The initial studies, especially two evaluation studies (2 and 3 in Table

Stage 1 The initial studies, especially two evaluation studies (2 and 3 in Table

1.1), were framed in terms of traditional contrastive rhetoric, which assumed that the rhetorical aspects of each language are culturally unique and preferred (Kaplan, 1966) and suggested that differences in organizational patterns between students’ first and second languages cause difficulties for L2 learners (Casanave, 2004; Kubota, 1997). These two evaluation studies were designed on the basis of the findings of Kobayashi’s (1984a, 1984b) study, which compared four groups of

26 Part 1: Looking Back. Research Insights students (American college students, advanced Japanese ESL students in

America and two groups of Japanese college students in Japan) in their use of rhetorical patterns. The study found a consistent tendency among the four groups: Whereas American students writing in English often used a general-to-specific (‘deductive’) pattern, Japanese students writing in Japanese frequently employed a specific-to-general (‘induc- tive’) pattern, and the two Japanese groups writing in English differed from each other, the group in Japan being substantially close to the group writing in Japanese and the group in the USA, relatively close to the American group. These findings confirmed what contrastive rhetoric had argued, but they also clearly suggested that the writing instruction and experience the Japanese advanced ESL students in the USA received influenced their frequent use of the general-to-specific pattern. In terms of research design, the study has strongly affected our subsequent research, in that we have continued to assume that a multiple group comparison can provide more insight than a single or two-group comparison in the investigation of the effects of such factors as writing experience on EFL students’ writing.

Method Whereas Kobayashi’s (1984a, 1984b) study investigated the use of

culturally preferred rhetorical patterns in the L1 and L2 writing of Japanese EFL students, the two evaluation studies examined the perceptions of L2 writing containing such patterns in a Japanese EFL context. More specifically, these large-scale experimental studies inves- tigated how readers’ background (differing L1, academic status and amounts of writing instruction) influenced the evaluative judgments of essays with contrasting rhetorical patterns. We assumed that the findings of the studies would benefit both sides (students and teachers) instructionally, in that students might learn about reader’s expectations, and teachers could find out what features need to be taught in class on the basis of students’ perceptions.

In these studies, the term ‘culturally preferred patterns’ was carefully rephrased as ‘culturally influenced patterns’ as an attempt to avoid essentializing cultural rhetorical patterns (Kubota, 1997, 1998a). Each of the two ‘culturally influenced patterns’ was a collection of rhetorical features taken from a variety of sources, including research findings, professional writing and composition textbooks (e.g. for Japanese, ‘inductive’ with loose transitions among paragraphs; for American, ‘deductive’ with explicit transitional markers). In addition to these

Situated Writing Practices in Foreign Language Settings 27 rhetorical differences, the two other features of coherence breaks and

language use errors were also included as text characteristics, and four evaluate two essays, one with a Japanese rhetorical pattern and one with

an American pattern.

Findings The analyses of the readers’ evaluative judgments in the two studies

yielded the same overall tendencies among the four groups. The 1996 study found that on one of the expository topics (TV’s effects on family life), Japanese EFL students who had not received English writing instruction (‘inexperienced students’) preferred the Japanese rhetorical pattern; native English teachers favored the American rhetorical pattern; Japanese teachers and Japanese EFL students who had received English writing instruction (‘experienced students’) valued features of both patterns. The 2001 study went further to analyze both evaluative criteria and comments by the same readers and showed clear parallel tendencies between the two sets of data: while inexperienced students attended predominantly to content in judging and commenting on essays, experienced students and Japanese teachers focused on clarity, logical connection and organization. The experienced groups’ perceptions tended to be more similar to the perceptions of the native English-speaking teachers, which may suggest that with more L2 writing experience, EFL readers’ perceptions of English essays change gradually from preferring L1 writing features to preferring many of those of L2 writing.

Whereas the method of using manipulated compositions in the evaluation studies drew both criticism and approval (Casanave, 2004;

that cultural preferences for certain rhetorical features exist. They also showed that writing experience and more exposure to English rhetorical features change student writers’ perceptions, implying that such percep- tions or preferences are not static, but dynamic. This part of the findings should have been more strongly stressed, as it was by Kubota and Shi (2005: 101), who took it as suggesting ‘a dynamic and varied nature of cultural and rhetorical perceptions’. The finding, in fact, supports the central criticism against the concept of traditional contrastive rhetoric that emphasizes the uniqueness of culture (Kubota, 1997; Kubota & Lehner, 2004; Matsuda, 1997) and accords with the concept of a new contrastive rhetoric, characterized by Connor (2002, 2005) as being concerned with dynamic interlinguistic/cultural influences.

28 Part 1: Looking Back. Research Insights Although the findings suggest that the writing instruction/experience

students receive affects their changing rhetorical perceptions, the studies did not provide any insight into the effects of specific amounts and kinds of previous writing instruction/experience on L2 writing. Thus, we felt it necessary to find out more about Japanese EFL students’ writing training before entering universities. This turned our attention particularly to the current status of L1 literacy being practiced in higher education in Japan, including high schools and universities.