A Comparison of English and Farsi Rhetoric and its Impact on English Writing of Iranian Students

Abstract

This research made a contrastive study of the rhetorical organization of a number of essays written by both native English speakers and Iranian students. The sample of the study was made up of 25 English essays written by Iranian students and 25 essays composed by native English speakers. The essays of both groups were compared based on frequency and distribution of three features: T-units, discourse blocs, and coordinating conjunctions. The result of the quantitative analysis showed that there are significant differences in the use of these three elements between native speakers and Iranian students. Iranian students tend to use more T-units, discourse blocs, and coordinating clauses in their writing. It is argued that this is due to different thought patterns between the two languages claimed by Kaplan’s (1966) contrastive rhetoric. Key words: culture; contrastive rhetoric; T-unit; discourse bloc; coordinate clauses