English Rhetoric Research Articles

Voice and Voicing Strategies Across Native and Second Language Writing: Extending the Interactional Metadiscourse Framework

Abstract Authorial voice is often identified as a key trait of successful writing in English rhetoric and composition, leading to research on its construction, development, and assessment in various types of written texts. Using Hyland’s (2008) interactional metadiscourse framework, existing studies have also examined the use of particular voice-related element(s) across different writer groups. Few, however, have examined how L2 writers may construct voice similarly or differently in their L1 and L2 writing. The present study therefore examined voice strength and voicing strategies in L1-Chinese and L2-English essays composed by the same group of Chinese EFL writers. Paired samples t-test showed, surprisingly, that writers’ L2-English voice was significantly stronger than their L1-Chinese voice, whereas subsequent text analysis of L1 and L2 writing samples further revealed differing linguistic, rhetorical, and discoursal resources employed by writers for voice construction when writing in two different language systems. Such findings extend Hyland’s (2008) interactional metadiscourse framework on voice construction and offer important implications for L2 writing instruction and assessment.

A Study of English Rhetorical Strategies Based on Neurosemantics

Abstract In recent years, with the performance improvement of deep neural network models, neural semantic parsing has entered a new stage and has been widely used in many fields such as classification tasks, speech recognition, linguistic annotation and syntactic analysis. In this paper, we design a strategy for recognizing and parsing English rhetorical devices using the neural semantic parsing method. In this paper, we first use the Skip-gram model to train word vectors, and then based on the convolutional neural network model to recognize the platitudes, metaphors, and similes in English text, and apply BiLSTM-Att model to acknowledge the English quoted rhetorics. The prediction accuracies of the CNN recognition model on platitudes, metaphors, and similes are 91.7%, 92.5%, and 90.2%, respectively, greater than 90%, indicating that the model can successfully recognize the platitudes, metaphors, and similes. The model can recognize platitudes, metaphors, and anthropomorphic rhetorical devices. Compared with the CNN+BiLSTM model, the precision, recall, and F1 value of the BiLSTM-Att model are improved by 0.22%, 11.44%, and 7.09%, respectively. Its recognition accuracy of English quotations under different similarity thresholds is very high, with 94% when the similarity reaches 50% and even 98% when the similarity reaches 90%. This suggests that the present paper BiLSTM-Att English quote rhetorical recognition model is adequate. This paper’s neural semantic-based English rhetoric strategy is paving the way for the development of natural language processing technology.

Hedges and Boosters in Undergraduate Thesis Abstracts of Qomaruddin University Students

In writing abstracts, authors usually include metadiscourses such as hedges and boosters. This study aims to compare the use of hedges and boosters in writing undergraduate thesis abstract as a mean of communicative strategy to increase or decrease the strength of the statement. This research data was taken from 25 undergraduate thesis abstract of English Language Education Study Program and 25 from Mathematic Study Program at Qomaruddin University Gresik with 100-250 word range and analyzed based on Hyland's taxonomy (2005).The results showed that there were 22 variants of hedges words with a total use of 53 words and 17 variants of boosters words with a total use of 130 words. In the undergraduate thesis abstract, the students of the English Language Education Study Program dominantly use hedges words, such as in the adverb and verb classes. However, for the use of hedges words in undergraduate thesis abstracts, Mathematic Study Program students are more dominant than English Language Education Study Program students even though the word variants used are still dominated by English Language Education Study Program students, such as in the verb class. In addition, students using hedges have greater value than boosters in writing undergraduate thesis abstracts as a way to reduce the risk of opposition, to show courtesy and to obscure authorship and strengthen opinions. Boosters are also used to demonstrate the originality of research. Hedging by the students shows that there is a lack of knowledge of English rhetoric. Thus, the use of hedges and boosters can also help to improve students’ academic writing skills.

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

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.

