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i HUE UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES ENGLISH DEPARTMENT  - AUTHOR: TRAN QUYNH HUONG MAJOR: ENGLISH PEDAGOGY THE INFLUENCE OF NATIVE CULTURE ON ARGUMENTATIVE ESSAYS' RHETORICAL STRUCTURES OF THIRD-YEAR ENGLISHMAJOR STUDENTS AT HUFL GRADUATION PAPER SUPERVISOR: Dr LE THI THANH HOA Hue, June 2020 i TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION 1 Rationale Research topic 3 Objectives Significance of the research .3 Scope of the thesis .4 Structure of the thesis CHAPTER II: Literature Review Introduction Rhetorical structure in argumentative essays .5 2.1 Definitions of argumentative essays .5 2.2 Characteristics of rhetorical structure in argumentative essays Language and culture 3.1 Definitions of culture .8 3.2 The relationship between language and culture .9 Cultural influences on writing 10 4.1 Definitions of writing 10 4.2 Cultural influences on writing .11 The Impact of Vietnamese Culture on Vietnamese EFL Learners‘ Writing Argumentative Essays 13 Previous studies 14 6.1 Studies in other countries .14 6.2 Studies in Vietnam .16 Summary 18 CHAPTER III: METHODOLOGY .19 Subjects of the study: .19 Data collection: 19 Text analysis: .20 Procedure of the data analysis: 20 ii Reliability and validity of the research 22 CHAPTER IV: Findings and Discussion 23 Thesis statement and Hesitation: confrontation versus harmony 24 1.1 Thesis statement (TS) 25 1.2 Hesitation (H) 29 Background information and Reservation: Directness versus indirectness 31 2.1 Proportion of Background Information (BI) 31 2.2 Reservation (RE) .32 The Use of Evidence in Argumentative Writing 35 Summary 37 CHAPTER V: CONCLUSIONS, LIMITATIONS, AND SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER STUDIES 39 Introduction .39 Summary of the key findings 39 2.1 The structural differences in argumentative essays between VE and EE .39 2.2 The explanations in terms of culture for structural differences in argumentative essays between VE and EE 40 Implications .40 Limitations and suggestions for further research 42 REFERENCES 43 iii STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP This study is claimed to be my own work All of the data and statistics mentioned in the study are guaranteed to be authentic Tran Quynh Huong iv ABSTRACT The present study aimed to explore differences in rhetorical structures of essays written by Vietnamese EFL learners and native English speakers The differences were then discussed in the light of cultural values to see how culture influenced the way Vietnamese EFL learners constructed an argumentative essay in English The findings suggested practical implications for teaching and learning to write argumentative essays in English better A total of 40 argumentative essays written in English (30 essays by Vietnamese EFL learners and 10 by American writers) were collected and analyzed To fulfill the aim of this study, the researcher employed Kamimura and Oi (1996)‘s classification of the organizational patterns of the argumentative essay structure for text analysis The results of the study indicated some significant differences in rhetorical structures of essays written by the two cultural groups The most striking dissimilarity involved the use of ambivalent Thesis Statement and more Hesitation by Vietnamese EFL learners The unwillingness to take a side in developing an argumentative essay might be attributed to the Vietnamese collectivist values of harmony and conflict avoidance This difference in cultural values also helped to explain the finding that Vietnamese EFL learners tended to use more Background Information and less Reservation when writing argumentative essays, compared with native English writers Finally, a number of practical suggestions were postulated with a view to helping Vietnamese EFL learners write argumentative essays better These suggestions included raising awareness of cultural differences in writing, teachers exposing students with more writing samples from native English writers, encouraging students to take a clear-cut side in an argument and to provide more concise, direct background information, and properly taking the opposite view into consideration v ACKNOWLEDGEMENT First of all, I would like to thank and show my appreciation to my thesis advisor Lê Thị Thanh Hoa for her unreserved valuable, constructive guidance and recommendations during the planning, development and completion of this research paper I would hardly complete my thesis paper thoroughly without her guidance, enthusiasm and encouragement She is one of the most dedicated, enthusiastic and knowledgeable lecturers that I have had opportunities to work with Next, I would like to extend my thanks to all of the lecturers, especially lecturer Nguyen Bao Trang and English-major students in HUFL who agreed to be part of this research despite their hectic working and studying schedules Their contribution played a vital role in shaping the findings of this study In addition, special thanks should be given to my best friend - Tran Vu Khanh Ngan for helping me find reference resources and checking the reliability of the study Her kindness and willingness to devote her time and effort so generously are very much appreciated Finally, I am deeply grateful to the English Department for allowing me to conduct this graduation thesis which is a highlight of my university life Hopefully, this research will serve as a reference source for further study, allowing lecturers in HUFL to improve the quality of their teaching vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS EFL: English as a Foreign Language ESL: English as a Second Language HUFL: Hue University of Foreign Languages EE: English essay VE: Vietnamese essay L2: second language CR: contrastive rhetoric TS: thesis statement BI: background information RE: reservation H: hesitation RA: rational appeals AA: affective appeals C: conclusion CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION Rationale Among the four skills in standardized tests, writing remains a crucial method