Academic Writing and Culture: A Study of Austrian Tertiary-Level EFL Learners

When language learners write an academic essay in a foreign language, they frequently make use of text conventions and discourse patterns from their native language. However, this may sometimes lead to a breakdown in communication due to different cultural expectations about the way information is p...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik 2015-01, Vol.40 (1/2), p.75-97
Main Author:	Scott, Nick
Format:	Article
Language:	eng
Subjects:	Academic learning Academic writing Austrian students Basic writing Contrastive rhetoric Cultural factors EFL English as a second language instruction Essays German language German literature Language culture relationship Literary criticism Questionnaires Rhetoric rhetoric and composition Second language writing Sociolinguistics student characteristics teaching and learning contexts Writers Writing Writing instruction Written language
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Summary:	When language learners write an academic essay in a foreign language, they frequently make use of text conventions and discourse patterns from their native language. However, this may sometimes lead to a breakdown in communication due to different cultural expectations about the way information is presented. This paper explores these processes of sociolinguistic transfer and languaculture dissonance with a special focus on German-speaking learners of English. Using previous research from the field of contrastive rhetoric as an analytical framework, it investigates the extent to which a group of 22 Austrian EFL learners attending an advanced-level university writing course are influenced by their German-language writing culture. An analysis of the learners' beliefs and written work at the start of the course is followed by a period of targeted instruction informed by the findings of contrastive rhetoric research on English- and German-speaking writing cultures. A second set of essays, written later in the course, is then analysed to ascertain whether the amount of sociolinguistic transfer observed in the students' work was reduced after targeted instruction.
ISSN:	0171-5410