The Alchemy of Conquest: Science, Religion, and the Secrets of the New World

This book has been an intellectual adventure to read, all 600-plus pages of it. The Scientific Revolution, Ralph Bauer argues, carries a connotation of “the discovery of new worlds” in nature. In historiography, the early modern revolution in cosmology has long been connected to the Age of Discovery in cosmography. Yet the two things remain conceptually distinct. We can indict Christopher Columbus for the violence of conquest but not Galileo for the discovery of spots on the sun. Yet what if discovery and conquest were conceptually intertwined from the very beginning? The Alchemy of Conquest completely reframes the concept of the Scientific Revolution by taking medieval nominalism and alchemy seriously.Bauer traces the origins of the categories of discovery and conquest back to the thirteenth-century Renaissance, particularly to the rise of Franciscan nominalism, artisanal alchemical experimentation, and the late medieval spiritual conquest of pagan and heathen souls. Both the alchemical-atomistic conception of matter and the nominalist interpretation of nature led to a voluntarist understanding of divine and human creation. Nature and thus God could be understood not through Aristotelian logic and Scholastic syllogism but through a painstakingly empirical exploration of randomly assembled matter. Universal law could only be known though the careful empirical codification of myriad local laws. The discovery of the secrets of nature happened through violent artisanal extraction and alchemical fire. Artisanal tinkering, in turn, could improve nature.Such a voluntarist understanding of God's power and human knowledge of nature led to a voluntarist understanding of religious conversion and to Franciscan global chiliastic religious missions of spiritual conquest. The empirical conquest of both nature and souls (religious transformation) began with William of Ockham, Roger Bacon, Albertus Magnus, Ramon Llull, Arab Aristotelians, and dozens of other artisan alchemists.By remapping the medieval conceptual history of discovery and conquest, Bauer's The Alchemy of Conquest does a number of things. First, it shows the deep alchemical, Franciscan, Llullian roots of Columbus's ideas of discovery as the artisanal conquest of the occult. Second, it presents New World missionary Franciscan notions of conversion as tied to alchemical notions of material and spiritual transformations and to demonology and apocalyptic chiliasm. In colonial Spanish America, there was a science of conversion. Religious reducciones (the congregation of Natives in towns and missions) did not merely mean social reengineering, as the scholarship on colonial missions and Indian cabildos seems to suggest. Reducción meant a craft, artisanal, and alchemical transformation of the soul via an empirical science of ethnography. Third, it radically reframes the origins of early modern Epicurean atomism. As Bauer shows, atomism as a commentary on the structure of matter and as a moral-religious discourse of disorderly teleologies first began as a commentary on American cannibalism. Fourth, the book squarely connects English discourses of colonization to Spanish Franciscan and Spanish Neoplatonic humanist ones (not Spanish Scholastic Dominican ones). English and Spanish interpretations of conquest were connected to alchemical nominalism, demonology, and the natural right to reshape American humans and religious landscapes through craft and conquest. The similarities arose despite the obfuscating English rhetoric of negative contrast (the Black Legend) and England's outright denial of conquest (the White Legend). Finally, Bauer completely reframes Francis Bacon's new revolutionary empiricism as a deliberate project of applying Spanish alchemical discourses of American colonialism not to peoples but to objects.This book will remain an enduring accomplishment of scholarship and erudition.

Rhetoric Construction of Chinese Expository Essays: Implications for EFL Composition Instruction

Recent scholarship on Chinese students’ English expository essays tends to blur or mitigate the differences between English and Chinese writings. This alleged convergence of English and Chinese rhetorical norms gives rise to a view that rhetorical aspects in second language writing instruction and research in China should be de-emphasized. Drawing on data from full-score Chinese compositions of College Entrance Examination, this study examines how Chinese expository paragraphs are developed. Results show great disparities between English and Chinese expository writing at paragraph level such as non-English rhetorical mode, reliance on authorities, rhetorical paragraph, and figurative language in topic sentence. We argue that Chinese rhetorical strategies are likely to be transferred to English writing if English rhetoric is not taught and reinforced in college.

