Ảnh hưởng của thói quen sử dụng tiếng mẹ đẻ đến việc học viết trong ngôn ngữ thứ hai - một điển cứu về du học sinh tại Úc
Kỷ yếu điện tử Hội thảo Quốc gia Nghiên cứu liên ngành về ngôn ngữ và giảng dạy ngôn ngữ
lần thứ VI
THE INTERFERENCE OF FIRST LANGUAGE LITERACY IN
SECOND LANGUAGE LITERACY: A CASE STUDY OF AN
INTERNATIONAL STUDENT IN AUSTRALIA
Nguyen Minh Bich Van
National University Ho Chi Minh city-University of Social Sciences and Humanities
Abstract
In Kaplan‘s contrastive rhetoric research (1966), the negative transfer or interference of
first language writing to second language writing is focused. It set out the hypothesis
that each language has a distinctive rhetorical convention, and that they leave a negative
interference in second language writing. By following this approach, this paper aims to
contribute to the research of contrastive rhetoric by exploring the question ‗
Could Vietnamese rhetoric obstruct the development of English writing literacy for
students at tertiary level?‘ by conducting semi-structured interview with the participant.
The major findings of this research show the challenges Vietnamese students face in
academic writing due to not only the interference of L1 to L2 in the process of second
language acquisition, but also the current academic writing instructions (e.g. critique
essays, argumentative writing). Some pedagogical implications for both teachers and
students to improve their writing teaching and learning are proposed.
Keywords
contrastive rhetoric, L1 interference, second language literacy
1. Introduction
Studying abroad is a valuable opportunity for students to expose to new cultures, and new
education system. Besides the benefits from new environment, students also face with many
challenges. One of the challenges that international students, especially Vietnamese students,
have encountered when studying oversea is academic writing in university. Many Vietnamese
students who study in Australia have been struggled with their writing assignments, and
received low marks. Cultural differences in writing and pedagogical applications in
contrastive rhetoric have been claimed as the reasons lead to these difficulties.
In terms of cultural differences, Grabe & Kaplan (1997) claim that cultural aspects and prior
knowledge of native language challenges the development of second language literacy in
some extent. Confucian philosophy, which people tend to follow the public opinion rather
than the individual perspective, influences profoundly in Asian cultures, and has affected
Vietnamese culture for more than two thousand years, therefore people tend to compromise
rather than criticise (Hinkel, 2002; Trinh & Nguyen, 2014). These characteristics have
influenced in Vietnamese writing style, sharp the habits of dissemble to be unquestioning, and
form the ‗indirectness‘, ‗implicitness‘, and ‗circularity‘ in their second language academic
writing (Phan, 2001). Soter (1998) asserts ―Vietnamese stories appear to be less goal-oriented
and hence less focus on plot than the typical English story‖ (p. 198).
Kaplan (1966) initially started a new study domain in contrastive rhetoric. This study area has
investigated cultural differences in written discourse patterns or rhetoric convention may
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affect negatively in second language writing (Connor, 1996). In Kaplan‘s study on contrastive
rhetoric, he presented diagrams of five different cultures including Oriental, English,
Semantic, Russian, and Roman. Oriental rhetoric was described as a spiral, while English
rhetoric was a straight line. English refers as a linear, direct and logic language, while Asian
language is considered as non-linear, circularity, and inductive (Pennycook, 1998). As a
result, English native speakers express their opinions in a ―linear, hierarchical fashion‖, while
Asians‘ perspectives are developed in a ―non-linear, spiral fashion‖ (Severino, 1993). In his
early work, Kaplan analysed the paragraph organization in second language leaners‘ essay
and categorized into five different type of paragraph development, which later he assumed it
as a ‗doodles‘ task. He also argued that second language learners‘ first language has affected
their paragraph organization in academic writing. Kaplan (1966) assumed that English
rhetoric is one type of Anglo-European culture, and the essays construct following a linear
development, while Oriental languages are claimed as inductive, indirect approach and state
the key features at the end of the essays or paragraphs.
