Twenty-Five Years of Contrastive Rhetoric: Text Analysis and Writing Pedagogies

Contrastive rhetoric in context: A dynamic model of L2 writing

“…In the last three decades, several books have been published (i.e., Connor, 1996;Connor & Kaplan, 1987;Kaplan, 1972Kaplan, , 1983Martin, 1992;Purves, 1988), and numerous articles and dissertations have been written on this subject. During the 198Os, the development of research approaches, such as text linguistics and discourse analysis, helped to improve the methodological orientation of contrastive rhetoric research (Enkvist, 1987;Leki, 1991). As a result, researchers have begun to study organizational structures of both Ll and L2 written discourse more vigorously and systematically (Martin, 1992), and contrastive rhetoric has come to be defined in a broader term, encompassing more than just the organizational structures (see Cormor, 1996;Ostler, 1996).…”

“…As Kaplan (1980) once wrote, the insights generated by scientific analyses of language 46 MATSUDA yield "interesting results" but they may not become useful to language teachers immediately because "the needs of the language analyst are quite different from the needs of the language user" (p. 59). More recently, Leki (1991) pointed out that "the immediate practical uses of the findings of contrastive rhetoric for ESL writing teachers are not altogether clear" (p. 137). Grabe and Kaplan (1989) also warned ESL writing teachers that "contrastive rhetoric does not offer a curriculum" (p. 277), although the notion "will continue to make a significant contribution to L2 curricular decisions and writing instruction" (p. 278).…”

“…The need for ESL writers to learn how to organize English written discourse still exists (Grabe & Kaplan, 1989;Kaplan, 1988;Leki, 1991Leki, , 1992Reid, 1989;Severino, 1993), although the way to translate research insights into classroom practice is yet to be developed. My aim in this study, then, is to develop a model of L2 writing that can help teachers place insights from contrastive rhetoric studies into the practice of teaching ESL writing.…”

“…However, this pedagogical approach came to be severely criticized because of its prescriptive nature and its deterministic view of the influence of the L2 writer's background (Leki, 1991). The criticism of this pedagogy in turn limited the potential contribution of contrastive rhetoric to the teaching of L2 writing.…”

Physical and Topical Structures of Manpower Discourse: A Contrastive Rhetoric Analysis in Southeast Asia

“…CR studies with implications for the ESL writing classroom began with Kaplan"s (1966) seminal work entitled "Cultural thought patterns in intercultural education," which involved some 600 L2 student essays. Albeit exploratory and, to a certain extent, more intuitive than scientific, Kaplan"s (1966) work established CR as a new field of linguistic inquiry (Leki, 1991).…”