Applying contrastive rhetoric in teaching toefl ibt essay writing to vietnamese students

APPLYING CONTRASTIVE RHETORIC IN TEACHING TOEFL iBT ESSAY WRITING TO VIETNAMESE STUDENTS Submitted to the Department of English Linguistics & Literature in partial fulfillment of the

APPLYING CONTRASTIVE RHETORIC IN

TEACHING TOEFL iBT ESSAY WRITING

TO VIETNAMESE STUDENTS

Submitted to the Department of English Linguistics & Literature

in partial fulfillment of the Master’s degree in TESOL

By

HUYNH PHONG NHUAN

Supervised by:

DANG VAN HUNG, Ph.D

HO CHI MINH CITY, AUGUST 2011

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY – HOCHIMINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES  DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LINGUISTICS AND 

I certify my authorship of the Master’s Thesis submitted today entitled

Applying Contrastive Rhetoric in Teaching TOEFL iBT Essay Writing to Vietnamese Students

In terms of the Statement of requirements for Theses in Masters’ programs issued

by the Higher Degree Committee of the Department of English Linguistics and Literature, University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vietnam National University of Ho Chi Minh City

HCMC, August 2011

HUYNH PHONG NHUAN

I hereby state that, I, HUYNH PHONG NHUAN, being a candidate for the degree of Master of Arts (TESOL) accept the requirements of the University relating to the retention and use of Master’s Thesis deposited in the Library

In terms of these conditions, I agree to the original of my thesis being deposited in the Library to be accessible for the purpose of study and research, in accordance with the normal condition established by the Librarian for the care, loan or reproduction of theses

HCMC, June, 2011

Signature

HUYNH PHONG NHUAN

First of all I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor,

Dr Dang Van Hung, for his enormous help and his prolific suggestions, and for keeping me focused on my research This thesis would have never been possible without him

I also want to express my sincere thanks to Dr Ho Thanh My Phuong and Than Trong Minh for their kind support and advice on many aspects of my study

I am deeply indebted to my colleagues at my workplace Without their suggestions, support and kindness, I would never have been able to pursue this work to the end I also want to thank the students who were very responsive to the survey questionnaires

My sincere gratitude also goes to all of the professors who devotedly taught

me during my postgraduate studies at the USSH In addition, I want to say you to all of my classmates, who have inspired and encouraged me during the study process and compilation of this thesis

thank-Another English teacher to whom I want to show my gratitude is Ms Moray Banfield She has done me a great favor by reading and editing the language used in this thesis

Finally, I want to express my profound appreciation of my beloved for her support with finance, data entry, as well as her encouragement, understanding, and

patience especially during the hard times of this study

This thesis is a study of contrastive rhetoric which explores the influence of Vietnamese culture on the writing of Vietnamese learners of English The study aims to raise awareness of the usefulness of contrastive rhetoric theory in teaching and learning English writing Its goals are set to find out (1) teachers’ and students’ attitudes to problems in writing argumentative essays, (2) the quality of students’ writing after applying the concept of contrastive rhetoric, and (3) recommendations for future applications

As for the framework of analysis, the study examines the textual patterning

of more than 2000 essays by Vietnamese students who were enrolled in TOEFL iBT training programs at one foreign language center In addition, it also utilizes various other research tools such as interviews, surveys, and observations to attain its goals There are more than 200 students and teachers involved in the survey, of whom about 10 teachers presented their viewpoints in interviews Furthermore, data collected from the observation of actual class activities also contribute to the analysis in this thesis

The study revealed that the awareness of contrastive rhetoric is rather high

in the English teaching and learning community in the Center; however, in some aspects, the approaches to address the cultural issues in English writing do not seem to be critical enough The common trends in learning and teaching English writing more often lean towards grammar-translation orientation to create beautiful language rather than developing a persuasive language for argumentative requirements used in TOEFL iBT classes

The study, thus, aims to establish a useful framework in order to make use

of contrastive rhetoric to enhance students’ writing skill for the academic environment in the future

List of Tables

Table 2.1: Effective Writing in English and Chinese for Academic Contexts   24 

Table 3.1: Implied Purposes from the Student Questionnaires   40 

Table 3.2: Implied Purposes from the Teacher Questionnaires   41 

Table 3.3: Implied Contents of the Interview Questions   42 

Table 4.1: Percentage of Use of Transition Words   68 

Table 4.1: Results from the Interviews   74 

Table 4.2: Class activities under Observations   75 

List of Figures   Figure 2.1: Source: Kaplan (1966, 15) Cultural Thought Patterns   17 

Figure 4.1: Positions in an Essay to Show the Main Idea   48 

Figure 4.2: Attitude of Directness   49 

Figure 4.3: Where to State an Opinion: Comparison of Directness in Students at  Different Levels   50 

Figure 4.4: How to State an Opinion: Comparison of Directness in Students at  Different Levels   51 

Figure 4.5: Students’ Concern(s) over a Well‐Written Essay   52 

Figure 4.6: Students’ Concern(s) over a Well‐Written Essay at Different Levels   53 

Figure 4.7: Students’ Ways of Expressing Ideas   54 

Figure 4.8: The Most Important Feature in an Essay   55 

Figure 4.8.bis: Students’ Concern(s) about Features in an Essay   56 

Figure 4.9: Sources of Help for Writing   58 

Figure 4.10: Whether a Good Vietnamese Writer Would Be a Good English  Student Writer   60 

Figure 4.11: Teachers’ Concern(s) about Teaching Writing   60 

Figure 4.13: Teaching Process   62 

Figure 4.14: Percentage of Use of Transition Words between the two Groups   63 

Figure 4.15: Percentage of Use of Transition Words by Student’s Levels compared  to the Test Group   64 

Figure 4.16: Number of Paragraphs per Essay   65 

Figure 4.17: Average Number of Paragraphs per Independent Essay   66 

Figure 4.18: Average Word Number per Independent Essay   66 

Figure 4.19: Directness Shown by Using Common Expressions   67 

CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY OF MASTERS’ THESIS   ii 

RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS   iii 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS   iv 