2. Theoretical Framework on Contrastive Rhetoric
2.1. Contrastive Rhetoric
According to Kaplan (1995), contrastive rhetoric is about the relationships between language
and thought. It claims that the way people who speak two different languages organize the
written text is culture-specific, and they will organise the same facts differently. For the
learners of an L2, there will be some facts on the text logic that they do not conscious about:
Firstly, the interference of L1 on the text‘s organisation.
Secondly, the organisation of text logic of L2
Thirdly, the differences between the two languages in terms of text organisation
Kaplan (1995) also admitted that his earliest research on this area in 1988 showed some fault
while he did not consider the differences in genre of texts and assumed that there was only
one single ―general‖ text-logical structure for English. In recent studies on contrastive
rhetoric, researchers concentrated on particular text genres. They also consider English as a
constant, and the text-logic of other languages is the variable when compare contrastive
rhetoric of the two languages.
2.2. Contrastive Rhetoric in Asian Languages
In 2004, Kuntjara investigated on the cultural transfer in Indonesian‘s English writing.
According to Kuntjara (2004), Indonesian conscious on the relationship with the interlocutors
in their conversations. There is tendency that people use the pronoun ‗we‘ rather than ‗I‘ in
order to reduce the speakers‘ responsibility in the conversation and avoid hurting the
participants. As the result, people implicitly and indirectly express their opinions. It is
considered as being rule and impolite if they present their perspective in a direct way. This
characteristic affects in their writing, and also in second language writing. This type of
expression is different from Western culture. American people tend to expose their opinions
explicitly and are encouraged to speak out in order to learn from others perspectives. People
take fully responsibility on their opinion and states in terms of writing.
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With respect to the essay‘s structure, in Indonesian essay, there is a tendency to put the thesis
statements and the key points in the conclusion rather than introduce in the introduction. This
is one of the basic differences between Western rhetoric and Asian rhetoric (Scollon &
Scollon, 1997). The key points tend to be postponed at the end of the background usually
putting forward.
Because of B (background or cause)
So A (key feature)
In contrast, in Western culture, the key point would be explicitly introduce at the
beginning of the essay, the arguments to support the main ideas would be put backward.
A (key feature)
Because of B (cause, background)
From her study, Kuntjara (2004) concluded that it is difficult to affirm the hypothesis cultural
transfer exist in Indonesian English writing by just investigating on their written text in
English. Indonesian rhetoric is considered as inductive, indirectness and impersonal, however,
there is a need for further investigation in order to conclude that these cultural features
interfere their writing in second language.
Mohan & Lo (1985) conducted a research in terms of the writing problem of Chinese students
on sentence-level problems. The aim of the study is to raise students‘ awareness on the
interference of first language literacy and prior knowledge on the development of second
language writing literacy. The study investigated on two groups of Chinese students, one from
Taiwan and one from Hong Kong. The result showed that the writing samples in English of
Taiwanese students were reported as indirectness and similar to the Chinese poetic structure.
In contrast, students from Hong Kong had no problem in organisations. This can be explained
by the fact that Hong Kong was colonized by the Britain in many decades; therefore, their
educational system has been influenced by the Western culture, while Taiwanese students
English writing has been affected by Asian culture.
3. Methods
3.1. The Study
The study was conducted in Melbourne, Australia. Every year, Australia attracts thousands of
international students, including Vietnamese students. Many of them face challenges in their
academic life, especially on their academic research writing. The research was conducted in
order to find the reasons that lead to this fact.
This paper concentrates on the data that collected from a semi-structured interview that was
designed to answer the following questions: Could Asian rhetoric obstruct the development of
English writing literacy for students at tertiary level?
Some information about the research setting is needed here.
