I am Naing Tun Lin, a graduate student studying applied linguistics with emphasis on TESOL at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. I am from Burma aka Myanmar and I know Burmese, which is my mother-tongue, and English. I was an EFL teacher and teacher trainer in my country. Writing is considered widely as the most difficult of all four skills in Learning a language.
In Burma writing composition is hardly taught. Students are encouraged to swallow whatever prescribed in the textbooks and regurgitate what they have in their passive memory. As a result they fail when it comes to writing creatively or presenting their argument effectively.
I noticed in the first few months as a student in the US university that there is so much difference between Asian rhetoric and the North American counterpart as I found myself in the American eyes beating around the bush. It then occurred to me I was only following the pattern that I had long been used to. I presented my ideas in the last part of the essays or assignments that I had to submit to the professors. In English speaking American culture they tend to present their ideas in the very beginning of their writings. Then they are followed by support and refutations. This is the issue that I have to deal with besides grammar and other mechanism in writing.
However, it cannot be denied that Eastern discourse is not appealing to the general reader in an Anglophone society. Regardless of the different rhetoric patterns in the East and the West and the rest of the globe, all the bedtime stories that we heard from our parents have the same order of presentation. It is only arguments that are presented in different ways. They are shaped by attitudes, outlook and social conditioning of peoples. When they want to avoid saying no, their honesty is misunderstood. Yet I have to see how the North American comes up with his or her rhetoric in the academic community as I am studying how they write and I will have to train writers in Burma to write to look and sound educated to the American, because the first impression is almost always the first interpretation of how or what someone is.
In Burma writing composition is hardly taught. Students are encouraged to swallow whatever prescribed in the textbooks and regurgitate what they have in their passive memory. As a result they fail when it comes to writing creatively or presenting their argument effectively.
I noticed in the first few months as a student in the US university that there is so much difference between Asian rhetoric and the North American counterpart as I found myself in the American eyes beating around the bush. It then occurred to me I was only following the pattern that I had long been used to. I presented my ideas in the last part of the essays or assignments that I had to submit to the professors. In English speaking American culture they tend to present their ideas in the very beginning of their writings. Then they are followed by support and refutations. This is the issue that I have to deal with besides grammar and other mechanism in writing.
However, it cannot be denied that Eastern discourse is not appealing to the general reader in an Anglophone society. Regardless of the different rhetoric patterns in the East and the West and the rest of the globe, all the bedtime stories that we heard from our parents have the same order of presentation. It is only arguments that are presented in different ways. They are shaped by attitudes, outlook and social conditioning of peoples. When they want to avoid saying no, their honesty is misunderstood. Yet I have to see how the North American comes up with his or her rhetoric in the academic community as I am studying how they write and I will have to train writers in Burma to write to look and sound educated to the American, because the first impression is almost always the first interpretation of how or what someone is.
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