ABSTRACT   v 

LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES   vi 

CONTENTS   viii 

CHAPTER 1   1 

1.1 Background of the Study   1 

1.2 Aims and Objectives   4 

1.2.1 Aims   4 

1.2.2 Objectives   4 

1.3 Research Questions and Hypothesis   4 

1.3.1 Research Questions   4 

1.3.2 Hypothesis:   5 

1.4 The professional significance of the study   6 

1.5 An Overview of the Methodology   7 

1.6 The Delimitations and Limitations of the Study   8 

1.7 Definitions of Key Terms   9 

CHAPTER 2   11 

2.1 Contrastive rhetoric theory   12 

2.2 Some typical issues of Vietnamese learners of English writing   29 

2.3 TOEFL iBT writing criteria   30 

2.4 Special studies of written texts by TOEFL iBT researchers   33 

CHAPTER 3   36 

3.1 The General Perspective   36 

3.2 The Research Context   36 

3.3 The Research Participants   38 

3.4 Instruments Used in Data Collection  39 

3.5 Procedures   43 

3.6 Data Analysis   44 

3.7 Ethical Considerations   45 

4.1 Data Analysis   47 

4.1.1 Questionnaires ‐ The statistics   47 

4.1.2 Documentation   63 

4.1.3 Interviews   68 

4.1.4 Observations   74 

4.2 Discussion of Results   75 

4.2.1 The Results with Reference to the Literature   75 

4.2.2 The Results and the Application of Contrastive Rhetoric   78 

CHAPTER 5   80 

5.1 Summary of Findings   80 

5.1.1 Review of the problem statements   80 

5.1.2 Findings   81 

5.2 Implications   82 

5.3 Suggestions   83 

5.3.1 Suggestion for a lesson plan   83 

5.3.2 Suggestions for Additional Investigation   87 

5.4 Conclusion   88 

References   89 

Appendix 1   96 

Appendix 2   98 

Appendix 3   100 

Appendix 4   101 

Appendix 5   102 

Appendix 6   102   

INTRODUCTION

This thesis is a study of how to improve English writing skill by researching the influence of cultural differences on the way to compose an academic English text The research was based primarily upon direct observation

by the researcher, an EFL teacher, who used some means of experiential and experimental approaches to the teaching of English writing In the first chapter of this thesis, the researcher presents the factors that may affect this study, specifies the main theme of the study which reaches all aspects of the study, describes its significance in some extent, and briefly summarizes the methodology used in the study The chapter concludes by giving some points about the delimitations of the study and the definitions of some special terms used in this paper

1.1 Background of the Study

This thesis is in response to the societal demand of English writing which can be seen by the fact that many English centers are offering training programs for academic writing English learners in Vietnam no longer seem to be satisfied with improving their listening and speaking skills only these days; they also aim to master English writing skills This holds true for young students who want to get

an advantage to study abroad, and office workers who desire to know how to write English effectively for business purposes In contrast with the long-held belief that Vietnamese students are usually good at reading and writing compared to listening and speaking, the outcomes of some pretests conducted by the author himself show that their ability in academic writing falls far short of the requirements Ironically, English-writing students do not seem to believe in their shortcomings

until they have the problems pointed to them Because there are many obstacles that prevent the learners from achieving their goals, finding the causes that hinder their achievement is a critical need, and it is also the inspiration for this thesis

Thanks to the fact that there are so many training classes for TOEFL iBT and IELTS examinations these days, Vietnamese learners of English have more chances to practice writing to meet the requirements of these examinations; on the other hand, the teachers responsible for these training courses also have more chances to understand more about academic writing skill, beside linguistic knowledge, to help their students perform their tasks successfully Based on the current situation, this thesis focuses on finding a way to assist students master the writing skills needed to meet the demands of TOEFL iBT exams Therefore, the research concentrated on teachers and students who have been involved with the TOEFL iBT programs for some time to make the research become more practical

It might be useful at this juncture to briefly describe the widespread development of the TOEFL iBT program and its academic requirements for writing on which this thesis is based First, at this moment, there are more than 7,500 colleges, agencies and other institutions in over 130 countries that accept TOEFL scores The candidates can take the test rather easily in one of the 4,500 test centers located in 165 countries, including Vietnam1 Furthermore, the test uses the Internet link to receive the tasks from the test-takers through computer systems, so it is rather suitable to the test-takers’ convenience Because of its current popularity all over the world these days, the TOEFL iBT may be a good choice for the learners of English who want to get some achievements such as studying at a higher education institution, getting admissions to English language learning program, applying for scholarships and certification candidates, tracking their progress in English-learning, and applying for visas Beside speaking, listening, and reading skills, academic writing skill is a critical requirement for the TOEFL iBT test In order to test the candidates’ writing ability, the TOEFL iBT writing section asks the test-takers to perform two tasks related to an academic

1

 According to Educational Testing Service (ETS), 2010. 

environment The first task is a 200-word integrated essay to be completed in 20 minutes in which the test-taker has to show that they know how to write a research report by combining the facts from a text and a lecture which are on the same topic The second is a 300-word independent essay to be completed in 30 minutes

in which the test-taker has to present an argument on a given real-life topic Therefore, English writing, especially academic writing, is now in demand among many Vietnamese learners of English

Vietnamese students may think that writing is not too difficult at first when they begin to study how to write English compositions; however, over time, they realize that they make more mistakes in writing than they expected they would, such as comma splices or run-on sentences, and it is rather hard for them to overcome the cemented errors Also, after a long time of studying English, the learners start to recognize that there is something else that they need to study more than just grammar To find the causes of these phenomena, the researcher is more concerned with the differences among cultures, or the rhetorical differences, of personal inventions and social conventions, the way people in English-speaking countries write compared to the way Vietnamese people do The term that will be

used for the theme throughout this thesis is “contrastive rhetoric”, and it will be

clarified later

Another important factor which inspired the researcher to write this thesis is the practical application of the knowledge of contrastive rhetoric in the Vietnamese setting The study, therefore, always tries to make use of the empirical facts gathered throughout the duration of the study to make suggestions for future use From this leading guideline, the researcher’s contemplation and effort have been concentrated to form a formula as being stated later in the next section In brief, this thesis was based on the study, surveys and practices of Vietnamese students and their writing classes to seek a solution to some chronic obstacles to their English writing

1.2.1 Aims

The main aim of this research is to ascertain a way to raise Vietnamese students’ competence in English academic writing skill To determine what methods have been used until now may give helps in this field, for a long time the researcher has searched through a wide range of related studies by well-known

researchers, and eventually found that contrastive rhetoric may be of great value,

which will be discussed in detail in the next chapter In other words, contrastive rhetoric seems to be the solution to the problem of English writing for Vietnamese students

2 To prove that the concept of contrastive rhetoric is useful in teaching English writing in Vietnam, the results in students’ work after applying this concept in class must be examined This is the second objective

3 The third objective is to make an investigation into the teachers’ attitudes and the approaches they often conduct in class to offer suggestions for preparing lesson plans used in academic writing classes

1.3 Research Questions and Hypothesis

1.3.1 Research Questions

In order to achieve those objectives, the following research questions must

be addressed:

1 To find out whether the concept of contrastive rhetoric may be applied

in the Vietnamese setting

2 To determine whether there would be better results in students’ work after applying the new way of teaching writing

3 To suggest a way to prepare lesson plans for TOEFL iBT writing classes

if the contrastive rhetorical approach is applicable

1.3.2 Hypothesis:

Contrastive rhetoric, or intercultural rhetoric, research focuses on good writing skill for both ESL (English as a Second Language) and EFL (English as a Foreign Language) classes Because of the demand for well-written essays in TOEFL iBT exams these days, this thesis aims to study how to apply the new trends of contrastive rhetoric research into teaching and learning writing essays effectively for Vietnamese students, and whether the use of contrastive rhetoric promotes certain advantages to Vietnamese learners of English writing Therefore, the writing skill considered here is not for general purposes, but focused uniquely upon the writing criteria set on the basis of the TOEFL iBT program, and it is also based on the supposition that contrastive rhetoric theory might be applied in various ways to help students improve their academic ability for the recruitment of North American and Canadian universities This research also rests on the supposition that the teaching of writing could be enhanced if the ideas of contrastive rhetoric are studied thoroughly and applied in the Vietnamese setting, especially in academic writing classes

To test the hypothesis that whether contrastive rhetoric theory has any improvement for writing skill, it is necessary to find the answer to the question: Whether there would be any improvement in Vietnamese students’ ability to write after they take the TOEFL iBT writing courses with the help of contrastive rhetoric theory This is the main theme of this thesis which controls the flow of every part in this thesis

Most of teachers and professors whom the researcher has had the chance to meet complained that Vietnamese students, even post-graduates who have practiced writing for a long time, fail to consider many basic principles applied in writing The blames usually fall on students’ lack of grammatical knowledge and spelling As a result, more intensive drills of grammar and spelling are offered in class to help students correct their faults in writing, and then students under the pressure of their teachers’ demand tend to make their essays grammatically perfect all the time Needless to say that in order to have well-written texts in any genres, students at any levels must acquire a linguistic competence in vocabulary, grammar, and that a bad discourse organization in a written text often accompanies poor lexico-grammatical competence This is the bottom-up processing mentioned

by Marianne Celce-Murcia and Elite Olshtain (2000) However, even when the lexico-grammatical competence criteria are satisfied, that does not mean Vietnamese students will definitely achieve the art of writing English A well-written English text does not necessarily include only correct sentence structures and beautiful words

The significance of this study is to test whether the understanding of contrastive rhetoric application may help Vietnamese students effectively improve their way of writing English texts after they have already mastered a certain level

of lexico-grammatical knowledge at a certain level These questions are now very important because the demand for well-written English texts is spreading throughout many other disciplines, not only the special-purpose uses such as for TOEFL writing Students need to cultivate a good writing style in English for their further and higher career success Besides the practical benefits of the study for students, the success of the study may confirm the theoretical strength of contrastive rhetoric in reality, and it may help to develop a pedagogical tendency towards students’ writing competence in general

in the progress test and achievement test In addition, opinions, attitudes, and cognition from teachers and students, have been surveyed and coded to analyze significant data statistically that may give justifications to objectively answer the research questions There were two large groups of students, the control group and the experimental group The storage of corpora of students’ final written test together with their levels has been retrieved to give an evaluation on the results both quantitatively and qualitatively That means the way that the certain students wrote on the same topic has been compared and analyzed using TOEFL iBT criteria The qualitative perspective was also used partly to examine and discuss the teachers’ thoughts in the interviews

The research is primarily designed to measure the progress of students through rhetoric training This has been carried out by collecting the data from experimental teaching in writing classes at one language center by the researcher himself In addition, various variables in the students’ essays and especially the essays at the end of each writing course have been collected quantitatively to confirm the achievement of certain students Also, the teachers and students’ attitudes to academic writing have been encoded in the form of computer data to analyze their opinions of contrastive rhetoric The collection of raw data has been conducted through various means The students’ written tasks have been collected through many writing courses to create the corpora Empirical analyses of the representative corpora of students’ written tasks could provide a much more solid foundation for descriptions of language use and contrastive rhetoric concept

The main instrument for processing the data is the computer, so data in various forms such as documents and sound recordings were converted into digital

formats Various procedures have been applied to the data to get useful information, including: data entry, data cleaning, data coding, data transformation, data translation, data summarization, data aggregation, data validation, data tabulation, statistical analysis, and computer graphics After digitalizing all the raw data, the analytical tools such as Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Word were used

to analyze the data The data was inspected, modeled to glean useful information, suggesting conclusions related to the intention of the research design Furthermore, the results of the analysis of the data were compared with the TOEFL iBT experts’ data in some areas, such as the validity of the test and the reactions of Vietnamese students compared to those of their Chinese, Korean, or Taiwanese counterparts

1.6 The Delimitations and Limitations of the Study

Even though the study has been conducted using a careful design and various sources of data, along with the help of the many participants involved in the study, there are still some limitations

First, the assessment of the results of the students’ progress is somewhat subjective and tends to yield low reliability There are two main sources of errors: rater inconsistency and sampling number To evaluate students’ writing passages,

we need writing rubrics to form the basis of our guidelines when scoring a text, and the TOEFL iBT program has supplied useful rubrics However, the inconsistency always occurs between raters because human resources are the only mean to apply in a direct assessment Not only between raters, but also with the same rater, the inconsistency still takes place from one moment to the next, even when the same writing passage is scored Another limitation is the number of sampling data A highly reliable writing assessment requires more than one writing sample, and each sample should be independent of all other samples The most reliable assessment may be done when all of the students’ results are scored independently by different raters By the scope of this study, these limitations have been recognized and kept to a minimum level by collecting several pieces of writing from each student and by getting helps from other trained teachers of TOEFL iBT writing courses

The scope of this thesis was set at the beginning of the study as being restricted to TOEFL iBT writing sections Instead of studying many writing genres, this thesis is based on the criteria set down by the ETS organization, that

is, the argumentative and summative ability in writing In addition, the writing competence of students is evaluated with regard to the use of language in academic environments, and not to other common standards

The delimitation of this thesis is set by the hypothesis that the influence of cultural differences may cause trouble when writing English, so the analysis hereunder will be focused more on the different expressions between the two cultures, English and Vietnamese, and not really discuss other areas such as basic knowledge of grammar or spelling

Finally, the delimitation of this thesis of master degree is a very small area within the field of applied linguistics It is the solution to the problems in learning English writing experienced by Vietnamese students that is the main concern of the researcher The result of this study may be useful to those who are concerned with teaching English writing, especially in training courses for academic writing such as TOEFL iBT or IELTS programs

2000, p.148) The term contrastive rhetoric in this study is used with the meanings

originally set out by Kaplan and later by Celce-Murcia et al Contrastive rhetoric,

as used in this study, does not refer to the performance of a talented writer; it

actually means the language flow of a text that is acceptable to a native speaker of that language