Exploration of Practical English Rhetoric Education Based on Applied Talents

Aristotle is the most representative figure in classical rhetoric. Nowadays, rhetoric is a subject that studies how to use rhetoric to improve the effect of language expression, with the aim of improving learners' ability of rhetorical analysis and appreciation and practical application. Rhetoric can be found in famous literary works, famous speeches, proverbs and idioms, prose poems, online buzzwords and advertising language. Confucius said: "Words are without words, but actions are not far away." Human language is beautiful and interesting because of rhetoric. The effective use of rhetorical devices can make people find everything new and fresh, and achieve the effect of lingering sound and never forgetting anything. Mastering rhetorical devices can properly express thoughts and feelings, and achieve the artistic effect of creating flowers with wonderful pen.

Learning English Rhetoric and Composition as A Vietnamese Student

This study centers around Vietnamese students, with a comparison with East and Southeast Asian students who share the same cultural idea, at higher education level who want to acquire better writing skills in English in and out of academic settings. Since English is not the students' first language, they normally craft an essay from the vocabulary that they know. This is understandable, but a good piece of writing in standard American English is not supposed to be traced word by word. Understanding this fact in-depth and practicing it regularly is the core requirement for English major students. In return, they can join any workplace with their strong writing skills that they have to acquire during their undergraduate years, or more if they attend graduate schools. This group of students is known to be timid since they were raised in a collectivistic community in which many of them make their higher education choices based on firstly the current trend, then what is suitable for them. Thus, by making a bolder choice of declaring English as a major, double major, or minor, they could have better insight into English rhetoric and composition to apply them as a multi-meaning sign to their writings properly.

Dialectics versus polemics in Chinese rhetoric: A study of indirection in Chinese and Chinese ESL argumentative writing as compared with English argumentative writing

AbstractThis study investigates Chinese indirection in argumentative writing. It examines whether there is a fundamental difference between Chinese and English rhetoric in their preferred method of argument, as suggested by instructional materials on how to argue effectively (Liu, Lu. 2005. Rhetorical education through writing instruction across cultures: A comparative analysis of select online instructional materials on argumentative writing. Journal of Second Language Writing 14. 1–18). A comparative analysis of 90 argumentative essays respectively written by expert Chinese and English writers, and advanced Chinese ESL learners reveals that while the English essays tend to adopt a polemical style that persuades by defeating opposing arguments, a significant proportion of the Chinese essays show a dialectical style which examines opposing positions without taking sides and yet rising above them to resolve conflicting issues. A significant number of Chinese ESL writing follow a similar dialectical pattern although not as frequently as their expert writers. A cultural explanation is attempted to account for the phenomenon. It is also argued that the dialectical model, while subsuming earlier rhetorical models adopted for analyzing Chinese writing, may hold the key to studying Chinese differences from the English in written arguments.

Explicit ESL/EFL Reading-writing Connection: An Issue to Explore in ESL/EFL Settings

This paper tries to explore the explicit relationship between reading and writing from ESL/EFL perspectives. The reading-writing connection has long been established in language literacy. Yet, this paper specifically focuses on the usefulness and effectiveness as well as the need for the explicit connection between the two language skills in ESL/EFL settings. It compares between Arabic rhetoric and English rhetoric as two opposite language systems. This paper tries to relate some issues in natural settings in Saudi Arabia in relation to the status of reading and writing in real classrooms and writing teachers’ strategies. Finally, the paper explores the composition teachers’ role and knowledge in making this explicit connection significant to ESL learners of writing. This paper cites some examples that the author experienced in reading and writing courses when he was an EFL student enrolled in English department.

On the Pragmatic Functions of English Rhetoric in Public Speech: A Case Study of Emma Watson’s HeForShe

The current research is mainly conducted to explore the pragmatic functions of English rhetoric in public speech. To do this, methods of close reading and case studies are adopted. The research first reveals that the boom of public speech programs helps reexamine the art of utterance, during the delivery of which English rhetoric plays an indispensable role in shaping and expressing a speaker’s opinions, and then, with Emma Watson’s HeForShe as a case study, concludes the specific pragmatic functions of English rhetoric: parallelism helps strengthen opinions; irony shows dissatisfaction, disapproval or rejection; rhetorical questions invite no answers, but call for emphasis and sense of urgency; contrast describes difference(s) so as to show preference. Use of proper English rhetoric devices in public speaking as well as in daily life improves communicative effect and efficiency.

