Rhetorical Patterns Used By Chinese College Students In Their English Argumentative Essays

It has long been acknowledged that the rhetorical structure of a written text has some effect on reading comprehension, and that a knowledge of text structure and skill in rhetorical patterning has a certain effect on the writer's fulfillment of his/her communicative intensions (Connor, 1987:441). However, nowadays in college English writing practice, there is always a mismatch of expectation or interpretation between students and their English teachers. In order to clarify the subtle relationship between the completion of writers' communicative goals and the employment of English rhetorical patterns, this thesis makes an investigation on the rhetorical patterns used by Chinese college students in their English argumentative essays, particularly focusing on the patterns used to achieve the global management of the sequence of ideas or arguments.Guided by the theories of genre analysis and the models of textual analysis, an integration or modification of models based on empirical studies is made to reflect the rhetorical patterns of Chinese students. Through a three-stage selection process, the data are collected from 500 pieces of argumentative essays written by students of Changshu Junior College, who are from 12 departments in their first or second year of study, mainly of a teaching orientation. The present paper mainly conducts an investigation from three aspects: the global and local management of ideas and arguments, use of cohesion, and style features.The major findings presented in the thesis are as follows:(l)Global and local management of arguments and ideas: (a) On textual level, twenty-four out of thirty sample essays (80%) followed a clear linear "introduction—argument/discussion—conclusion" pattern, while the other six sample essays (20%) presented an indirect or inductive approach in addressing the essay task, (b) Referring to introductions or beginning paragraphs, most (18) of the sample essays (60%) followed the pattern of providing a situation and making a thesis. Another five sample essays (17%) fell into just giving a standpoint ormaking a claim. Still there were four sample essays (13%) following the pattern of introducing an issue and then proposing a question, (c) As to the main argument (body) of the argumentative essays, half of the sample essays (50%) fell into putting up a sub-claim followed by an elaboration. Another six sample essays (20%) were inductive or indirect reasoning pattern. Also, there were five sample essays (17%) discussing from two sides with the seeking of balance, (d) In the conclusion paragraphs, fifteen sample essays (50%) reiterated the thesis. Another six sample essays (20%) included only suggestion or recommendation in the conclusion. Comparatively, there were six sample essays (20%) containing a call to the future on top of reiteration of the thesis.(2)Use of cohesion: (a) The use of discourse markers varied from none to five in each sample essay, but the commonly used discourse markers between paragraphs were "first(ly)", "second(ly)", "on the other hand", "however" etc. (b) References in the sample essays employed mostly personal pronouns like "we", "I", and demonstrative pronouns like "this", "it" . (c) Ellipses and substitutions were seldom used by this group of students in their argumentative essays, (d) The most frequently used conjunctions were "and ", "so" and "but". But there were few uses of more complex conjunctions such as "however", "moreover", "furthermore", (e) Lexical cohesion (repetition) was also used frequently in most of the sample essays. (3)On style features: (a) Fifteen sample essays (50%) displayed a spoken or rather personal style of writing for their English writing proficiency was not high, (b) The rhetorical questions in eleven sample essays (37%) were obvious because of the effect of traditional Chinese "Problem—Discussion—Solution" pattern in argumentative essays. The patterns described above may help us identify the possible factors that affectthe use of rhetorical patterns in Chinese students' argumentative essays and willprovide useful information for the teaching of English writing.