TOEFL iBT™: TOEFL for Test of English as a Foreign Language and iBT for Internet-based Test It is a trade mark of Educational Testing Service (ETS), based in Princeton, New Jersey, America That is a private, nonprofit organization devoted to educational measurement and research, primarily through testing ETS develops and administers millions of achievement tests each year in the United States and 180 other countries

In this chapter, the aim of this study has been set as stated explicitly in the problem statement part, that is: With the application of contrastive-rhetoric theory, Vietnamese students’ writing competence in TOEFL iBT writing courses may be considerably improved The next chapter is a literature review, in which the researcher will provide the background information from previous and up-to-date relevant research to clarify the context of this introduction Chapter 3 presents three related concepts: the research perspective, research type, and research methods That chapter also includes a specification of time and place, the research participants, the instruments used for data collection, the procedures used to collect data, and the method employed to analyze the data Chapter 4 is devoted to the results of the study, objectively describing the statistical packages presented in tables and figures Chapter 4 also discusses the results, aiming to interpret the study’s findings in many aspects The last chapter is Conclusions and Recommendations, summarizing the entire study from the problem statement to the final answer, showing the relation of this study to previous research, making some recommendations for educators, and suggesting additional research

LITERATURE REVIEW

This Chapter provides an overview of the theoretical background of the thesis, particularly an overview of previous theories on the concept of contrastive rhetoric in teaching English writing Some current developments, applications, controversies from many countries that surround the issue in the field are also mentioned to investigate the reliability of the contrastive rhetoric theory, which is the foundation of this thesis The literature review also expands its scope briefly to include the writing criteria laid down by the ETS organization in order to measure whether the concept of contrastive rhetoric theory matches these criteria to some extent The review is organized in a categorical order, in which there are four main sections Section 2.1 reviews the basic concept of contrastive rhetoric as defined

by Robert Kaplan and his followers; section 2.2 mainly studies the previous researches on problems of Vietnamese and Asian learners of English writing related to cultural differences; section 2.3 briefly presents the TOEFL iBT writing criteria, and discusses the relationship between the solution implied by contrastive rhetoric theory and the requirements laid down by the ETS organization Section 2.4 mentions some special studies of writing texts from the researchers who work for the TOEFL iBT program The conclusion, which is the last part of this literature review, will pave the road to find a solution for the problem statement of this thesis

Historical evolution of contrastive rhetoric

The term “rhetoric” has had different meanings throughout its long history,

as Conner (1969) discussed these changes in her book Cross-Cultural Aspects of

Second-Language Writing First of all, the root of the word “rhetoric” comes from

“rhetor” in Greek, meaning “orator” In Aristotle’s time, rhetoric was concerned

with the modes of persuasion in speech Even though, in the recent past, there were several linguists who viewed rhetoric as having a negative connotation, that

is, an approach similar to sophism, new researches are finding rhetoric useful and considering it to be persuasive discourse without negative connotations Conner says that with the expanded definitions of rhetoric in studies of writing, rhetoric is becoming an integral part of contrastive writing research On the other hand, the term “contrastive” may come from the contrastive analysis hypothesis initiated during 1950s that considers the negative, interfering influence of the first language

on second language acquisition Contrastive analysis was originally developed by Fries (1945) and expanded on by Lado (1957), who maintained that mistakes made

by L2 learners were caused by the incidental effect of their native language Contrastive analysis and contrastive rhetoric developed in parallel with each other

in an effort to improve pedagogy, but contrastive analysis tended to focus on error analysis concerning the negative effects of transfer, and it later evolved into the study of “interlanguage”, which is a system that is separated and different from both the native and target language To some extent, the difference between contrastive analysis and contrastive rhetoric is that while the former focuses more

on sentence structures in the tradition of linguistics, the latter delves deeply into discourse structures across culture and genres, instead of focusing on syntactic issues in writing The specific discourse structure and genres across cultures such

as organization information in research papers and dissertations written by native English speakers with a variety of language and disciplinary backgrounds are what contrastive rhetoric aims at Each culture, for instance, has its own way of

non-stating the thesis statement in an essay organization; whether the main idea is presented directly or not is an indication of the difference between cultures

The origin of contrastive rhetoric might be initiated from a theory called Sapir-Whorf hypothesis from the viewpoint of linguistic relativity, in which it suggests that different languages affect the writer’s perception and thought in different ways The learning of a new language always encounters obstacles because of the learner’s native language’s influences, the Whorfian hypothesis argues This precious hypothesis was criticized by some linguists and psychologists at first, but new arguments in the 1990s gave a support to some aspects of the hypothesis In 1966, Kaplan backed up the Whorfian view by stating that not only spoken language but also written texts reflect the logic and rhetoric of different cultures It is Kaplan’s view that was the first effort in a new field of ESL that focused on the rhetoric of writing Also, it is his view from which this thesis draws its inspiration, and on which it is based

According to Conner, before the year of 1966 when Kaplan first mentioned contrastive rhetoric, the teaching of composition to ESL students mainly focused

on structural linguistics The strong influence of structural linguistics and behavioral psychology at the time created pedagogical approaches to the teaching

of language mostly based on pattern drills Conner quoted Brooks (1960), Fries (1945) and Lado (1964) who said that students were asked to master the sentence structure and the sound system of English, and writing was not the preferred representation of the language As a result of this theoretical background, the approach of most writing exercises focused on manipulating elements of sentences

in order to master correct sentence patterns, and not on creating a coherent and organized text The lack of coherence or a good organization of an ESL student’s text was often blamed upon the lack of appropriate practice, and considered as bad thinking, according to Conner

At this point, it may be said that English writing exercises in Vietnamese high schools, and even in higher-education institutions, these days are still from

the period of structural linguistics that Conner mentioned, and an English translation from Vietnamese texts is preferred to texts written English itself This

is confirmed by Tran, Thai (2007) in his dissertation Many attempts have been made to change the traditional way of writing that not only has dominated pedagogy in Vietnam for a long time but also that of other countries, as Brooks, Fries, Conner and Lado proved In an effort to eliminate the weakness in English writing displayed by Vietnamese learners so far, Luu, T T (2010) emphasizes on journal writing as a good practice to nurture learners' motivation of writing and boost their writing competence Nguyen, H H T (2008) in one of her articles suggested that problems in teaching and learning EFL writing can be addressed by

a variety of methods such as psycholinguistics, syntax, sociolinguistics, and pragmatics Even though these approaches may boost students’ writing competence to some extent, none of them mentions text organization as a typical difference in writing that is derived from culture