Similes In Novel Looking For Alaska By John Green

The paper entitled “Similes in Novel Looking for Alaska by John Green” focuses on the kinds of simile and the meaning of simile found in the novel. The data was collected by reading the novel intensively, giving underline and taking note the similes found in the novel. The collected data was analyzed using qualitative method based on theory of figurative language, particularly simile. The main theory used in the analysis of the kinds of simile is proposed by Zhang Xiu Guo in a book entitled English Rhetoric (2005) and the analysis of type of meanings uses theory proposed by Leech (1981) in his book entitled Semantics. From the analysis of the data, there were two types of similes found, namely simile in terms of function and structure. Functionally there were three kinds of simile found, they are descriptive, illuminative, and illustrative similes, meanwhile structurally two kinds of similes were identified, they are closed and open similes. The meanings of similes found are connotative and conceptual meanings.

Challenges in Teaching Japanese EFL Students to Express Themselves Logically

This paper describes a study conducted with twenty-five Japanese lower-level EFL students to develop their ability to write logically in English. In school, Japanese students rarely express their opinions in writing supported by facts or reasons, a result of an important characteristic of Japanese culture: people focus more on emotion than on critical reasoning. Teachers of English often instruct students to add reasons, examples, or conclusions to their written expressions of opinion, but students often fail to do so because they do not grasp their purpose. In this study, students were explicitly instructed in 1) the different values in Western and Japanese culture, 2) alternate ways of thinking and expression, 3) the importance of logic in English rhetoric, and 4) paragraph structure in written English. Students practice writing using English paragraph structure, first in Japanese and then in English. The results indicated that initially only about one third of the students acquired an understanding of how to organize a paragraph logically when writing in Japanese, indicating the difficulty Japanese students have in adopting the principles of English rhetoric even in their native language. After explicit instructions were given repeatedly, another one third of the students were able to structure their paragraphs logically when writing in English. Throughout the six sessions of the study, however, the rest of the students (32%) continued to write their paragraphs in both Japanese and English according to the conventions of Japanese rhetoric, or without logical reasoning.

Excavating the Memory Palace: An Account of the Disappearance of Mnemonic Imagery from English Rhetoric, 1550–1650

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the visual precepts of rhetoric’s fourth canon found themselves at odds with the iconoclasm of England’s Protestant elite. Under this negative influence, mnemonic imagery disappeared from rhetorical theory. Interest in the fourth canon declined, replaced with a Ramist conception of memory grounded in abstract (and imageless) order. A general outline of this history has been offered by several scholars—most notably, Frances Yates—but new bibliographic data along with recently digitized archives can verify its accuracy. Print, written culture, or “modernist” ideologies alone cannot explain the historical marginalization of the canon of memory.

“Mysteries divulged”: Philemon Holland’s Paratexts and the Translation of Pliny’s Natural History in Early Modern England

This paper seeks to situate Philemon Holland’s 1601 translation of Pliny’sNatural Historyin the context of the development of early modern English science. While Holland’s Pliny has traditionally been studied in terms of the early modern reception of the Classics, the establishment of an English rhetoric of translation and the development of English prose, this paper focuses on the discursive and paratextual strategies at work in Holland’s rendering of the botanical and medical books of Pliny’sNatural History. Drawing on and broadening Genette’s definition of paratexts as liminary spaces of authorial—or translatorial—control and self-fashioning, the paper explores the complexities of Holland’s self-defined translation project as the “divulging” of Pliny’s medical and botanical knowledge to a broadened readership. Whereas the prefaces to both volumes of theNatural Historyrely on the rhetoric ofutilitas, or usefulness, to span the spectrum of potential readers, from schoolchildren and “inferior readers” to Humanist scholars and physicians, a closer analysis of the marginal annotations in books XIX to XXVII of theNatural Historyshows Holland integrating the Continental tradition of learned commentary denouncing the factual, interpretive, and methodological errors in Pliny’s treatise. It is argued that the resulting tension between text and paratext, and between Holland’s prefaces and other kinds of liminary material, ultimately reflects changing attitudes towards ancient science, and the very nature of scientific knowledge in early modern England.

