Transfer of Mother Tongue Rhetoric among Undergraduate Students in Second Language Writing

Abstract

Mother tongue rhetoric transfer is unavoidable in ESL writings, especially for Iranian ESL learners, since Persian and English language is quite different. The paper discusses the negative transfer of mother tongue rhetoric in Iranian undergraduate ESL learners’ writings from the perspectives of choosing rhetorical structure in English and Persian writing. In this regard, 50 intermediate undergraduate Iranian students who are a bachelor in engineering fields at two private higher education institutions located in Malaysia, are selected as participants to give their opinion about which style they prefer to use for both English and Persian writing. Statistical analysis of the participants' performance indicates that Iranian undergraduate students use the same rhetorical pattern for their both Persian and English writing and there is no consideration regarding the knowledge of L1 and L2 differences. The results also state that above 70% of the participants prefer to give a general comment about the topic and encourage readers at the end of the writing in their English and Persian essays.

The motivational beliefs and attitudes about writing of international students enrolled in online academic English classes during the COVID-19 pandemic

“…Students who have always been high achievers might find it challenging to adapt to these new conventions while they continue to develop their L2 writing skills. This struggle could be more pronounced for students who perceive writing as a primary tool for exploring and expressing ideas ( Durkin, 2008 ; Lee and Deakin, 2016 ; Heng, 2018 ) and who might be inadvertently adhering to their L1 rhetorical styles ( Connor, 2004 ; Saffari et al, 2017 ; Wei et al, 2020 ).…”

The Influence of Negative Transfer of Mother Tongue on College Students’ English Writing and its Countermeasures

“…Only a large amount of language input can ensure sufficient language output. Students should choose some excellent literary works, famous aphorisms and idioms to recite in the process of English learning, and learn to imitate foreign authors in the process of input so as to promote the development of English thinking [5]. And students should strengthen the contrastive study of the differences between English and Chinese in order to correctly analyze the misunderstandings and conflicts between cultures and improve their intercultural communicative competence.…”

Toward a Transnational University: WAC/WID Across Borders of Language, Nation, and Discipline

“…• L1 literacy abilities and strategies do not automatically lend themselves to successful work in L2 writing but they also do not automatically obstruct work in L2 writing (see among others Saffari et al, 2017). • The work in first-year writing is, based on what we know from "transfer" research, often simply too dissimilar from what will be required later in various disciplinary and professional contexts for it to help students in later courses (Leki, 2006).…”