Unlike previous studies of English writing in Vietnam, this thesis tends to postulate Kaplan’s theory, especially the problem of organization; therefore, Kaplan’s work should be examined closely Thanks to Kaplan’s initial suggestion, the disorganization of texts written by ESL students can be understood in a clear view Kaplan said that the mistakes in organization come not from the learners’ laziness with regard to their studies but from their cultural backgrounds in which the ESL students organize a text based on their own linguistic and cultural norms This enlightening concept has actually created a new approach to the teaching of composition in ESL classrooms, but it may not be well known to parts of English teaching community in Vietnam Some teachers may argue that organization is not

a new feature in writing, and that all Vietnamese students certainly know there are three main parts to an essay: the introduction, the body and the conclusion However, when asked what should be put into each part, students seem confused, and their answers usually fail to meet the criteria for English writing Therefore, Kaplan’s theory of contrastive rhetoric, or cultural backgrounds, leading to mistakes in organization should be taken into consideration

Robert Kaplan’s model of contrastive rhetoric and his theoretical premises

In the article “Cultural Thought Patterns in Inter-Cultural Education” by Robert B Kaplan in 1966, the different approaches to teaching composition depending on cultural differences were mentioned for the first time The issue was addressed as the nature of rhetoric Kaplan said that rhetoric is a mode of thinking that influences many activities such as analysis, data gathering, interpretation, and synthesis in the writer’s mind, and not in his mouth, to achieve an end He argued that depending on the observer’s perceptual frame of reference from his own culture, certain objects and activities may appear in different forms and ideas It can be said that by writing this article, Kaplan founded the discipline of contrastive rhetoric in the field of applied linguistics He thought that one cannot use a purely linguistic analysis to analyze texts, and he saw American theoretical linguistics as basically atextual Kaplan confirmed that even though there are lexical and grammatical resemblances between languages proceeding from a common hypothetical ancestor, the truth remains that the verbal universe is divided into multiple sectors, and that this diversity of languages leads to different realities As mentioned before, the word “rhetoric” originated from Aristotle, and Kaplan postulated that if Aristotle had lived in another country, his logic would have been different, and that the whole world of Western philosophy and science, which is in debt of his thought, would have not been in the form we know today Kaplan maintained that the interference of the rhetorical conventions of students’ native language with their ESL writing is a matter of fact because each language and culture has its own unique rhetorical conventions Kaplan went further by arguing that language and culture have a reciprocal relationship in the meaning that the diversity of languages also affects the cultures, the whole system of customs and habits that are related to the language, and the language in its turn controls what people tend to say in the culture From Kaplan’s speculation about the reciprocal causality between languages and cultures, the idea arises that logic, which is the basis of rhetoric, emerges from a culture, not from a common way of thinking that

is universal to all peoples The same argument applies to rhetoric: it differs from

culture to culture, and even these canons of taste also change themselves within a culture over time In his book, Kaplan illustrated his point with a simple example

to a ready-made interpretation of the world to show that the conceivability is different from culture to culture On posterity, the Indo-European speaker often says, ‘I see him…’, but the Eskimos in Greenland say ‘he appears to me…’ Thus one perceives the phenomenon as his activity and the other as something that occurred to him In Kaplan’s idea, it can be seen that a language and its related thought patterns have evolved from a cultural pattern, and it is different from other cultural patterns; as a result, any attempt to put one kind of rhetoric into another rhetorical context will necessarily lead to absurdity Kaplan continued by pointing out that a fallacy that have been popular at American colleges and universities at a time assumes that if a student can write a well-written text in his native language,

he can, as a matter of course, write a perfect essay in English This fallacy has been tested in the surveys of this study, and, in fact, a number of Vietnamese participants in the surveys still believe in this notion The fact is, said Kaplan, that non-native students who have mastered the syntactic structures of English have still displayed an inability to compose various kinds of English texts, such as term papers, theses, and dissertations, and more often, students receive such common comments as “The material is all here, but it seems somehow out of focus,” or

“Lacks organization,” or “Lacks cohesion.” Kaplan argued that the foreign-student paper is out of focus because the foreign writer is using a different rhetoric coming from a different culture which seems to violate the expectations of the English-speaking reader He said, “A personality is carved out by the whole subtle interaction of these systems of ideas which are characteristic of the culture as a whole.” As an example, Kaplan described the structure of English composition as linear; English paragraphs typically begin with a topic sentence supported by examples that are related to the central theme, whereas paragraphs in other languages have different structural models This idea of Kaplan seems true to the author of this thesis The author himself has conducted several experiments by

asking students whether they have heard the phrase the topic sentence, even in

Vietnamese, very few of them say yes

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French-speaking students often compose digressive paragraphs which do not seem

to contribute anything of syntactic significance to the main idea of the paragraph, even though it is an interesting digression As for Chinese texts, Kaplan argued that they favor indirect means of expression, as in other “Oriental” writing; he explained the indirectness in Chinese texts by emphasizing the influence of the

“eight-legged essay” He did not mention Vietnamese directly in his research, but from his argument, it is clear that Vietnamese, more or less, belongs to the Oriental orientation in which a writer typically expresses his ideas in an indirect way and tries to avoid free expressions of personal views and feelings We will return to the cultural orientation in writing later by considering opinions from other researchers or from native speakers of a specific language

Kaplan’s above mentioned analysis has introduced a new approach to thousands of teachers of English as a secondary language, but at the same time it has triggered some controversies, which we will mention later Of course, according to Kaplan, the English thought pattern is neither a better nor a worse system than any other, but it is merely different Kaplan said that his discussion is not intended to give any criticism of other existing styles of paragraph developments; “rather”, he said, “it is intended only to demonstrate that paragraph developments other than those normally regarded as desirable in English do exist.” However, he confirmed that rhetorical differences do not necessarily reflect different patterns of thinking Kaplan summarized his arguments by saying that when teaching paragraph structure to ESL students, whether in terms of composition or reading, the teacher himself should be aware of these cultural differences, make the contrastive rhetoric clear to his students in order to help them have an appropriate performance The above summary from Kaplan is the guiding idea for this thesis which aims to find an application of contrastive rhetoric in the teaching of writing in Vietnam