‘A Malay knight speaks the white man’s tongue’

ABSTRACTSasterawan Negara Professor Emeritus Muhammad Haji Salleh (b.1942) is a major Malay poet and literary scholar. Mainly educated in English and writing his early poetry largely in that language, he made a decision during his late twenties to write his further poetry only in Malay. His poetry now exists in English, Malay, a small number of Malay translations of his own works first published in English, and a much larger number of his own English translations of works that were first published in Malay. His scholarship has focused on the aesthetics of the classical Malay literary tradition, and he has recently published an English translation of the epic, the Hikayat Hang Tuah. This article is based on Anthony Pym’s proposal that ‘the central object’ of translation history should be ‘the human translator’ (1998: ix). It will study Muhammad’s development as a bilingual scholar, poet, translator and self-translator, working within specific literary and academic fields. As a translator, Muhammad has moved from a ‘formal’, literal, style of translation to a freer, more ‘dynamic’, style. Muhammad’s translations of his own poetry are freer in form but strict in the translation of content. His translation of the classical epic, the Hikayat Hang Tuah, follows the original patterns of phrasing but is free in its use of extended paraphrase and a mock-medieval English rhetoric.

The visibility of divergence: Vicke Lindstrand – Swedishness, Scandinavianness and the “other”

SummaryDuring discussion of national identity, stereotypical characteristics inevitably emerge. In applied arts and design, the character or appearance of objects is commonly understood to express certain notions of national identity, yet this concept of a national “style” is inherently problematic. The Nordic region is arguably one of the most oft-cited exponents of national and regional design identity, or style, by way of the mid-twentieth-century marketing of Swedish and Scandinavian design. Stylistic stereotypes abound in mid-twentieth-century discourses on both Swedish and Scandinavian design and, indeed, ideas of Swedishness and Scandinavianness became somewhat homogenous and apparently resilient to divergent, non-Scandinavian influences. This paper discusses the construction of the narrative of modern Swedish Design and Scandinavian Design identity by way of an examination of divergent influences in the work of the Swedish artist and designer Viktor Emmanuel (Vicke) Lindstrand (1904–1983). The aim is to readdress Lindstrand's position in twentieth-century design history by problematising the historically unbalanced reading of his work as an artist and designer, constrained as it was by the construction of national and regional design identities and their mediation in discourse [see also the essay by Mark Ian Jones, “Vicke Lindstrand after Orrefors – In the Shadow of Streamlined Perfection”, in Ann-Christine Fogelberg (ed.), DESIGN: Vicke Lindstrand (1904–1983) Glas, keramik, textil, måleri och skulptur, Uppsala, 2013, pp. 4–23; Mark Ian Jones, On the Periphery. An Examination of Mid-twentieth Swedish Design and the Reception of Vicke Lindstrand, Sydney, 2011]. My position is that of a non-Swede, an outsider with a different vantage point, examining English language discourse of Swedish origin that was, in turn, intended for outsiders. As such, this paper considers how key mid-twentieth-century English language discourses and rhetoric, manifest in exhibitions and texts, represented Swedish and later Scandinavian design. Lindstrand is positioned as an exemplar and his work is utilised to illustrate and underscore the arguments proposed by this paper.

A Comparative Discourse Analysis of English and Korean Editorials

The present study investigated the differences in the organizational patterns, the rhetorical structures, and the position of the main claim in English and Korean editorials. 16 English and 19 Korean editorials were selected for this study. Results showed that for Korean editorials, although there were some instances of the introduction-body-conclusion pattern which is more preferred in English rhetoric, most of the discourse styles utilized the classical Korean pattern, ki-sung-chon-kyul. One interesting finding was that while the preferred English text structure pattern was maintained in English editorials, the four-unit discourse style also appeared in the English editorials. Furthermore, the underlying rhetorical structures including the placement of the main claim in the editorial comments are discussed for each language.