to evaluate learners‘ proficiency in English, especially for academic purposes (White, 1987) However, according to recent test results from the Educational Testing Service (ETS, 2014), writing has been the most problematic to Vietnamese test takers This could be explained by the low quality in teaching writing, especially argumentative essays, the current approaches to teaching English writing, or the impact of Vietnamese culture and testing and assessment on learners‘ EFL writing (Trinh & Truc, 2014) For EFL third-year undergraduates in Vietnam, of all the writing genres, argumentative essays seem to play a pivotal role in their development at higher education level This is because it defines how well a student will be able to approach critical issues in life by showing their opinions and to persuade others with justifications This type of composition is the requirement in the third year after the completion of most language skills courses Also, argumentation constitutes the core text type in academic writing, and hence, is frequently tested by standardized English tests, such as TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) and IELTS (International English Language Testing System), which have been given much attention among university students due to an increasing demand for higher education, employment, business and overseas studies However, this genre proves to be difficult both technically and culturally to second language (L2) students (Pessoa, Miller, & Kaufer, 2014) Constructing good argumentative essays seems to be a challenge probably because of the differences in essay production between English and Vietnamese From my observations and experience of being an English major during the last three years, it occurred to me that EFL students‘ writing capability is affected by many factors: background knowledge, familiarity with English usage, etc However, native culture seemingly creates the largest barrier in the process of mastering writing skills The differences of rhetoric between Asian and Western world are no longer a new concept Specifically, the writing style of Asians is usually regarded as indirect, inductive and wordy, whereas that of Native English speakers tend to be direct, deductive and concise (Kaplan, 1966) Even for EFL students who are highly literate in their native language, the lack of L2 linguistic and cultural knowledge can stand in the way of academic success, (Spack, 1988) Similarly, contrastive rhetoric (CR) research has suggested that what is considered as effective writing differs from one culture to another (Connor, 1996; Hinkel, 1994) The English essays written by EFL students, particularly by Vietnamese speakers, might differ from those of native speakers To write the best English argumentative essay, it is not effective to apply the reflective, lengthy and deductive Vietnamese-typical writing style into the conventions of the genre in English Therefore, teaching and learning how to write an English composition properly have been a major concern at universities all around the world in general, and the English Department of Hue University of Foreign Languages (HUFL) in particular Jarunthawatchai (2010) maintained that, influenced by Kaplan‘s (1967) contrastive rhetoric, L2 practitioners came to understand that writers should be aware of the organization of the texts Thus, it is incumbent upon teachers to emphasize rhetorical rather than sentence level knowledge in their writing classes Consequently, in typical classroom settings students can be guided to focus on rhetorical features of different genres More specifically, since writing classes at university level mostly stress academic writing, attention should be paid to the rhetorical organization of different essay types such as argumentative essays As a senior majoring in English teaching at HUFL, and an educator in the future, I can gain a deeper insight into this aspect of writing through researching and reporting this thesis to help understand the structure of English argumentative writing Research topic This study is entitled: THE INFLUENCE OF NATIVE CULTURE ON ARGUMENTATIVE ESSAYS' RHETORICAL STRUCTURES OF THIRD-YEAR ENGLISHMAJOR STUDENTS AT HUFL Objectives This research aims to draw more attention to differences in terms of text organization by Native English speakers and Vietnamese EFL learners when constructing an argumentative essay in English Then from the findings, language students and teachers can have a deeper insight into organizing a piece of argumentative writing properly Research questions: What are the structural differences in argumentative essays between Vietnamese EFL learners and native English speakers? In terms of culture, what might be the explanations for those differences? Significance of the research The research is of significance for theoretical and practical purposes Theoretically, the study provides a small piece of empirical evidence and insight into the hypothesis on the connection between culture and writing Practically, the findings of this study should help to raise both EFL teachers‘ and learners‘ awareness of cultural impacts on writing argumentative essays in English Accordingly, Vietnamese EFL students can have better preparation for success in academic writing at universities as well as when taking international tests such as IELTS or TOEFL In addition, the study provides implications for handling students‘ difficulties in learning to write argumentative essays in English with suggestions for improvement 36 Examples of the common evidence types can be seen as follows: VE 4: For instance, I love to tell you a story about Thomas Edison, he is studies very bad at school and the headmaster send his mom a letter to tell that he has been banned from this school because he is stupid He asked his mom about the meaning of a letter and his mom say that he is so smart that no one in that school can teach him (AA) VE 4: Schools nowadays put too much homework on student It is a burden to them to develop their personality If they have no time to nothing unless doing the homework and how they can other thing that helpful for their personality development? (RA) EE 3: My young cousin, for example, who was caught by his father for his robbery behaviour as an ample example, rectified his misconduct and develops a high degree of honesty as well as integrity after receiving proper values inculcation.