International Englishes

It is interesting to note that differences in writing patterns not only exist between English-speaking people on one side and non-native speakers on the other side, but also within English-speaking communities As a result, if a Vietnamese student wants to take an English-writing examination, he should consider whether the examination is being conducted by a British or American institute Depending

on the country that organizes the writing test, an English text may be evaluated as good or poor For example, the expectation about test-takers’ essays from TOEFL iBT raters, trained by the American organization, is different from those of IELTS ones, trained by the British organization Typically, contrastive rhetoric considers Anglo-American English rhetorical patterns as the norm to compare with other patterns because American researchers such as Janice Lauer at Purdue University and Edward Corbett at Ohio State University have pioneered the revival of classical rhetorical theories as a basis for teaching of composition In addition, according to Conner (1969), Aristotle’s text is the major influence upon American composition scholars of today However, modern contrastive rhetoric research has shifted its emphasis to focus on numerous differences between spoken and written modes of Englishes By Englishes, we mean the variations in American, British, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand English as well as nonnative varieties of English which are used by as many as 700 to 750 million people as a national, second or foreign language, or as the lingua franca For example, Biber’s analysis (1987) shows that American essays use a more interactive style and have a large number of “that” clauses, first- and second-person pronouns, contractions, and subordinate clauses The British and New Zealand essays, on the other hand, rate these aspects as low priority, but consistently demonstrate more lexical variety, and employ a more abstract and formal, non-interactive style Annelie Ädel (2006) also mentions that British and American students have different orientations to personal/impersonal meta-discourse, in which American students prefer giving their prose a personal and individualistic touch This confirms that different cultural stereotypes of writing texts exist even between the two most-

influential speaking countries Because the differences among speaking countries represent a big obstacle to English learners, the notion of Western-thought may be inappropriate when we want to compare it with Asian thought patterns, let alone some other Western patterns such as French culture

English-Contrastive rhetoric: Studies of culture and composition

The relationship between culture, writing and L2 instruction has been conducted by educational researchers, applied linguists, anthropologists, and psychologists to investigate what good writing is in a given culture and how it is taught Notable researches from the International Study of Written Composition2have made significant contributions to the knowledge of writing instruction and culture The Study of Written Composition, begun in 1980, examined the teaching and learning in schools in fourteen countries with the goal of explaining differences and typical patterns in the creation of written composition with particular attention to cultural background, curriculum, and teaching practices The countries where the research was conducted were Chile, England, Finland, Hamburg-Germany (FRG), Hungary, Indonesia, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Sweden, Thailand, the United States, and Wales The IEA (International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement) that conducted the Written Composition Study lists the following key findings of the relationship between culture and composition on its website First, it states that written composition was found to be located in a cultural context and so cannot be considered a general cognitive capacity The ideology of the teachers and their instructional practices were also significant factors in influencing written composition Second, good compositions from different countries shared common qualities in content and style, but their organization, use of detail and aspects of rhetoric had their own national or local characteristics Third, students across educational systems got common knowledge of the written product, its surface features and how important it is; however, there was national variation in the perception of what is valued Next, the most successful students were girls because

2

 Source: IEA website: http://www.iea.nl/written_composition.html 

they were given different writing instruction and their performance was rated differently Lastly, the cultural values of the community were the cause of the different ratings and instructions All in all, the survey results show that cultural background has an obvious impact on English composition

Applied linguists have also conducted studies of culture and literacy The writing development among children in their native cultures is seen as part of the combination of culturally preferred patterns of rhetorical texts and related cognitive cultural models (Connor, 1989) This kind of model allows for the positive transfer of shared linguistic and cultural features from the first language to writing in English as a second language

Studies of composition pedagogy from the contrastive rhetorical view

The methods of research in contrastive rhetoric have been placed in four

categories by Conner The first one is reflective inquiry which Kaplan, in The

Anatomy of Rhetoric (1972), restates his hypothesis about cultural differences in

writing patterns and discusses the importance of the study of written texts as well

as the studies among text types The special point here is Kaplan emphasizes that there are four points related to contrastive rhetoric in the teaching of writing: (1) contrastive rhetoric may be applied to find solutions to pedagogical problems in teaching English writing to non-English students; (2) the evolution of contrastive rhetoric has become a research paradigm and a useful tool for teachers; (3) contrastive rhetoric may identify several special functions in a language as compared to English to help teachers of writing; (4) though the findings of contrastive rhetoric can be applied to the teaching process, it is not a methodology This is Kaplan’s review of the direction of contrastive rhetoric in 1988 As can be seen clearly from Kaplan’s view, contrastive rhetoric was never meant to be a teaching method

The second method of research in contrastive rhetoric listed by Conner is quantitative descriptive research Before Kaplan’s research, most studies of the problems L2 students had with writing usually concentrated on error analysis and

the interference by L1 These days, text analysis is based more on sophisticated discourse analysis methods Text analysis has always been at the core of contrastive rhetorical research, and it is also computerized to create a large set of reliable data for research Such analyses have helped to identify patterns favored

by writers in a certain culture Through quantitative descriptive research with the help of computerization, there are many linguistic features from different cultures which can be drawn on to confirm the reliability of rhetoric theory For example, Kaplan studied more than 600 essays in his 1966 study; Biber (1988) analyzed sixty-seven different linguistic features in 481 texts This method of quantitative descriptive research has also been used in this thesis to analyze rhetorical features

in Vietnamese students’ TOEFL iBT writing essays to compare the organizational patterns that occur frequently in their essays with those found in native English texts

Another method used to study contrastive rhetoric is surveys Liebman (1992) surveyed Japanese and Arabic ESL students to investigate how writing is taught in these two cultures, and how writing backgrounds influence on L2 writing The same method has been employed to gather data for the analysis in the thesis, and, as a matter of course, Vietnamese teachers and students of writing have been invited to participate in the survey This point will be explained in more detail in the next chapter The other methods of research such as case studies and quasi experiments fall out of the context of this thesis, so it is unnecessary to mention them here

Some other researches on contrastive rhetoric from non-native speaking countries

English-China

East-Asian countries such as Vietnam, China, Japan, and Korea have a large number of similar features in their writing, for instance, the indirect style in the way of expressing opinions in essays Hsu (1981) claimed that this indirectness

in Chinese writing originated from the Chinese attitude of mutual dependence, that

means Chinese have an inclination to be more situation-centered and to be more socially or psychologically dependent on others Chinese writers tend to use more euphemisms and circumlocutions to avoid offending others and maintain their own self-esteem in the social community, which is reflected in the typical indirect organization of Chinese writing Furthermore, Chen Xian (2008) in CELEA Journal (Vol．31 No 6) states that the impact of rhetorical differences on ESL

writing by Chinese learners of English can be seen in some studies about indirect and circular organization For example, according to Chen Xian, in 1987, Fagan and Cheong’s analysis of 60 English compositions written by Chinese ESL ninth graders in Singapore showed that 50.9 % of students still employed the traditional Chinese four-part model of “qi-cheng-zhuan-he”, an obvious transfer of the indirect organization from Chinese to English writing Through examining a Chinese writing class in Taiwan, Chen Xian claimed that “qi-cheng-zhuan-he” was still being taught in Taiwanese schools “Qi-cheng-zhuan-he” is a technique of composition in which the main thesis is concealed in the first part of an essay and only introduced later It is in contrast to the organization structure derived from American thought patterns in which the main theme is usually introduced right at the beginning In addition, Matalene (1985) says that English essays written by Chinese ESL students revealed a lot of awkward narration and unrelated statements before the arguments Also, these English compositions tended to refer

to historical philosophies and rely on customs and authorities, rather than expressing the writers’ own viewpoints freely and directly

