Evaluation of Japanese Ki-Sho-Ten-Ketsu essay organization vis a vis the English Five Part Essay by native English speaking college composition students and implications for contrastive rhetoric

Abstract

College composition students and graduate assistant teachers were tested for their perceptions of coherence, focus, organization, and overall quality of essays written in the Japanese Ki-Sho-Ten-Ketsu rhetorical pattern of organization as opposed to the English Five Part Essay style of organization where the experimental essays were otherwise identical. These perceptions were measured on a 4-point Lykert scale. The composition students were also tested for their total recall of the essays. The data were analyzed by ANOVA, and no significant effect for treatment was observed. The results of this study suggest that for the Japanese Ki-Sho-Ten-Ketsu/English Five Part Essay pair the negative effects of native language rhetorical pattern on readers of the second language may be less important than the theory of contrastive rhetoric would suggest. Consequently, alternative forms of possible cultural interference such as cultural background knowledge (content) and the role played by writing in a culture warrant greater scrutiny.