought that you made a very valuable point in the beginning: "...international students should be introduced to the style of American academic papers and have them diagrammed. I don’t think that academic papers need to be set as the standard for the most logical or most intelligent form of writing, they’re certainly not the most intuitive, they’re just the standard we happen to have."

    This idea of diagramming an American academic paper is something worth detailing further in the classroom. I think it would go a long way in aiding their confidence. But, on the other hand, the idea of a "standard" still feels limiting, as you say, "not the most intuitive". I am interested in how your ESL students have felt about such things or if it just seemed like a new form of writing for them that now required careful citation.

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