Shih-Chieh Chien (2007) from the University of Cambridge goes further by describing the differences of writing styles between Chinese and Anglo-American writers He states that where Anglo-Americans typically come straight to the point, the Chinese place a higher value on ambiguity and tact, and make significant use

of implied meanings This is because the two cultures tend towards different approaches: individualism vs collectivism In individualistic cultures, such as the American culture, people focus on individual achievements and incentives, and responsibility for decisions lies with individuals The goal of communication is to

exchange facts in order to make a deal Language is used to facilitate information exchange, to clarify the most important issues and to resolve conflicts In contrast

to the typical way that Anglo-Americans go straight to the point, the Chinese place

a higher value on ambiguity and tact, and make significant use of implied meanings

Characteristics of effective writing in

English for an Anglo-American

academic audience

Examples of some contrasting characteristics in the Chinese culture/language

Writing is viewed as a tool to

accomplish a task (that is, to express a

point or present an argument)

Writing is viewed as a way of engaging the emotions through beautiful

with readers expected to infer the writer’s main point

The writer is responsible for including

explicit signals – such as transitions – to

show logical links between ideas and

make connections clear

Explicit signals are not necessary; the writer shows respect for the reader’s intelligence and ability to make inferences

Information is expected to be highly

specific

Information is expected to be highly philosophical

Specific evidence (facts, statistics,

examples) are used to support arguments

Traditional wisdom and authority are used to support arguments

Heavy use of deductive reasoning

(movement from the general to the

specific)

Heavy use of inductive reasoning (movement from the specific to the general)

Emphasis on the individuality and

originality of ideas

Emphasis on traditional wisdom and shared cultural knowledge

Table 2.1: Effective Writing in English and Chinese for Academic Contexts (Source: Shih-Chieh Chien, University of Cambridge)

The shape of discourse in English and Chinese, as a result, often develops

in different ways: in Chinese, people tend to use inductive organization that is indirect, implicit, and circular; on the other hand, people who belong to the Anglo-American culture prefer expressing their ideas in a deductive structure; that means

a direct, explicit, linear organization Table 1 shows the differences between the two writing styles that may be due to their different cultures

At this point, we may note that there is an equivalent style in Vietnamese students’ texts: the indirect expressions and a secret main theme are preferred by many Vietnamese students of English The way to express ideas freely is also preferable among a number of students when their opinions were surveyed

Japan

The study of Japanese-English contrasts has been extensively conducted by Hinds (1984) He said that there is a similarity between Japanese texts and the Chinese style of writing; hence, Japanese texts are rather incoherent to Western readers because there is no association among many parts of a text Some native speakers of Japanese such as Kobayashi (1984) and Kubota (1992) have also contributed to the study of Japanese-English contrasts They both confirmed Kaplan’s idea that a specific culture has an influence on the second language writing style Japanese texts tend to place the general statement at the end, and contain a long introductory remark and long, complex sentences They also found that Japanese texts are indirect, ambiguous, roundabout, illogical, and digressive

However, Yoshifumi Kohro (2009) from Kyushu International University presented different ideas from Kaplan and Hinds about contrastive studies between Japanese and English Earlier studies argued that there is a negative transfer of L13rhetorical features into L24 compositions According to Kohro, these arguments were based on linguistic reflection or intuition rather than on empirical evidence From Kohro’s study, it was observed that writers in L1 were not able to transfer

3  L1: Mother tongue. 

4

 L2: Secondary language, usually indicating English. 

L1 global text structures into L2 compositions, and there was no correlation between L2 proficiency and composition quality Kubota’s study (1998), focusing

on discourse patterns which contrasted L1 and L2 composition, also reported that students with higher L2 proficiency are better writers in both L1 and L2; most subjects employed deductive type rhetorical patterns in L2 compositions regardless of their L2 proficiency levels; there was no clear relation between L2 proficiency level and the organization patterns employed Kubota also revealed the transfer of writing skills rather than L1 rhetorical interference This indicates that the use of rhetorical structures in Japanese and English depends on the students’ various conceptions of L1 and L2 rhetoric, their amount of writing experience in English and English proficiency In short, Japanese researchers have different ideas about whether contrastive rhetoric has as big an impact on Japanese learners

of English’s writing as Kaplan suggested

Korea

According to Connor, Korean texts are characterized by indirectness and nonlinear development The indirectness in Korean texts is characterized by placement of the thesis statement at the end of a text Connor quoted Hinds, who said that Korean texts have a delayed introduction of purpose The typical essay includes an introduction, the development of a topic, a turning to a somewhat unrelated topic, and a conclusion She also quoted Choi, a native speaker of Korean, who found that the typical structure of English essays was rarely presented in English essays of Korean speakers Thus, rhetorical problems in English writing among Korean students are similar to those among Chinese students

Vietnam

Because the focus of this thesis is to find a way to improve the writing of Vietnamese test-takers of TOEFL iBT exams, it is necessary to have a look at the common writing style Vietnamese students learn at school According to the book

How to Write a Good Essay written by Nguyen, Manh D et al (2005), as a

component of the Vietnamese literature curriculum, argumentative writing in high school takes the form of a kind of a literary analysis, in which students are required to master the way of arguing for the beauty of a learned literary work; Vietnamese students need to memorize quotations from poems and books in order

to be successful at writing examinations Consequently, Vietnamese students tend

to show they know how to express their learned ideas artfully, instead of persuasively as expected in Western argumentative writing This single-genre composition may result in students not being confident in their critique and their

own opinions Nguyen, Hau V (1959) in his book The Art of Writing emphasized

that indirectness as an artful and an effective way to begin an argumentative essay His old book is selected to discuss here because it reflects traditional Vietnamese thought in the first half of twentieth century, whereas the modern books may be affected by Western logic and Western textbooks Still in his book, there is no concept of the topic sentence, which is usually an important point in learning to write paragraphs in Western practice There are three main parts, he emphasizes,

in the body of an argumentative essay: explanation, justification and comment As for the conclusion, Nguyen, Hau V says the writer may show his opinion, whether

he agrees, disagrees, or applies eclecticism Furthermore, the application of

coherent devices such as therefore, however, thus, moreover, etc., are considered

boring, tedious, and Nguyen said they should not be used in an argumentative essay This again reflects an opposite view between American organization and Vietnamese way of writing

