Contrastive Rhetoric and the Japanese Writer of EFL

Page No.: 
151
Writer(s): 
Waiching Enid Mok, University of Hawaii at Manoa

In the last two decades, contrastive rhetoric (CR) has expanded tremendously
in scope. It has gone beyond text analysis to include investigations of political
and historical contexts for writing as well as cross-cultural differences in the
composing process. The fundamental attitude ofCR toward L2text production
as interfered with by Ll rhetoric, however, remains unchanged. Taking this
deterministic approach, the author discusses the pedagogical implications of
CR research for L2 writing teachers. More specifically, suggestions are made
with reference to English and Japanese rhetorics as to how L2 teachers can take
advantage oflearners' Ll rhetoric in the orienting process to L2 writing. The
foci of discussion are on the similarities and differences between English and
Japanese texts in terms of organizational style, use of logi~ and relative
relationship between writer and reader, and instructional methods of Japanese
and English writing in Japan. The discourse patterns under discussion include
expository, argumentative, and technical writing.

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