Family Languages and English Writing: Rhetorical Patterns in Students’ Written Texts in the Multicultural American Context

Abstract

This study aims at investigating the characteristics of the rhetorical patterns in opinion writing produced by the students across different family language groups in the multicultural Korean language program at a university in the US. The participants were 40 students from a variety of language environment such as Korean, English, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese and others. The data comprised questionnaire and English writing products from the students, and the students’ written texts were analyzed based on meaning-making and Toulmin’s six elements, claim, data, warrant, backing, qualifier, and rebuttal. The findings revealed that the English group established the highest number of the Toulmin elements, whereas the Korean group adopted them the least amount. The Chinese and other groups shared the elements with similar numbers. It is concluded that the students from heritage languages adopted similar approaches in establishing their meaning-making and rhetorical patterns for English writing. Thus, a central part of the learning process for students should be concerned with ‘way of knowing’ in the given context. (Sun Moon University ? University of Colorado Boulder)