writing cultures around the world
1.
I’ve noticed that citation is a very big part of
academic papers here in the United States. People are very aware of the
copyright issues, what the source is, where is it from, what picture is this
magazine from; they cite everything. But in China it’s not a big thing at all,
I would just say for example an article I don’t remember who said this, but
this is roughly the sentence or just place a picture inside of my article
without citing the source. And the more I think about it I think that a big
part of the reason is because of the cultural differences. In China we are so
used to sharing everything and we’re a country with 45000 years of Asian
culture and also on top of that we are have communism which has the idea that
everybody is supposed to be able to share everything; so it’s just very common
and natural for people to think it’s okay to share. (Lily, China)
2.
In Vietnam, you risk the chance of being penalized if you go outside the classroom and put in extra information other than what is lectured in the class from the teachers. An example was when I was younger I was given a topic of writing about a typical meeting in the classroom and just describing a class meeting. And so I was in the classroom writing about the atmosphere of the class. And I thought that wasn’t enough. So I looked out the window and I started writing about the schoolyard, how peaceful it is during the study hours and I started mentioning about the trees and the leaves falling. And I got marked down for that because I wasn’t supposed to write about outside the classroom. In the United States, for example in my history of medicine class, I didn’t do as well as I thought I would on my paper because I didn’t go outside the classroom and find extra information to put down in my paper. So the main difference here is that extra information and the students own opinions are so valuable in essays. (Khan, Vietnam)
3.
Actually exaggeration is acceptable in the Arabic way of writing. It is even sometimes acceptable or preferred to use exaggeration. It helps the writer to write. It helps him to express his feelings and describe whatever he wants to describe and to attract the reader to his writing, and the reader would think the writer is a good writer. An example of that, “He has money enough to fill the sea.” Actually nobody has money enough to fill the sea but that indicates that he is rich. Unfortunately, American teachers maybe won’t see this point of writing and they would take that the American way is the only way. No there is a lot of ways in the world. And they might deduct points or it might affect their evaluation of the student that he doesn’t know how to write. (Jordan, an Arabic country)
4.
In American writing it is very important for you to
make everything very clear, but in Japanese writing this is a bit different
because readers are supposed to participate in the story much more than
American writing. It means that, for example, in Japanese writing there are so
many pronouns, but this is the reader’s job to understand what this” he” is and
what this “she” is and what this “it” refers to. I tend to do that in American
writing, in English essays, and everyone asks me who this “he” is and who this
“she” is. In American writing, writers have a lot of responsibility for their
writing, but in Japanese writing, readers have more responsibility to
understand and participate in the story. (Maho,
Japan)
writing style
writing academically-tone
See Tone and Formality in Academic Writing from Temple University