There are just a few studies on the impact of contrastive rhetoric on Vietnamese learners of English Most studies to date have tried to research and apply Western methods of teaching writing, instead of recognizing the problems underlying the cultural background However, some researches have addressed cultural differences as obstacles in the teaching and learning of language Nguyen,

Tung T (2010), in his book Incorporating Culture into English Language

Teaching in Vietnam, summarizes the relationship between language and culture,

and then suggests a teaching method that incorporates the cultural meaning into

the teaching and learning of English within the educational system and practical realities in Vietnam He confirmed that culture shapes our language, and that culture cannot be separated from language However, the focus of the book is on the key elements of social context and cultural context to reach an understanding

of the potential meaning of an utterance, in that the meaning of language in use needs to be interpreted in terms of the core culture, social organization, and surface level of lifestyle, and not on ways to address the obstacles that hinder the absorption of what is to be learned

Le, Dung H (2004) in his M.A thesis addressed the problems in learning English writing from another viewing angle He said that there is a reciprocal relationship between reading and writing skills, and that reading skills can help non-native learners of English significantly improve their writing skills He stated that carefully choosing a reading text may supply L2 writers with a better knowledge of natural collocations, sophisticated syntactic structures, and the logical organization of ideas Le emphasized that the most important features of a well-written text are the logical organization of ideas, cohesion, fluency, and critical thinking He blamed the failure of students of writing classes at one university on negative mother-tongue interference among other things The effect

of the mother-tongue on L2 learning, according to Le, has both positive and negative aspects, and it is the failure to filter negative interference from the learners’ own culture that creates the kind of English that sounds like Vietnamese

Le concluded that critical reading skills may help students produce compositions that are beautiful, persuasive and purposeful

Soter (1988), who studied English stories written by Vietnamese speaking children at Australian schools, said that Vietnamese stories appeared less goal-oriented and less focused on the plot than the typical English story Ann M Johns (1991) presented a case study of a Vietnamese ESL student who, despite his success in the courses related to his major, was enrolled in a “remedial” composition class for the third time because he was not able to pass the English competency examination Another anecdote from Sandra McKay (1993) is about a

Vietnamese refugee in the United States The student had learned certain conventions regarding text organization and reader-writer relationships, but he did not always meet his English audience’s expectations when he applied the conventions he had learned in Vietnamese to his writing in English

Tran, Thai (2007) in his study about “Indirectness in Vietnamese Newspaper Commentaries” said that the L2 commentaries seemed resemble to Western organizational norms but still present a progression in an inductive approach, connections as well as important markers used with indirect attitude He also mentioned the noticeable vagueness in the newspaper commentaries as a result of some indirectness markers Furthermore, the same approach may be found in EFL essays composed by Vietnamese writers where their rhetorical considerations are not that audience-oriented Tran, Thai has made an important contribution by studying the limitations in English writing in the Vietnamese education system Some of his unique ideas are very useful to analyze the limitations in students’ academic essays in this study

2.2 Some typical issues of Vietnamese learners of English writing

Le, Dung H.’s (2004) study shows that nearly 100% students and teachers who were surveyed believed that a well-written assignment has to have a clear, logical organization of ideas, besides the criterion of coherence within the text However, the ideal style of logical organization, whether British or American, is not mentioned Instead, the difficulties encountered by Vietnamese learners are listed as follows: lack of vocabulary, uncertain structure, unable to utilize appropriate grammar when writing, lack of fluency and naturalness, lack of logical organization of ideas, unable to find equivalent expressions in English, unable to start a piece of writing All of these points, except for the logical organization of ideas, may be classified according to TOEFL iBT criteria as lexical and grammatical accuracy The appropriate and precise use of grammar and vocabulary may represent a basic knowledge of the structure of English rather than

a specific impact of culture Even though the former is necessary in all aspects of language acquisition, the latter is the focus of this thesis Based on an important

finding from Le that a clear, logical organization of ideas is believed to be the ideal for a well-written text by most Vietnamese students and teachers, it can be said that Kaplan’s ideas on the impact of culture on the way to organize an English text is more applicable

Tran, Thai (2007) stated that the big problem for Vietnamese writers of English is the awareness of a critical audience, and he suggested that concepts of the rhetorical construction of texts should be introduced in college to help students improve their writing in their first year

Overall, it can be seen that there are two major problems experienced by Vietnamese students writing in English; the first is the sentence skills, and the second is the organization While both are of equal importance, the former has been more prevalent in the teaching of English writing so far, and even though the organization of a text is recognized as an important part in the learning process, the variations in organization styles according to the cultural background have not yet been evaluated to an appropriate extent Therefore, besides the common writing problems such as grammar and vocabulary, it is necessary to heed Kaplan’s suggestions to examine the real situation in Vietnam

2.3 TOEFL iBT writing criteria

Among the most innovative features of the TOEFL® Internet-based test (TOEFL iBT) is the addition of a new writing section consisting of two writing tasks The writing section includes both independent and integrated tasks The independent tasks of about 330 words each require test takers to write about their personal opinions or experiences, usually whether they agree or disagree with a given statement The integrated tasks of about 250 words each require the use of three language skills: listening, reading and writing For instance, a single writing task requires test takers to read a short passage on a computer screen, listen to a brief lecture through a headset, and then write by typing on a keyboard to explain how the information in the passage and lecture are related

To address the problems in writing TOEFL iBT essays experienced by Vietnamese learners based on contrastive rhetorical viewpoint, it is necessary to list the scoring criteria of an acceptable essay according to the official guide to the TOEFL iBT As mentioned earlier, there are two tasks in the writing section of the TOEFL iBT: an integrating writing task and an independent writing task The former involves some listening and reading in order to complete the task, and the latter poses a challenging question to check the exam-taker’s writing competence The two tasks have their own characteristics and requirements, but, overall, the writing style for both is quite similar To identify the contrastive aspects between the Vietnamese style of writing and the Western one, we only focused on the scoring criteria from the official scoring Guide The total score for both writing tasks is 30, representing one-fourth of the overall score of the four skills, reading, speaking, listening and writing

• For the Integrated writing essay:

Because there are facts from two sources needed for this writing task, the relevant information presented in the lecture and the reading must first be selected carefully Thus, the selection of information and connections are the first criterion Next, the raters will evaluate how the information is organized into paragraphs, and the appropriate and precise use of grammar and vocabulary

• For the Independent writing essay:

In this kind of writing, the test-taker responds to a common question that asks his or her opinions about an issue from daily life, so the overall quality of the writing is scored The criteria relate to the organization of the essay, and the appropriate and precise use of grammar and vocabulary Another important element in the criteria is that the essay must display unity, progression, and coherence This means the writer should use coherent devices to connect ideas, pronouns to maintain the