Critical contrastive rhetoric in action: Iranian EFL learners' writing in focus

Abstract

Since its appearance in the domain of critical pedagogy, critical contrastive rhetoric has been used as an approach to critically investigate the cultural and linguistic differences involved in structuring texts. Based on the assumptions behind poststructuralist, postcolonial, and postmodern critiques of language and culture, this study attempts to examine new and additive ways of writing in a group of EFL learners by raising her critical awareness of rhetorical organization of their mother tongue and the target language. To this end, data were triangulated from different sources: in-depth daily observations, audio-tapes of interviews, classroom discussion and reflective questionnaire. The results indicated that through the dialogical and problem-posing processes, students became more reflective on the differences between the complex web of rhetoric in their L1 and L2.