Exploring the Rhetorical and Communicative Impacts of Native Culture on the Argumentative ...

407 Pages·2015·4.02 MB·English

People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria
Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research
Mentouri Brothers University, Constantine
Faculty of Letters and Languages
Department of Letters and the English Language

Exploring the Rhetorical and

Communicative Impacts of Native Culture

on the Argumentative Writing of Algerian

Master Students of EFL

Towards Designing a University Course for the

Teaching of Argumentative Essay Writing

Thesis Submitted to the Department of Letters and the English Language in
Candidacy for the Degree of “Doctorat Es-Sciences” in Applied Linguistics

By: Miss Touria DRID Supervisor: Prof. Zahri HAROUNI

Board of Examiners:

Chairman: Prof. Ahmed MOUMENE Prof. Mentouri Brothers University, Constantine
Supervisor: Prof. Zahri HAROUNI Prof. Mentouri Brothers University, Constantine
Member: Prof. Riad BELOUAHEM MCA. Mentouri Brothers University, Constantine
Member: Prof. Salah KAOUACHE MCA. Mentouri Brothers University, Constantine
Member: Dr. Doudja SLOUGUI MCA. ENS, Constantine
Member: Dr. Naouel ABDELLATIF MAMI MCA. Sétif 2 University, Sétif

27 October 2015
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DEDICATIONS

I dedicate this work:
to the memory of my father… the person who taught me to read and write,
t
o my mother,
and to my family.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to express my immense gratefulness to all those persons who have
given their precious support and assistance for the completion of this work.
In particular, I am profoundly grateful to my supervisor, Prof. Zahri Harouni, not
only for the perceptive guidance and the profuse constructive feedback she has
continuously offered me, but also for the scholarly background that she has constructed for
a whole generation of students and researchers at Mentouri University in linguistic studies.
My ever-growing interest in language issues was indeed shaped within the research
territory that she has led us into. Her immeasurable appreciation of my work during all the
phases of my post-graduation studies has always been my impetus to make steps forward.
I am also very thankful to the members of the examination board, who have
accepted to read and assess my work. I appreciate the insightful and objective feedback
they have offered for the refinement of the content.
My sincere gratitude is extended to Prof. Frans van Eemeren, Emeritus Chair of the
Department of Speech Communication, Argumentation Theory and Rhetoric of the
University of Amsterdam, and Dr. Francisca Snoeck Henkemans, the present Chair, for the
encouragement and the facilities they offered me to visit the department in 2008 and 2009.
I acknowledge the permission they gave me to have access to the library, to use the
photocopying material and to participate in research symposia. I value the arrangements
they have made for me to meet the staff members in the department. I am greatly indebted
to them for giving me solid background in argumentation studies through corrections of
sections of my work and productive discussions on argumentation issues. Above all, I
appreciate the convivial welcome I got from them at the University of Amsterdam.
My gratitude goes especially to Dr. Bilal Amjarso and Dr. Dima Mohammed for
their infinite day-to-day brotherly care and psychological support in the Netherlands.
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Without them, my missions abroad would have been difficult to accomplish. I am thankful
to them for the informative feedback they gave on my research project as well.
I should also be grateful to the faculty members in the same department: Dr.
Eveline Feteris, Dr. José Plug, Dr. Leah Polcar, Lotte van Poppel, Marcin Lewinski,
Corina Andone, Roosmaryn Pilgram, Constanza Ihnen-Johry, Yvond Tonnard and Duncan
Harkness for the enlightening discussions I had with them about the research theme. I
particularly show gratitude to Dr. Jean Wagemans for the suggestions he made on the first
chapter of the present study and Dr. Bert Meuffels for the important methodological and
statistical guidance he offered.
I would also like to express my indebtedness to Mr. Youcef Bencheikh, my ex-
student and my colleague, for the scarce documentation he generously put at my disposal
and for his support in textual data processing and in using concordance tools.
Special thanks are addressed to the Master students and the writing instructors at
the Department of English at Kasdi Merbah University (Ouargla, Algeria), for their
enthusiastic participation in generating the data for the present study and sacrifice of their
time and efforts. Further, I acknowledge the assistance of Mr. Djelloul Bourahla, the Chair
of the department. His judicious perception of the research load that every member of the
department carries along with the teaching duties speeded up the progression of my work.
Finally, I am indebted to all my friends, whose continuous psychological support
enabled me to persist and surmount the research hurdles.

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ABSTRACT
Argumentative writing, a fundamental part of academic writing, is reported to pose problems
for learners of English as a foreign language. The present study examines the factors
engendering difficulties in writing an argumentative essay by a group of Arabic-speaking
Master students of English in Algeria. This case study seeks to accomplish the following
objectives: To explore the effect of the rhetorical patterns and communication styles of the
learners’ native language and culture on their argumentative essay writing, to explore the
teaching practices of argumentative essay writing in the Algerian university context, and to
develop innovative instructional ways of argumentative essay writing based on understanding
the nature of learners’ problems. To achieve these goals, a blend of quantitative/qualitative
methods was employed. A writing test was used to elicit 104 argumentative essays from 52
Master students out of 199 registered for the academic year 2012_2013 at the Department of
English at Kasdi Merbah University, Ouargla, Algeria. The participants were chosen via
convenience sampling. An interview was administered to 4 teachers of writing out of 10 at the
same department chosen via purposive sampling. Its aim is to explore the instruction pursued
when teaching the specified genre. The analysis of the data involved firstly a quantitative
treatment of the learners’ texts. The purpose of this analysis is to detect the impacts of the
rhetorical patterns and communication styles of the learners’ native culture on their
argumentative essays in English. The rhetorical patterns covered are excessive coordination,
through-argumentation and non-deductive text development, and the communication style
under investigation is indirectness. Further, qualitative techniques, based on the procedure of
coding, were employed in the analysis of the teachers’ interview responses. The results
demonstrate that the learners’ argumentative texts contain rhetorical and communicative
features that can be attributed to the effect of their native culture, but the latter is not the sole
factor leading the student writers to deviate from the discourse norms governing the
construction of the genre under focus. In fact, learners’ low linguistic proficiency and the
received instruction contribute equally to the problem. On the basis of the findings, a course
for the teaching of argumentative essay writing to Arabic-speaking university students of
English as a foreign language has been designed based on the genre-process approach.
Through this study, the present researcher has attempted to aid the learners of English to write
argumentative texts which respond to the standards of academic writing and to contribute to
the development of current research in the field.

