The Tutoring Book - California State University, Sacramento

Worldview: the Continent, Asia and a Testimony from India
Niccole Scrogins
101
Tatyana Moran
Hyang-Sook Park
Manpreet Devi
Niccole Scrogins
Fall 2008
Contrastive rhetoric, pioneered by Kaplan in the 60’s, was one of the most holistic approaches for
working with second language writing during the time. Contrastive rhetoric examines the differences in
modes of writing between cultures. Perhaps the most beneficial result of Kaplan’s exploration of
contrastive rhetoric is found in the hearts of sympathetic readers like tutors and teachers in the academy.
But before we can become sympathetic readers, we must become aware of what makes writing different
from one culture to the next. If you were born and educated solely in the States like me, you may be
oblivious to the vast differences in writing styles across the world. Understanding some of these
differences may help you identify others in your ESL tutee’s writing. You might find yourself doing a
little contrastive analysis with your multilingual writers. Hopefully, and most importantly, you might
begin to understand the challenges that multilingual writers face when attempting to compose written text
in a language and culture wildly different from their own, opening an ocean of knowledge and creative
tools to use when working with the wonderfully diverse population of writers who frequent the University
Writing Center. Below, three ESL writer/tutors share their experience and expertise.
Tutoring Continental Student Writers
Tatyana Moran
Western cultures are often viewed as individualistic and hence supportive of direct, assertive, and
explicit verbal styles. However, this is a broad generalization that can be damaging while working with
multilingual students. Because of such generalizations, the writing styles of European students might be
mistakenly viewed as closely related to the American, white, middle-class writing modes and, therefore,
not deserving of special approach. In the present article, I will argue that Anglo-American and
Continental writing traditions are in fact distinctly different and that the writing center should be a contact
zone where understanding of the differences between American and Continental academic writing could
be negotiated.
The Continent refers to continental Europe, explicitly excluding the United Kingdom as an island.
Interestingly, this geographical division has resulted in two different writing traditions. Studies show that
continental scholarship of Central and Eastern Europe, including Russia, was developed through direct
contact with German thinking and intellectual style. There are two different writing traditions within the
Western culture: Anglo-American and Continental (Clyne, 1989; Duszak, 1997; Rienecker & Jörgensen,
2003). Based on these findings, I will refer to the writing style of the students from continental Europe as
“continental” style.
On the Continent, where was been born and educated, universities do not endorse the teaching of
academic writing. The underlying rationale for this position is that content is married to form and good
writing is married to good thinking and all these are so tied together that instruction which separates these
marriages may be a fruitless endeavor. The idea of good writing as a gift, as an innate intellectual or
artistic talent which is, in its nature, unteachable, dominates continental attitudes toward academic
writing. In schools, exercises in creative writing replace the English drill in step-by-step instruction in the
production of argumentative texts. For instance, the teacher may read aloud the best student’s paper but
would never comment on what makes it good; thus, the ability to produce good writing is viewed as an art
to be mastered through observation and practice.