(AA) EE 1: For example there are children from all different backgrounds – some rich, some poor; some highly talented ans some intellectually challenged, all in the one school situation The teacher and schools’ policies can can guide them to be tolerant, respectful and accepting of all people regardless of their background.(RA) In terms of rational reasons supporting the writer‘s opinion, EE seemed to be clearer with more explanation to support their statements The structure problem of all essays may was in the missing of the affective appeals which means not many affective appeals could be found in English essays (only out of 8) One interesting finding is that when talking about the significance of family impact on a child‘s personality, many students chose to talk about divorce or children from dysfunctional families However, this is not the case for native speakers 37 VE 17: the whole life of each person is also to spend on family, so if a child is born in unhappy family with divorced parents, he or she is not easily to make new friends Even being daughters or sons with violent fathers, they will have different characters such as tend to violence, or lead on isolated existence I agree with view "like father, like son” VE 20: For example, the children are taken care of family They can effect on character of their parents If they are unfriendly, dishonest, children can learn and the same Summary Through the data analysis, similarities as well as differences were found in the way argumentative essays were written in English from English speakers and Vietnamese EFL Among the similarities, it was found that the students in both groups generally developed thesis statements, that most of the development of ideas was grouped into paragraphs, and that specific principles for each mode of discourse seemed to be applied the same way by both English-speaking group and Vietnamese group (rational appeals were preferred over affective ones) On the other hand, some differences were also found regarding organization and style: the proportion of background information is greater in essays constructed by Vietnamese; in addition, a large number of Vietnamese chose to ―sit on the fence‖ by taking both sides of the claim rather than supporting only one side Vietnamese culture—the native culture of the research participants—might play a role in making some of them organize the introductory paragraph in English in a circular fashion rather than a linear one This chapter focused on important differences between EE and VE essays in terms of a number of cultural features The results indicate that the identified differences between EE and VE essays can be attributed to a number of factors, among which are the Vietnamese EFL writers‘ nonlinearity in their argument patterns, their tendency to make abrupt 38 switches in the flow of ideas In terms of culture, these factors may result from the fact that Vietnamese students belong to the collectivism, high-context group Many of the argumentative texts produced by the research participants confirmed the contrastive rhetoric theory proposed by Kaplan (1966) to some extent, in that the Oriental thoughts flowed in circular direction around a certain topic prior to stating their argument about it, or that Vietnamese generally chose to support both points of views However, perhaps because Vietnamese participants experienced approximately two and a half years of writing and approximately six months of argumentative writing with thorough instruction from educators, their writing bears some striking resemblances to that of the English native speakers For the most part, similarities between the two groups of participants still exist 39 CHAPTER V: CONCLUSIONS, LIMITATIONS, AND SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER STUDIES Introduction This chapter summarizes briefly the key findings of the study It then discusses implications, limitations, and suggestions for further studies Summary of the key findings This research paper was carried out in order to analyze differences among argumentative essays of Vietnamese EFL students and native English speakers, followed by cultural explanations The findings show that Vietnamese cultural values had certain influences It is not easy to give up our native cultural values which have been formed and inherited from the past and have deeply influenced our characteristics and our daily behaviors Certainly, these values have great influences on the writing style of Vietnamese students in general and their English writing in particular Within the scope of this study, it is not possible to analyze all Vietnamese cultural values that cause difficulties for EFL students writing in English Thus, I have only focused on analyzing the values that may have effects on EFL students, namely collectivist values of indirectness, respect, harmony, and conflict avoidance Specifically, indirectness and harmony affected the writer‘s decision to agree or disagree, use of more hesitation, greater amount of background information in the introduction, and less reservation to refute the opposite view 2.1 The structural differences in argumentative essays between VE and EE As for thesis statement and hesitation, both researched groups displayed certain differences Most of them adopted deductive rather than inductive approaches towards thesis statements; however, Vietnamese tend to be more neutral when taking sides expressed through these thesis statements In other words, instead of giving a clear-cut opinion, some Vietnamese ELF students discuss both points of view on a controversial topic This sort of hesitation existed to some extent in Vietnamese essays 40 In terms of Background information and Reservation, Vietnamese students used much