Contrastive Rhetoric: A study of Introduction and Thesis Statement in the American English and Persian Expository Essays

Document Type : Research Paper

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Iranian students often face serious problems in learning to write English composition. Out of the different factors affecting the students' concepts, schemata and strategies in writing English composition, the influence of L 1 rhetorical organization in L2 composition is an important issue which has been neglected in researches and teaching methodologies for Iranian English language learners. This article made a contrastive study of the rhetorical organization of the introductory part of the American English and Persian expository essays. Using I-unit and discourse bloc as the method for quantitative analysis, the research studied sample essays from the journals of the two languages. The result of the analysis showed that there is a major difference between the introduction of the essays of the two languages in length of the introductions, placement of the thesis statement and generality and specificity of sentences. As for the pedagogical implication, the study suggests that comparing the rhetorical organization of the compositions of the two languages and raising Iranian English language learner's awareness of these differences can be effective in improving Iranian English language learners' composition.

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