Keywords: Argumentative essay, Arabic language, Arab culture, communication styles,
rhetorical patterns, English writing.
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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
CN: Conditionals
CR: Contrastive Rhetoric
CTU: Coordinate T-Unit
DB: Discourse Block
Dem.: Demonstratives
Den.: Denials
Dis.: Disclaimers
DU: Discourse Unit
EAP: English for Academic Purposes
EFL: English as a Foreign Language
ESL: English as a Second Language
ESP: English for Specific Purposes
FL: Foreign Language
FTA: Face Threatening Act
HCC: High Context Communication
IC: Intercultural Communication
Indef. 1: Universal and Negative Indefinite Pronouns
Indef. 2: Assertive and Non-Assertive Indefinite Pronouns
KWIC: Key Word in Context
L1: First Language
L2: Target Language
LCC: Low Context Communication
LMD: Licence-Master-Doctorat
N°: Number
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NNS: Non-Native Speaker
NS: Native Speaker
PV: Passive Voice
Q: Question
RQT: Rhetorical Questions and Tags
SCP: Simple Concordance Program
TEFL: Teaching English as a Foreign Language
TSA: Topical Structure Analysis
T-unit: Terminal Unit

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LIST OF TABLES
Table 1: Types of Syllogisms 24
Table 2: Manifestations of Tip and Bottom Cultures 53
Table 3: Categories of Cohesive Devices 65
Table 4: The Low-Context Communication and High-Context Communication 92
Frameworks
Table 5: Hinkel’s (1997) Model of Indirectness Strategies and Devices 93
Table 6: Dimensions of Analysis 157
Table 7: Indicators of Coordination and Subordination 158
Table 8: Indicators of Argumentative Patterns 159
Table 9: Indirectness Devices 160
Table 10: Clausal Classification of T-units 175
Table 11: Problems in Using Subordination and Coordination 176
Table 12: Argumentation Patterns 179
Table 13: Problems in Writing Counter-argumentative Essays 180
Table 14: Frequency Distribution of the Placement of the Thesis Statements in 191
the Essays
Table 15: Common Non-Conventional Patterns in Deductive Essays 192
Table 16: Non-Conventional Patterns in Inductive Essay Organization 194
Table 17: Total and Median Values for the Use of Indirectness Devices 199
Table 18: Rhetorical Questions 200
Table 19: Disclaimers and Denials 201
Table 20: Universal and Negative Indefinite Pronouns (Indef.1) 203
Table 21: Assertive and Non-Assertive Indefinite Pronouns (Indef.2) 204
Table 22: Demonstratives 205
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Table 23: Passive Voice 206
Table 24: Conditionals 208
Table 25: Recapitulation 209
Table 26: Teachers’ General Background in TEFL at University 218
Table 27: Teachers’ Experience in Teaching EFL Writing at University 218
Table 28: Circumstances Surrounding the Teaching of Writing to 2nd Year 220
LMD Students
Table 29: Teachers’ Assessment of the Situation 222
Table 30: Level Allocated to Teach Essays 224
Table 31: Period Allocated to Teach Essays 225
Table 32: Syllabus Guidance on Essay Writing Pedagogy 226
Table 33: Teachers’ Attitudes Towards Presence/Absence of Syllabus Guidance 227
Table 34: Resources Used to Assist the Teaching of the Writing Skill 229
Table 35: Procedures of Teaching Essays 230
Table 36: Teaching Essay Writing Procedure Orientations 231
Table 37: Preferred Approaches in Essay Teaching 232
Table 38: Additional Techniques 233
Table 39: Teachers’ Ideal Procedures 234
Table 40: Factors Affecting the Choice of Procedure 234
Table 41: Syllabus Specifications about Argumentative Essay Writing 235
Table 42: Focal Features in Argumentative Essay Writing 236
Table 43: Types of Introductions 239
Table 44: Organizational Patterns of the Essays’ Body Section 240
Table 45: Types of Conclusions 242
Table 46: Additional Focal Features in Teaching Argumentative Essay Writing 243
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Table 47: Teachers’ Perceptions and Attitudes towards Recurrent Rhetorical 244
Patterns and Communication Styles
Table 48: Factors Affecting Production of Non-Nativelike Argumentative 252
Essays
Table 49: Solutions to Improve the Teaching of the Essay Genre 254
Table 50: Additional Information 256
Table 51: The Course Design Process 271
Table 52: Points of Emphasis in Argumentative Essay Teaching 277
Table 53: Course Structure 286

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