Unity of Writing as the Problem of Russian Learners of English

Abstract

It is well known that the least successful point of Russian learners of English is writing, and many Russian university graduates who successfully pass grammar or vocabulary proficiency tests are not so successful when they challenge to perform a composition. It should also be noted that the main stumbling block of students’ writing is its rhetorical aspect. Accurate in grammar as they might appear, the students’ compositions often display lack of clearness and ease, lack of unity and force, flawed cohesion and flawed coherence, as well as all the other rhetorical drawbacks.With the purpose to improve the Russian students’ writing I resorted to the analysis of rhetorical errors in students’ papers, grounding the study by A. Hill's conception of good style. In accordance with A. Hill's ideas I divided the rhetorical drawbacks into fails of ensuring unity, ease, clearness and force. The obtained data comprised the subject matter for a series of articles.The abstracted article is devoted to the problem of unity, which is viewed upon as mutual relations between the idea and the form of its expression. It highlights violations of unity in students’ compositions and other types of written papers.