Effects of Culture on L2 Writing: A Case Study of Korean University Students

Abstract

Drawing on the cultural background of the East (i.e., Korea) and the West (i.e., U.S.), I aimed to investigate the influence of L1 culture on L2 writing by focusing on the usage of “I” and the logical structure in the participants’ English writings. Ten Korean university students learning English as a foreign language (L2) participated in this study. The data was collected through questionnaire, interviews, process logs, and the participants’ English writings (They wrote four English essays and one personal narrative). The number of the essays that did not use “I” at all was 13. Five participants did not use “I” at all in at least one of their essays. Nine participants wrote “Chun” (deviation form) in their English writing. All participants employed the combination of English (e.g., U.S.) rhetoric and Korean rhetoric: The rhetorical structure of introduction-body-conclusion (English rhetoric) was mixed with ki-sung-chun-kyul (Korean rhetoric). A new converged mode of writing appeared when there was a fusion between a collectivist culture-based writing and an individualistic culturebased writing, which I coined as “Convergent rhetoric.” The convergence of Korean rhetoric and English rhetoric yielded diverse writing styles, yet a general pattern was graphically represented.