more background information prior to the thesis statement compared to their English counterparts Reservation (or counterargument) was a popular strategy used by more than half of the English participants while only a few Vietnamese took such an approach The use of evidence in Argumentative Writing surprisingly indicates striking similarities between these two groups Rational appeals or logical analysis was used the most frequently rather than affective appeals, demonstrating a common preference towards particularly rational, logical explanation 2.2 The explanations in terms of culture for structural differences in argumentative essays between VE and EE Such dominant features may derive from the impact of Vietnamese and English cultural context and values Belonging to a collectivist culture, Vietnamese highly value harmony by avoiding conflicts They might try their best to neither hurt the opponent‘s feelings nor be against their opinions Therefore, some participants attempted to adopt a ―balanced‖ opinion rather than taking a clear-cut side By contrast with American writers who value confrontation and competition, Vietnamese EFL learners used more hesitation, and less reservation As for indirectness, the Vietnamese are expected to be more indirect and relational when it comes to communication style This was shown by the greater portion of background information Any cultural context can bring about both advantages and disadvantages The following section presents practical implications drawn from the findings of the study Implications Such interference from the native culture was definitely unconscious (Kaplan, 1997) In that circumstance, the writer possessed no or very little awareness that the 41 native culture affected the way they organized ideas in writing an argumentative text in the target language They might not even be aware that differences existed in the rhetoric of the native and target languages Taking these facts into account, the findings of the present study led to some implications in the teaching of English, especially the teaching of argumentative text in academic writing classes This section will outline some suggestions on teaching argumentative writing to EFL students First, it is essential to raise the learners‘ awareness about the different types of rhetoric resulting from cultural differences In this way, they could adapt to the best type of rhetoric when they are writing in a particular language Accordingly, they need to find out solutions to overcome difficulties caused by cultural difference, such as reading and learning from samples of native speakers, which plays a pivotal role in a high quality EFL essay product Second, explicit instructions on English rhetoric should be conducted intensively in the teaching of writing to provide the learners ample opportunity to adapt to the use of this rhetoric and achieve optimum results in expressing their ideas to the readers According to Winfield and Barnes-Felfeli (1982), L2 writing instructors are better off teaching the cultural material initially in the native language, but through such fun activities as visual media or observational learning in the environment This arises in view of Wilson's report: the more comprehensible input one receives in lowstress situations, the more language competence one will have (2000) Third, teachers should encourage students to take sides when answering an argumentative question After taking a stand on an issue, students can generate and evaluate a multitude of evidence in a logical manner to support the overall claim An argumentative essay is meant to convince the people to agree with the writer‘s point of view Counterargument should be included to provide more credibility By showing what the opponent is likely to say in response to students argument shows that they prepared their topic and anticipated opinions of the opposition 42 Finally, students should know how to construct a proper introduction with appropriate length Background information should only give the reader the necessary information he/she needs to understand the essay topic; lengthy and unnecessary information should not be included Limitations and suggestions for further research There is still room to elaborate further regarding the constraints mentioned early on concerning the cultural area The researcher suggests the following ideas, which may be useful for further studies in the future First and foremost, there are a number of limitations in this study Firstly, this study is conducted only in the English Department at HUFL, Vietnam due to time constraints and involves a purposive selection of participants Which means the scope of this study was small, focusing on one university and a small number of participants within this university Should time permit, it could be carried out on a larger scale, so that a bigger and thus more accurate data collection could be achieved, and more indepth analysis could be offered in the study without missing some subtle cultural features in the essays In addition, findings for the first research question could have brought more comprehensive results via analysis and comparison among the essays written by HUFL students of the same topic instead of three topics Thirdly, most of the essay topics in this research not really offer writers the chance to generate affective responses for a fairer comparison in the use of evidence Topics concerning crime and punishment, art and culture would be a better fit Moreover, not only juniors from HUFL but also even those from many foreign languages institutions nationwide could be included for a more comprehensive research All in all, it is expected that future research will be able to address these existing limitations for a better development of the research field 43 REFERENCES Ballard, B., & Clanchy, J (1993) Supervising students from overseas Quality in PhD education, 61-73 Bander, R G (1971) American English Rhetoric: Writing from Spoken Models for Bilingual Students Bennett, J., & Chaloupka, W (Eds.) 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