LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Separated by a Common Language -
Asian Students Writing in English

Renu Gupta, Ph.D.

Abstract

According to research in contrastive rhetoric, student writing in English is influenced by the rhetorical structure of the native language. This study examines essays written on a general topic by MBA students from three countries-China, India, and Singapore. An analysis of the essays showed that students from China, who learned English as a foreign language, structured their essays as an exposition, whereas students from India and Singapore, who had studied in English-medium schools, gave equal weight to a discussion of the counterarguments. Student comments revealed that prior instruction in English composition influenced the structure of their English texts.

1. Introduction

When experienced ESL teachers read student essays written in English, they are often able to identify each student's home country. Their judgments are partly based on lexical choice and syntax, but the primary clue is the rhetorical patterning of the essays. One explanation for these rhetorical differences in student essays comes from contrastive rhetoric, which argues that L2 students transfer the rhetorical structures from their L1 to the texts that they write in English (Kaplan, 1966, 1987). Several studies in contrastive rhetoric have found differences between the rhetorical structures of English texts, which are characterized as linear and direct, and the structures of texts in other languages such as Chinese, Arabic, and Japanese (see Connor, 1996 for a summary of studies). However, contrastive rhetoric has been criticized because its underlying assumptions remain unclear (Casanave, 2004) and it sets up a simplified binary distinction between English and other languages (Kubota and Lehner, 2004).

An alternative explanation, which this paper explores, is that social and educational contexts determine how students learn to construct English texts. Since texts are constructed and situated in social practice, there may be preferred styles for English texts that are endorsed by society and transmitted through educational institutions. Case studies of ESL learners have documented student frustration with writing in US universities, where the writing conventions differ from the way the students learned to construct English texts in their home countries (Canagarajah, 2002; Fox, 1994); in order to gain a better understanding of student problems in writing academic essays, we should first examine how they are taught to write in English (Charteris-Black, 1997).

In former British colonies, where English is often the language of school instruction, studies indicate that teachers may not address rhetorical organization in their English composition classes. Mohan and Lo (1985) found differences in the text structures of essays written by students in Hong Kong and Canada that they partly attribute to the different instructional practices in the two countries: in Canada, teachers and textbooks placed greater emphasis on text organization, whereas in Hong Kong the focus was on sentence-level accuracy. The situation is similar in India, where teacher feedback and evaluation focus on spelling, vocabulary, grammar, and originality of ideas rather than organization (Rani, 1995); there is little in the way of explicit instruction and students are either left to their own devices (Kesari, 2002) or directed toward a model essay (Singh, 1985). These studies highlight the importance of examining the broader social and educational context within which writing in English is taught and learned in different countries.

Although research in contrastive rhetoric has tended to treat English texts as a unitary phenomenon, Kachru (1996a, 1997) has argued that there are differences among English texts in different countries; she draws a distinction between texts written in the US versus texts from Great Britain, New Zealand, Australia, and former British colonies, citing Biber (1987) on syntactic differences and Connor (1995) on structural differences in school essays.

There is little detailed analysis of the structural differences between texts written in the US and those from other English-dominant countries. However, evaluation criteria and textbooks offer insights into what constitutes "good writing" in different countries. In the US, the Educational Testing Service (ETS) states that "[a] well- written essay should contain discourse elements, which include introductory material, a thesis statement, main ideas, supporting ideas, and a conclusion" (Attali, 2004: 4).

Other researchers at this organization have reinforced the centrality of the thesis statement to an essay (Burstein, Chodorow, and Leacock, 2003; Burstein, Marcu, Andreyev, and Chodorow, 2001; Higgins and Burstein, 2006; Higgins, Burstein, Marcu and Gentile, 2004) and the thesis statement plays an important role in the ETS teaching package, Criterion (Educational Testing Service, 2007). Additional criteria come from US textbooks designed to teach ESL composition that emphasize not only the thesis statement but also the use of topic sentences, supporting details, and transition words, such as first, however, and moreover, to signal sentence and idea relationships (see, for example, textbooks such as Oshima and Hogue, 1999).

In other English-dominant countries, writing instruction may be less explicit. One attempt to make writing instruction more transparent to students is the textbook prepared by the Open University in the UK (Coffin, Curry, Goodman, Hewings, Lillis, and Swann, 2003). Coffin et al describe three ways of structuring argument essays. The first type, an exposition, closely resembles the essay defined by ETS and ESL textbooks, but without the terms "thesis statements" and "topic sentences"; the essay writer states the overall position, then provides sub-arguments and supporting evidence (counter-arguments may be given but are not obligatory), and closes the essay by reinforcing the overall position.

The authors describe two additional argument types: the discussion and the challenge. In the discussion essay, "the writer explores the issue from two or more perspectives before reaching a position in the concluding section" (p. 60), whereas the challenge essay begins by stating "the position which will be argued against. A series of rebuttal arguments and supporting evidence then follow. Finally, the writer puts forward the overall argument or position" (p. 60). In both the discussion and challenge essays, counterarguments play an important role and the writer's stance is explicitly stated only at the end of the essay. From this, we see that students in the UK are expected to use a range of text structures, even if these are not taught explicitly.

The types of text structures taught in different countries may explain the results of two studies. Reid (1996) compared the second sentences (i.e., the sentence following the topic sentence) of native and nonnative writers in the US and found that the two groups used different sentences. When Allison, Varghese, and Wu (1999) replicated the study in Singapore with undergraduates who used English as their dominant academic language, the students did not generate appropriate second sentences; more importantly, neither did the raters, who came from the UK and Australia. This seems to reaffirm the structural differences between US and British/Australian texts.

With globalization, there has been increased interaction through teacher exchanges and international business, resulting in altered notions of effective writing in English; for example, in China, English composition textbooks now teach students to write in an "Anglo-American" style (Kirkpatrick, 1997). In other countries, such as India, educational practices are more resistant to change, because they are constrained by the local examination system, but the demands of the workplace have slowly begun to filter down.

This paper examines the English essays written by students from three Asian countries-China, India, and Singapore-and explores the educational contexts and workplace practices that shaped students' notions about writing English texts. In these countries, English plays different roles and is learned through different modes. In China, English is learned as a foreign language, but the status of English is more complex in the two former British colonies-India and Singapore. In India, where English may be used in education and for communication, learning is through "predominantly scholastic transmission" (Gupta, 1997: p. 53), whereas Singapore is one of the "multilingual contact variety countries" where English may or may not be acquired purely through the educational system (Gupta, 1997: p. 55).

The data for the paper come from two sources: essays written by MBA students in Singapore for a placement test, and their comments on writing texts during the subsequent remedial writing class. The analysis showed that students from China followed the expository argument structure, whereas students from India and Singapore gave equal weight to a discussion of the counterarguments.

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