3.2. The Participant
The participant was a post-graduate student in Melbourne, Australia, who finished her
Bachelor of English in Vietnam. When she came to Australia to study for her Master‘s degree,
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she faced many challenges in academic writing and received low marks for her two first
terms. She was also a teacher of English in Vietnam before going abroad. As a learner, she
would experience the teaching curriculum in Vietnam, especially in writing instructions, the
difficulties and how she found the motivation in learning English. As a teacher, she could
share her experiences on how the teaching process and training in Vietnam.
3.3. Data Collection
Individual face-to-face semi-structured interview was conducted to explore the participant
difficulties and the reasons that lead to her difficulties when studying abroad. The interview
lasted for 60 minutes and was tape-recorded with the consent of the participant. The
researcher transcribed the conversation herself to ensured that all the meaning was obtained
exactly.
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the interference of first language interfere in the
development of second language writing literacy, concentrating on the Vietnamese Oriental
rhetoric that could negatively interfere the process of development in second language writing
literacy. The interview was constructed into three parts: the interviewee‘s experience in
learning and developing second language literacy, the interviewee‘s opinion on the English
teaching curriculum in Vietnam in general and in her province, and the interviewee‘s view on
Vietnamese academic writing style and Vietnamese English academic writing style.
The questions employed in the interview were mostly open-ended questions with the purpose
to collect the feedbacks from the interviewee. Close-ended questions or ‗Yes – No‘ questions
also were used in the interview in order to confirm the information from the interviewee.
4. Findings
4.1. Early experiences on learning English
The participant started learning English from grade one, and she has been learning this
language for more than ten years. However, even though she was exposed to English very
early, she does not consider that she has been fully successful in the development of second
language literacy. Besides learning English in formal schooling, she also took some extra
English classes at the English centers. The participant felt more comfortable when learning
English in the private English centers because she was provided opportunity to speak and
practice listening, while in school she had to learn everything in the textbooks. Moreover, her
English has improved since she started to learn in the English centers.
In terms of her difficulties in learning English, her answer was ―a lot‖. The participant comes
from Quy Nhon province, which is a province located in the Central Vietnam. In her
hometown, she did not have opportunity to expose to the authentic input, and did not learn
English from any native English teacher. She learned English by reading books and listening
to English songs and short conversations. Consequently, she was not confident in speaking
English and avoided to interact people who are good English, because she was afraid that she
would commit mistakes.
4.2. The current English teaching curriculum and writing instruction in Vietnam
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In terms of writing, the participant assumed that because Vietnamese are good at grammar,
they do better in writing compared to speaking and listening skills. However, when being
asked whether Vietnamese students successful in their writing, she said they are not
successful, but better than speaking and writing. According to the participant, in Vietnam,
students are not actually taught writing in school. The instructions are focus on teaching
grammatical structures and these structures are included in the tests. There are limited
instructions in writing; consequently, students have less opportunity to develop their writing
skill. Writing parts are also included in the tests. However, there were short paragraphs, and
no assignments in English that excess one thousand words. Consequently, after more than ten
years learning English, students could not write a proper paragraph in English. According to
Tran (2013), many students and graduates after five to twelve years learning English had not
been able communicate in English outside the class in both written and spoken form.
Regarding the differences in writing instructions at public school and private English centers,
the participant admitted that the writing instruction at her high school and university was not
well-constructed, while at the English centers the writing instructions focused on various type
of essays. In high school, the participant said they rarely had any official writing lessons.
Therefore, the teaching curriculum in the English centers was considered more successful
than in her high school.
4.3. The interference of Vietnamese Oriental rhetoric on the development of learners‟
second language writing literacy
Following the participant context, the participant said she is confident in her writing skill.
However, in her first two terms in her postgraduate study, her grades for assignments were at
C and D. The participant admitted that she had fewer experiences in academic writing, in
paragraph organizations and still affected by the Vietnamese writing style at that time.
