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This study analyzed writing features conceptually linked to collectivist or individualist orientations among students from Taiwan and the U S. These features were indirectness, personal disclosure (first person singular pronouns and personal anecdotes), use of proverbs and other canonical expressions, collective self (first personal plural pronouns and statements of humaneness and collective virtues), and assertiveness. Comparisons were made across languages and nationalities (Taiwanese and US. students) and also across language alone (Taiwanese writing in Chinese and in English).Associations with each writers degree of collectivism as a personality trait were also tested. U.S. students writing in English, compared to Taiwanese students writing in Chinese, were found to be more direct and to reveal more personal anecdotes, Taiwanese students, in contrast, tended to use more proverbs and to express humaneness and collective virtues with greater frequency. Taiwanese students' English writing showed influences of their L1(first language) writing conventions in terms of indirectness, humaneness, collective virtues, and limited use of personal anecdotes. Taiwanese students writing in English, as compared with their Li, were more likely to use first person pronouns, were less likely to use proverbs and were also less assertive. Use of writing features was associated with nationality and language but not with writers' individual levels of collectivism. These associations imply that certain writing features may be more a matter of socialized discourse conventions than directly attributable to differences in collectivist or individualist ideation. Moreover, other findings of variability, especially among Taiwanese writers, belie any simplistic cultural essentialism.
Learning to write in a second language is much more than just a technical achievement in orthography, vocabulary, and syntax. On the contrary, becoming a proficient writer in a second language requires assimilation of far more subtle and yet pervasive cultural knowledge about ways of arguing, ways of addressing an audience, ways of expressing authority, and much more. Thus the teacher of composition to non-native speakers must be sensitive to complex issues of cultural difference as well as to matters of interlanguage interference. Cross-cultural comparisons between Western Anglophile nationalities (U.S., Australian, Canadian) and Confucian-influenced Eastern cultures have highlighted the individualism/collectivism contrast in general psychological functions (Singelis & Brown, 1995) as well as in educational practices in particular (Hofstede, 1986). For example, in teaching English composition to students...