Table Of Contents
Promoting effective writing
Having examined the sorts of essay questions set for the national matriculation examination (the gāokǎo), Kirkpatrick (1995) demonstrates that at middle school "[Chinese] students are encouraged to be original and inventive in their writing" (p. 51), and that these essays they may be explicitly required to exhibit a "clear main stream of thought", "complete structure, clear paragraphs and stages, smooth and coherent language, correct punctuation" and strict adherence to a word limit (p. 46). In later work ( 2002, 2004b) he argues that the Chinese conceptions of good academic writing, as propounded in university composition textbooks, are not greatly different from our own, in regard to clarity of style, appropriate structures of text and argumentation, use of and adherence to models, and citation of sources.
Questioned on this, some students interviewed for this project agree. Others, however, do report differences from what they've experienced at home: first and foremost, in our requirements of prior research and detailed acknowledgement of sources; secondly, in our insistence on the formal properties of the conventional genres we write in; and thirdly, in the way we expect an argument to be presented.
To understand these differences we consider, firstly what we know about the experience of writing that these students have actually had; and secondly, some cultural characteristics of Chinese discourse structures. We then look at ways we can support these students in adjusting to the writing practices required of them in Australia. These include providing models of academic writing to clarify what is expected of them, and giving timely and appropriate feedback on the work they hand in.
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I think the similarity is, both encourage originality. I mean, both encourage original thought at university level, and in university you have to, I mean, not just memorise what the book say, you have to have your own idea.
— Lucy
Do you think is a great difference between academic or professional writing in Chinese and English?
There are some differences but I don't think there are big differences, except for plagiarism. The similarities are, the wider you read, the better you can organise your ideas, and the stronger your argument can be.
— Daniel
But I'm wondering, what about in the actual organisation of the ideas, once you've got your basic ideas together -did you find any difficulty in knowing how to organise the ideas - what comes first, what comes after, sort of thing?
I think this is not very difficult, because this is a logic thing.
And the logic is the same, whether it's English or Chinese, basically?
Yes - for the idea, I think it's the same.
— Lionel
Do you think in fact the way we organise an essay, the structuring, is it different in English from the way it would be in Chinese?
Similar, I think.
— Nova