CR/IR blog post

I think the benefit of Contrastive or Intercultural Rhetoric to writing tutoring is mainly as what Casanave calls "awareness building" (53). Particularly because if you are not a speaker of the L1 language, you cannot really assume that you understand the rhetorical structures that it may have that are different than your own language. All this would be need to be explored in conversation and relationship with the student, and even then, as the article points out, students don't fully understand the rhetoric of their native language, just like native English speakers don't.  Besides the critques of overgeneralizing culture, I certainly think it's a worthwhile endeavor to explore the biases and assumptions we may have about other "cultures" and also analyze various writing structures. That is fascinating! When it comes to it's use pedagogically, I echo Kyle's earlier statement that individualized approaches are best because every student (ELL or not) writes differently--whether this can be attributed to the country they comes from or the city they come from or the family they come from or their peer group or personality or family history etc. is part of the "hybrid and dynamic aspects of culture" (29). (Rachel points out how culture is a concept that is hard to define). I also agree with Lei that simplification of differences can in many cases be helpful, at least in cultivating an awareness that people are different than you, but also that there are universal questions/struggles with writing/logic/thinking??