chinese expository essay

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Liu & Huang 2021 Rhetoric Construction of Chinese Expository Essays SAGE Open 11(1)

What Characterizes Chinese Students’ Exposition Besides Deduction and Induction?: A Comparative Rhetoric Perspective

Donghong Liu is a full Professor of English Department at Central China Normal University. Her research interests include comparative rhetoric and second language composition, intercultural composition and communication, second language acquisition and pragmatics.

Qiong Gan is a lecturer of English Department at Central China Normal University. Her research efforts have focused on translation theories and practice, and rhetoric and composition studies.

Rhetorical features of Chinese writers’ essays have been studied for decades but inconsistent interpretations of deduction and induction lead to controversial results. Taking a comparative rhetoric perspective, this paper clarifies the notions of deduction and induction and investigates what rhetorical features characterize Chinese expository paragraphs besides deduction and induction and whether Chinese EFL learners’ English paragraphs have similar features. Two kinds of data sources were used—29 full-score Chinese expositions in College Entrance Examinations and 29 English expositions written by Chinese EFL learners. The results show that deduction is preferred in both Chinese and EFL writing, and that rhetorical paragraphs and coordinate paragraphs are particular to Chinese writing while the EFL learners’ paragraphs display hybrid rhetoric such as semi-coordination. It is concluded that neither Chinese paragraphs nor EFL ones are similar to the modern English rhetorical paradigm, and English rhetoric instruction will facilitate the introspection of the two kinds of rhetoric.

About the authors

This work is supported by the Social Science Department of the Ministry of Education of China [Grant No.: 16YJA740022].

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