Uncommon Tongues: Eloquence and Eccentricity in the English Renaissance by Catherine Nicholson (review)

Reviewed by: Uncommon Tongues: Eloquence and Eccentricity in the English Renaissance by Catherine Nicholson Samuel Baudinette Nicholson, Catherine, Uncommon Tongues: Eloquence and Eccentricity in the English Renaissance, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013; cloth; pp. 224; 3 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. US$55.00, £36.00; ISBN 9780812245585. In Uncommon Tongues, Catherine Nicholson situates ‘strangeness’ at the centre of the development of English vernacular eloquence during the Renaissance. Through an in-depth analysis and reading of notable English literary works from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Nicholson places eccentricity in its pedagogical, rhetorical, and literary context. The study is highly engaging, written with conscious eloquence, and provides a unique approach to well-studied and little known texts that builds upon existing research in the field of English rhetoric, such as Carla Mazzio’s The Inarticulate Renaissance (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008). Nicholson’s concern is the hyper-embellished prose of John Lyly’s Euphues, Edmund Spenser’s The Shepheardes Calendar, and Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine. She argues that the wilful eccentricity displayed by their writing elevated the rhetorical eloquence of the English language during a time when rhetoricians and pedagogues were realising the unique difficulty of applying Latin and Greek theories of eloquence to a supposedly barbarous tongue. Nicholson does so through a series of elegant metaphors, such as the rhetorical exile of the English language from Latin eloquence, with its attendant colonial concerns about an England perceived to be on the periphery of Europe and the old Roman Empire. The first two chapters of the book ground these concerns in a thorough analysis of the development of English rhetoric. This section flows exceedingly well and Nicholson’s reading of texts such as Thomas Elyot’s The Boke named the Governor and Roger Ascham’s The Scholemaster is engaging. The second half of the study, which provides three interesting chapter-length case studies of strangeness in Lyly, Spenser, and Marlowe, feels less cohesive; the analysis in these chapters is, nevertheless, still coherent and impressive. The final coda to the book, which briefly reads Shakespeare against the other studies, is less convincing than other sections of the book, perhaps because of its brevity. The strength of the study ultimately lies in Nicholson’s in-depth engagement and reading of her literary sources. In her own eloquent prose, Nicholson emerges as deeply aware of the connection between these texts and their immediate contexts, although the disconnected structure of the second half of the book sometimes makes this difficult to appreciate. Uncommon Tongues will appeal to historians of the English vernacular culture of the Renaissance, and English literary historians more generally. Those attracted to the development of theories of rhetoric will also find much of interest in this book. [End Page 303] Samuel Baudinette Monash University Copyright © 2015 Samuel Baudinette

Application of grey relational analysis to expose individual student's cognitive difficulties in English public speaking

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to propose a formative assessment framework to expose individual student's cognitive learning difficulties in English public speaking. The paper aims to provide student feedback and information during the teaching and learning process. A grey student-construct (S-C) chart is developed to represent the students’ cognitive mapping of the speech difficulties in relation to their overall speech conceptualization. This grey S-C chart can facilitate the instructors to ameliorate the classroom teaching and learning performance in English public speaking. Design/methodology/approach – In total, 26 students in a class of English Speech and Rhetoric participate in the experiment – each student views the online video segments of a great speaker's speech, and then decides what segments would best support the speaking skill constructs and also reflects on his/her own difficulties in the same constructs. The grey relational analysis (GRA) method is used to analyze the empirical data. The individual student's construct localization grey relation grade values are calculated to rank the grey relation for both students and constructs. Accordingly, a grey S-C matrix is constructed and a grey S-C chart can thus be developed. Findings – The grey S-C chart manifestly displays the cognitive difficulties in sequences of both students and constructs. Practical implications – According to the grey S-C chart, the instructors may modify teaching strategies to enhance the overall classroom performance. The students may adjust learning strategies to eliminate their specific difficulties. Offering individualized advanced and remedial practices to those largely deviating from the norm is also possible. Originality/value – The study is the first of its kind to apply the GRA method to expose individual student's cognitive learning difficulties in English public speaking. The grey S-C chart is novel in education literature, which can reveal individual student's learning difficulty patterns.