The first article spent time discussing the issues in rhetoric in regards to writing of non-native English speakers. He mentioned a few examples and studies such as Kaplan’s theory and its biases. The different patterns of the job application process for Asians, Americans, and Belgians. Later on he continued by comparing two different studies, one of which in Japan, and the other conducted and Senegal. In Japan they had students write a traditional student essay and then translating it to English and then the control group wrote a persuasive essay choosing a side of an argument and supporting it. The study basically showed that students were comfortable in writing the traditional five paragraph essay in comparison to the non-traditional. In Senegal, the students face two major difficulties in their writing. One of them was that they couldn’t organize their thoughts and discern a specific beginning, middle, and end. The other difficulty was that their first written language learned was French and in French the main format of writing is in dissertations (thesis, antithesis, and synthesis). Some students carried this format over to English creating an unsatisfactory essay (Connor 231).
Kubota discusses a variety of issues in his articles. At the beginning of his 1999 article he discusses a little bit about the differences between Japanese and North American culture. He talks a little about how we work in groups but to achieve success individually with constructive criticism with our colleagues whereas the culture in Japan is more collective group to all achieve that certain goal. I remember in one of my past TESOL classes a fellow classmate was discussing the taboo we Americans have on plagiarism and how in other countries, the need to “give credit where credit is due” isn’t as important. The mindset is that someone wrote/discovered/thought of something important and that information is meant to be used and shared to increase knowledge. It’s all more about teamwork rather than giving credit to specific individuals.
He continues to discuss Atkinson’s thoughts on how Japanese find that the idea of critical thinking promotes individualism, self-expression, and learning by using a language. I love how when discussing this topic he mentioned that ESL professors need to view critical-thinking as a “cultural practice”. This reminds me of the stereotyping article from last week’s reading. As discussed in that article, we supposedly claim that the Chinese stumbled upon their practical inventions and that these ideas didn’t require any critical thinking. In that article Kuma discusses how Americans a privileged with a higher level of critical thinking and that Asians cannot succeed in this area. That article was contradicting the stereotypes that we created, but in this article I find it offensive as well that they say we should claim this way of thinking as a “culture practice”. Do we really think that we are the only ones capable of critical thinking?
Further on in this article they talk about fixed cultures and beliefs and then briefly state contradictions. They give examples of American students being submissive and silent during class as opposed to newly adopted behavior among students in Japan that practice patriarchal values as well as self-expression. And the article continues with thoughts and research of educational theories and means of learning in Japan. And towards the end of the article, different models of teaching are discussed that are used in the classroom and issues that they provoke.