Moreover, she also had problems in the process of writing an English essay. She always
transferred the Vietnamese written style to her English writing texts. In Vietnamese written
style, the authors employ the inductive method in their writing, tend to introduce the general
ideas first, and then they will state the main key points at the end. Moreover, Vietnamese
writers also use long sentences to express their ideas. This style is different from Western
writing style. In Western academic writing style, the authors go straight to the points, and use
short sentences but contain full meaning in there. Therefore, it would be easier for the readers
to comprehend the meaning in the texts. The participant said it took her a long time to adapt to
the Western written style in terms of writing critique essays or a reading response. For
critique essays, learners are required to state out their strengths and weaknesses from the
previous tasks (e.g. literature review, research proposal, micro-teaching segments) base on
theoretical framework. In reading response, learners must use their critical thinking to show
their understanding on a selected journal article. These argumentative assignments are
considered challenges to Vietnamese students.
In the interview, the researcher found some evidence that support Kuntjara‘s work (2004).
When being asked about if Vietnamese pay more consciousness on the relationship between
the interlocutors in the conversations, the participant claimed that Vietnamese also very
conscious on these kinds of relationship. They are afraid to hurt others if they are
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straightforward in expressing their opinions. She also took an example from herself. If she
wanted someone to invite her a cup of milk tea, she would never tell that person directly, but
say: ―I really love milk tea‖, and she assumed that the other person had to understand the
meaning embed in there. The purpose of this indirect expression is to do not create any
comfortableness in the conversation. The participant claimed that she would be quite furious
when she talked about people who express their own ideas in a directly way without paying
attention on others‘ thought. She asserted that these people are ―not good‖, ―don‘t care about
other people and just want to show their thought‖, and ―need to respect each other‖. These
responses are similar to Indonesian culture. In Indonesian culture, a person will be considered
as rude and impolite if they express their opinions straightforwardly and explicitly (Kuntjara,
2004).
In order to investigate whether these characteristics affect the participant‘s academic English
writing, the researcher asked her about the how she made arguments on her assignments in
Australian university. The participant shared that she had many difficulties in writing
assignments in her master‘s program, especially making arguments in her papers. Vietnamese
and Asian people often show respect rather than criticize (Phan, 2001). There is a tendency to
compromise rather than criticize in their culture and that characteristic affects their second
language writing. Therefore, the ability to write argument essays of Vietnamese students is
not highly appreciated. Regarding the participant‘s writing style, in her assignments, she
avoided to directly criticize others, especially when writing the reflection on her peers.
Moreover, lack of making strong arguments and connections in her writing also one of the
reasons led to her low marks at the first semesters of the master course. She recognized the
problems in her papers through her professors‘ feedbacks. Her papers were evaluated as
irrelevant, and circularity because instead of concentrating on the main points of the essays,
she put more emphasis on unrelated ideas, and save the key points at the end. This fact
supports the claim on Severino (1993)‘s work that Asian countries share the similarity in
indirectness spiral form in their written text. In order to improve the quality of her
assignments, the participant was required to put more effort on changing her writing style
from Vietnamese to Western writing style.
5. Discussion and Implications
According to the result from the interview, there are many factors that affect the participant‘s
development of second language writing literacy.
Firstly, the linguistic environment is one of the reasons. Since the participant was not
provided opportunity to access to the authentic input, she just could learn English from
reading books or listening to English songs lead to the lack of confidence in using
English in terms of both spoken and written forms.
Secondly, because the English teaching instructions in Vietnam has prioritised in
teaching grammar rather than keep the balance in all skills, consequently, as a student,
the participant did not have chance to learn writing properly, and lead to her low
performance when studying abroad.
Finally, the interference from first language or prior knowledge also challenges the
development of second language writing literacy. Being affected by Vietnamese
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oriental rhetoric and not being used to with critical thinking on writing her
assignments in Australia, the participant got low marks on her papers. From the
participant‘s case, there are some implications that should be applied in writing
instruction.
