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DOCUMENT RESUME ED 373 331 CS 214 453 AUTHOR Fox, Helen TITLE Listening to the World: Cultural Issues in Academic Writing. INSTITUTION National Council of Teachers of English, Urbana, Ill. REPORT NO ISBN-0-8141-2953-6 PUB DATE 94 NOTE 180p. AVAI ;LI_ FROM National Council of Teachers of English, 1111 W. Kenyon Road, Urbana, IL 61801-1096 (Stock No. 29536-3050: $12.95 members, $16.95 nonmembers). PUB TYPE Reports Evaluative/Feasibility (142) Guides Non- Classroom Use (055) EDRS PRICE MFOI/PC08 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS Cognitive Style; College Students; *Cultural Context; Cultural Differences; *Ethnocentrism; *Expository Writing; *Foreign Students; Higher Education; Intercultural Communication; *Interpersonal Communication; Student Problems; Technical Writing; Writing Difficulties IDENTIFIERS *Academic Discourse; *Analytical Writing; United States; World Views; Writing Contexts ABSTRACT This book explores why students from other cultures often find it difficult to learn academic writing and understand its purpose in a U.S. university. The book discusses how these students' writing is influenced by cultures where people communicate indirectly and holistically, value the wisdom of the past, and downplay the individual in favor of the group. Drawing upon systematic conversations and interviews with students from Asia, Latin America, and Africa, the book looks at what happens to undergraduate and graduate students--some of them mid-career professionals who are published writers in their own countries--when they try to modify their writing and thirl.ing styles to produce analytical papers in the Western context. The book addresses the difficulties on both sides with sustained and empathetic focus on underlying cultural differences, noting that the dominant communication style of the United States is highly valued "by only a tiny fraction of the world's peoples." (NKA) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. ers S L PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) U S DEPARTNIST OF EDUCATION Mot of Edvcalhonsi Rmch era Impronment EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (EMI o Thin d0Comen1 rue been rooroducad IA cataract Iron, lha parson or offiamubtOs onopnalmo it Minor changes have ban macho lo onwon re0tOd0ChCa auelity Ponta ol vs* or opintOn$ 111440 in Thisdone mesh 00 not ncallanly moreent °mom OE RI cositon At POKY OM 2 BEST COPY AVAILABLE College Section Committee Cynthia Selfe, Chair Michigan Technological University Pat Belanoff SUNY at Stony Brook Lil Brannon SUNY at Albany Doris 0. Ginn, CCCC Representative Jackson State University Jeanette Harris University of Southern Mississippi James Hill Albany State College Dawn Rodrigues Colorado State University Tom Waidrep University of South Carolina H. Thomas McCracken, CEE Representative Youngstown State University Louise Smith, ex officio University of Massachusetts at Boston James E. Davis, Executive Committee Liaison Ohio University Miles Myers, NCTE Staff Liaison Listening to the World Cultural Issues in Academic Writing Helen Fox The University of Michigan National Council of Teachers of English 1111 W. Kenyon Road, Urbana, Illinois 61801-1096 This book is dedicated to the students at the Center for International Education, 1986-1991, who taught me how to listen to the world. NCTE College Level Editorial Board: Rafael Castillo, Gail E. Hawisher, Joyce Kinkead, Charles Moran, Louise Wetherbee Phelps, Charles Suhor, chair ex officio, Michael Spooner, ex officio Staff Editors: Sheila A. Ryan and David Hamburg Cover Design: Barbara Yale-Read Interior Design: Tom Kovacs for TGK Design NCTE Stock Number 29536-3050 0 1994 by the National Council of Teachers of English. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. It is the policy of NCTE in its journals and other publications to provide a forum for the open discussion of ideas concerning the content and the teaching of English and the language arts. Publicity accorded to any particular point of view does not imply endorsement by the Executive Committee, the Board of Directors, or the membership at large, except in announcements of policy, where such endorsement is clearly specified. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Fox, Helen Listening to the world : cultural issues in academic writing / Helen Fox. p.cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8141-2953-6 1. English languageRhetoric--Study and teachingUnited States. 