Contrastive Rhetorical Analysis of Saudi ESL Writing

Abstract

Many Saudis studying English suffer because of their inability to write well in English. There are few studies that examine the impact of first language and culture on the ability of Saudis to write in a second language. This study revisits Kaplan's (1966) claims about Arab students' writing that are based on the theory of contrastive rhetoric. It begins with an overview of the development of contrastive rhetoric. It also examines the impact of genre and culture as it is used to analyze the work of Arabic ESL learners. The study then analyzes Saudi participants' (n=4) English language writing through the lens of contrastive rhetoric theory. The author uses ethnographical research methods to analyze samples of English writing and to interview his participants about their experiences as ESL learners. The paper findings indicate there are major grammatical and content problems in Saudi students' English writing. He concludes that thinking in Arabic while writing in English leads Saudi ESL writers to misuse word repetition, parallel construction, and to overuse specific grammatical structures. The paper concludes with suggestions about how to correct flaws in current ESL teaching techniques used with Arabic speaking students including tactics for addressing their lack of English reading and dictionary skills. Introduction This paper investigates Saudi students' writing using the theory of contrastive rhetoric. Contrastive rhetoric is a theory of second-language acquisition that explains problems in composition that are encountered by second-language learners. Several linguistic scholars (n=) apply contrastive rhetoric theory to writers from a specific cultural context. The goal of this paper is to apply contrastive rhetoric theory to samples of Saudi English writing in order to identify the linguistic and culturally-based challenges of writing in English for Arabic speakers. It investigates Kaplan's (1966) claims about Arabic language speakers specifically it challenges the claim that all Arabic speakers share the same challenges because of their language background regardless to their cultural or linguistic differences. The aim of the paper is to show how Arabic language speakers' writing problems can be different from what Kaplan's claims. Since L1 writing has a significant impact on L2, the author also investigates Saudi students' Arabic writing samples. The discussion section explains Saudi students' common writing problems in English for ESL instructors. It concludes with suggestions for helping Arabic ESL learners overcome their most common grammatical and linguistic difficulties. Contrastive Rhetoric Analysis There are many definitions of contrastive rhetoric. Panetta (2000) presented one of the most direct definitions of contrastive rhetoric as follows , " The term used to describe the argument that the linguistical, organizational, and presentational choice that English as a second language (ESL) students-writers make substantively differ from the choices that native language writers make " (p.3).