Integrating Speaking and Listening Activities into Teaching Anglo-American Academic Writing Rhetoric

Abstract

In an attempt to widen the range of practical strategies grounded in theoretical speculations of genre theorists, this paper proposes teaching the rhetoric of Anglo-American argumentation through pre-writing listening and speaking activities in ESL academic writing classes. Research shows students’ struggles with ESL academic writing include more than inadequate knowledge of vocabulary, grammar, and sentence structure. Instead, the main problem is suggested to be a problem of rhetoric. Students’ attachment to their native rhetorics and their unfamiliarity with Anglo-American academic rhetoric can seriously hinder the process of learning academic writing in English. Suggestions have been made that teachers should condition students into adopting Anglo-American rhetorical patterns through drills and controlled exercises. These methods, however, have proved unsuccessful, ignoring the impact of students’ native rhetorics. Thus, an emphasis on paying sufficient attention to students’ cultural backgrounds has been the focus of many recent studies, particularly among multiliteracies experts and genre theorists. This paper taps into the theoretical potential of the latter in order to propose integrating speaking and listening activities into teaching Anglo-American academic writing as a new strategy.