Cultural thinking and discourse organizational patterns influencing writing skills in a Chinese English-as-a-foreign language (EFL) learner

Bilingual Research Journal, Fall 2001 by Gonzalez, Virginia, Chen, Chia-Yin, Sanchez, Claudia

Abstract

Writing patterns of a Chinese English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) learner were analyzed as a case study from linguistic, pragmatic, and psycholinguistic perspectives. Alternative assessments were used by American pre-service teachers and a Taiwanese EFL instructor for rating linguistic developmental problems referring to format, style, syntax, and grammar. In addition, researchers conducted deeper linguistic analyses of discourse organization and cultural thinking styles. The case study also presents patterns found, some conclusions, and theoretical and practical educational implications.

Objectives and Purpose

This is a psycholinguistic case study of writing skills of an English-as-a-- foreign-language (EFL) undergraduate student, who comes from a Chinese background, speaks Mandarin as a first language, and majors in English at a Taiwanese university. The objective of the case study is to understand from a cognitive perspective the role of linguistic, cultural, and educational factors influencing writing patterns in an EFL adult learner. It is the theoretical purpose of this paper to contribute to the conceptual understanding of cognitive developmental processes reflected in cultural thinking and discourse organization patterns in Chinese EFL writers.

The three co-authors were instructors for a junior-level course on second language learning and development at a large research-based state university in the Southwest region of the United States. As such, the researchers also had as their applied purpose the integration of educational technology (i.e., electronic mail) to content training, and practical experience in English-as-a-- second-language (ESL) literacy instruction for pre-service American teachers. Pre-service teachers need to be exposed to real-life interactions with learners of culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. In addition, researchers need to study the effect of teacher's feedback (i.e., assessment) on the EFL student's literacy skills. Providing this virtual contact with EFL learners can help pre-service ESL teachers understand ESL/EFL content at higher levels by linking theory to practice, particularly in interactions with second language students to whom they have had little prior exposure. Thus, this study explores some educational implications for training pre-service teachers in ESL content, as well as linking assessment with instruction for improving Chinese adult students' writing skills in an EFL context modified by virtual contact with future ESL American teachers.

Research Questions

In reviewing the literature, the co-authors found that most studies have analyzed Chinese ESL/EFL writing from a linguistic perspective, focusing mainly on analyzing the essays as a product (descriptive and qualitative analysis of syntactic and grammatical patterns). Instead, our interest in this topic comes from a cognitive, developmental, and constructivist perspective. The researchers aim to shed some light on some heuristic research questions with respect to the Chinese EFL student in this qualitative study: What linguistic patterns are found by American pre-service teachers in the Chinese EFL learner's essays? What linguistic patterns are found by the authors in the same Chinese EFL learner's essays? How are underlying cultural thinking and discourse patterns revealed in the linguistic aspects of the Chinese EFL learner's essays? How does instructional feedback provided by the pre-service American teachers compare to the Taiwanese English instructor's feedback and to the researchers' psycholinguistic analysis of the same Chinese EFL learner's essays?

Critical Literature Review and Statement of the Problem

Linguistic and Cultural Factors Influencing Thinking Patterns in ESL/EFL Learners

Kaplan (1966) was the first author to develop a deterministic hypothesis, suggesting that people from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds organize discourse differently, as a reflection of their native language and culture. Since then, numerous authors (e.g., Hing, 1993; Mohan & Lo, 1985; Qi, 1998; Yu, 1996; Wang, 1994) have explained the influence of cultural thinking patterns on the world views, values, behaviors, and language use of ESL/EFL learners. These cultural thinking patterns are called contrastive rhetoric. Kaplan (1967) defined rhetoric as "a method of organizing syntactic units into larger patterns" (p. 5) at the sentence level by learning how to use grammar, syntax, and vocabulary. Based on the interpretation of the first author of this paper, contrastive rhetoric implies a comparison between cultural ways of thinking in first and second languages that are expressed through the use of cultural conventions in written and oral language. Kaplan (1972, 1987) later revised his deterministic hypothesis of culture's effect on language use and offered a weaker version. The revision suggests that all the different rhetorical ways of thinking may be possible in any written language, but that one cultural thought pattern is preferred due to social, cultural, and linguistic constraints. Although these deterministic and revised hypotheses initiated a new line of thinking in how second-language literacy development was approached by researchers since the 1960s, it was not a revolutionary idea. In the view of the first author of this paper, these hypotheses stated by Kaplan transferred the traditional Sapir-Whorf hypotheses from the broader area of second-language learning into the specific application of literacy development.