2. English languageStudy and teachingForeign speakers.3. Commu- nication, Intercultural.4. Multicultural education.5. Language and cul- ture.I. National Council of Teachers of English.II. Title. PEI405.U6F691994 808'.042'071173dc20 94-16113 CIP 5 Contents Acknowledgments vu Introduction ix 1. Frustrations 1 2.Worldwide Strategies for Indirection 12 3. "In Solidarity": The Voice of the Collectivity 29 4."What Is Ancient Is Also Original" 45 5.Something Inside Is Saying No 65 6.Stigma and Resistance 85 7. Helping World Majority Students Make Sense of University Expectations 107 Epilogue 127 Notes 137 Works Cited 145 Resources for Research, Teaching, and Cross-Cultural Understanding 149 Index 155 Author 161 V Acknowledgments Thanks, first of all, to the faculty at the English Composition Board, University of Michigan, whose devotion to their own Sc' Marty activities, broad intellectual interests, and skeptical, yet friendly reception of my initial ideas gave me an understanding of my audience as well as the courage to begin the writing. To my students, friends, and colleagues from around the world who told me of their painful experiences writing for the U.S. university and trusted me to make my own meaning of their reflections on communication, teaching and learning, politics, language, and cul- tural differences. To all who read my manuscript in whole or in part, asked me tough questions, sent me in new directions, gave me outstanding sugges- tions and editorial comments, or who simply listened: Kanthie Athukorala, Dianna Campbell, Francelia Clark, Robin Dizard, Peter Elbow, Maria Fox, Nondini Jones Fox, Christina Gibbons, Susanmarie Harrington, Anne Herrington, Emily Jessup, Sara Jonsberg, David Kinsey, Phyllis Lassner, Ilona Leki, Li Xiao Li, Mark Lynd, Marjorie Lynn, Kumiko Magome, Mary Minnock, Hassan Ali Mohammed, Barbra Morris, Anne Mullin, Sharon Quiroz, Marla Solomon, John Swales, Sylvia Tesh, Nick Tsoulos, George Urch, and Robin Vamum. To my editor and old friend, Dave Stanley, whose work added sensitivity and accuracy to my manuscript, whose kind voice made me willing to read his editorial suggestions again and again. To Anna Donovan, secretary at the Center for International Edu- cation, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, for providing me with an office, a computer, keys to everywhere, and her own upbeat company in the summer of 1992. To my youngest daughter, Cybelle Fox, who gracefully survived her adolescence despite my obsession with cultural influences on student writing. And special thanks to my NCTE editor, Michat! Spooner, whose gentle support for my decision to write this book for the academy in my own voice despite the risks has been particularly important to me. vii 7 I afroduction It is not so much the content of what one says as the way in which one says it However important the thing you say what's the good of it if not heard or being heard not felt? Sylvia Ashton-Warner, Teacher It is Martin Luther King Day at the University of Michigan, and Alhaji Papa Susso, praise singer and living library of West African family history from the thirteenth century to the present, is visiting the classroom. After playing the kora, a twenty-one-stringed harp-lute, for an appreciative audience of upperclass and graduatestudents, Papa Susso asks for questions. "I'm ready for you," he encourages them, smiling. "I don't feel shy:' Talking about his music to foreign audiences is not new for him; Papa Susso has already spoken to American classes on ninety-four campuses in response to the overwhelming newinterest in African historical narrative. For the next hour, students and faculty ask questions, and Papa Susso engages them with stories, humor, and musical interludes. But after he leaves, students are perplexed. Some of them are even angry. "Why didn't he answer our questions?" friey wonder. The instructor, whose specialty is oral narrative, is as baffled as the students. "I asked him what he tells his child, who he is raising to be an epic singer, about the qualities that make a great grist," the instructor told me. "And he answered totally off the point. He didn't talk about qualities at all. He said, 'you start with the playing, and then he gave us a list of some typical songs, one after the other. And then he told us how they take a child who is learning to sing from house to house, from king to king. It just didn't make sense. And it wasn't that he didn't understand us. His English is excellent!" Multiculturalism in the university has come a long way since the 1960s and 1970s, when visits like this one were rare, and classes on oral narrative performance were nonexistent. Since then, many universities lx Introduction have setand reachedambitious goals for diversity that have made their student bodies and academic offerings more representative of the world's cultures. But despite these admirable changes, multiculturalism in the university has been limited for the most part to theoretical understanding, a mastery of facts and theories and major ideas, knowledge about difference rather than a real feeling for what it is to make sense of the world and communicate it in totally different ways. It is this lack of understanding that caused the puzzling miscommuni- cation between Papa Susso and his U.S. audience, and that causes far more serious problems for students from so many of the world's cultures that the university increasingly dedicates itself to serve. As I viewed and transcribed the videotape made of Papa Susso's visit, I could see why the students were confused.

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