theory vs. practice

“These grammatical and stylistic features of spoken and written Arabic create serious problems when it comes to communicating with Westerners, and the difficulty is made worse by the fact that Americans understand the words just fine, and therefore think they understand the communication, lacking the cultural context to interpret it.”

For me, this is one of the most summative comments Bouchra Moujtahid makes in her article, “Influence of cultural and linguistic backgrounds on the writing of Arabic and Japanese students of English.” Although speaking directly of Arabics, Moujtahid suggests here that it is important for writing consultants to understand the intent behind all ESL students’ writings. Understanding their literal prose is not enough, we must understand the underlying “why” (an all too familiar concept for the students of ENGL 383).

With this article, Moujtahid provides excellent reasoning for why writing consultants should have basic knowledge about the cultures of their ESL students: the ability to classify a writer’s mistakes can help a consultant focus their approach to remediation. I very much agree with this concept, and I think Moujtahid’s article is valuable in the sense that the cultural practices it illuminates are pertinent and useful to classifying a writer’s mistakes.

However, as with many articles we have read in this course, I would like to see Moujtahid press a little further than theory and move more directly towards practice.

At one point, Moujtahid quotes the article “The Least You Should Know About Arabic” to suggest that writing consultants should help ESL writers recognize the differences between their native language and English “so that [the writers] are better prepared to meet the expectations of their readers.”

This is one of few instances in which Moujtahid gives any direct suggestions on how her observations can be put to practical use. I would like to see more of this. What happens when simple explanations of cultural differences are not enough to help these writers?

Moujtahid also briefly mentions Brant M. Kresovich’s “Sentence Combining Activities for Japanese University Students,” but this article appears to represent a very particular problem a very select group of writers might experience.

Although I find the information presented in Moujtahid’s article to be valuable, I would appreciate some more direct suggestions on how these ideas can be translated into practice. How, precisely, do I use this information to help my writing consultants in a practical and realistic way?