5.1. Develop students‟ awareness on the differences between the two languages
One of the main reasons that leads to not proficiency in English writing is the learners do not
recognise the differences in terms of expression between Vietnamese and English or they do
not understand the social contexts. Because of the interference of Vietnamese into English
writing, students tend to write in an inductive and indirect way. The one possible way to help
students be familiar with direct writing style is getting them exposed with the authentic input,
the native written texts.
5.2. Reading as the input
According to Grabe & Kaplan (1997), reading and writing is a combination that language
teachers need to consider to in their curriculum. Before writing, teacher should give students
the input as references for their essays. The input here can be giving through reading at first
hand. Learners will find the encouragement, ideas, vocabulary, and planning their paper after
gathering the information from the reading texts. Students should be encouraged to read as
much as they can.
5.3. Develop students „critical thinking skills
Critical thinking can be understood as the ability to have reflective and independent thinking.
The learners will become an active one rather than being a passive recipient of information.
The ability to reason will be build. Students will be encouraged to question ideas and
assumptions rather than accepting them at the face value. This set of skills will benefit
students on working on their critique writing assignments. Develop students‘ critical thinking
will help them to be an independent thinker, who will understand the viewpoint logically
rather than by their instinct.
6. Conclusion
The study above reveals challenges a Vietnamese student encountered in her study in
Australia in terms of academic writing. Contrastive rhetoric is not only the reasons lead to her
failure to achieve high score at her international university, but also because of the writing
instructions in Vietnam. The study indicates that in order to have quality training in English
writing teaching and learning, appropriate and effective strategies are needed. According to
Savignon (1997), the final goal of language teaching is to develop learners‘ communicative
competence, which includes grammatical competence, sociolinguistics competence, and also
discourse competence. It is hoped that EFL language learners in Vietnam could achieve the
language proficiency as native speakers, but is not necessary for the competence. In order to
do that, there should be the cooperation from teachers, students, authorities and societies.
References
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Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Soter, A.C. (1988). The second language learner and cultural transfer in narration. In A.C. Purves
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Kỷ yếu điện tử Hội thảo Quốc gia Nghiên cứu liên ngành về ngôn ngữ và giảng dạy ngôn ngữ
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ẢNH HƢỞNG CỦA THÓI QUEN SỬ DỤNG TIẾNG MẸ ĐẺ
ĐẾN VIỆC HỌC VIẾT TRONG NGÔN NGỮ THỨ HAI – MỘT
ĐIỂN CỨU VỀ DU HỌC SINH TẠI ÖC
Tóm tắt
Nghiên cứu so sánh tu từ của Kaplan (1966) đã tập trung vào những chuyển đổi tiêu cực
của ngôn ngữ mẹ đẻ vào văn phong của ngôn ngữ thứ hai. Nghiên cứu này đã đƣa ra một
giả thuyết đó là bất cứ ngôn ngữ nào cũng có một hệ thống tu từ đặc trƣng, và hệ thống
này sẽ dẫn đến một số chuyển đổi tiêu cực trong quá trình sử dụng ngôn ngữ thứ hai của
ngƣời học. Dựa vào sự tiếp cận trên, bằng cách thực hiện phỏng vấn bán cấu trúc với đối
tƣợng nghiên cứu, bài báo này sẽ tìm câu trả lời cho câu hỏi ‗Những phép tu từ trong
tiếng Việt có gây cản trở quá trình phát triển kỹ năng viết tiếng Anh của sinh viên ở bậc
đại học hay không?‘. Kết quả nghiên cứu cho thấy những khó khăn học sinh, sinh viên
Việt Nam gặp phải trong việc phát triển kỹ năng viết tiếng Anh không chỉ do sự ảnh
hƣởng của tiếng mẹ đẻ, mà còn do việc dạy và học kỹ năng viết ở Việt Nam chƣa đƣợc
đẩy mạnh. Một số biện pháp cải thiện chất lƣợng giảng dạy và học viết cũng đƣợc đề cập
trong bài báo này.
Từ khóa
tu từ so sánh, ảnh hƣởng tiếng mẹ đẻ, năng lực ngôn ngữ thứ hai
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