The present study aimed at examining the effects of English collaborative writing and learners’ reflections on the experience of collaborative writing. The study was classroom based, and the participants (n=33) were Korean graduate students majoring in English education. The study compared texts produced by pairs (n=22) with those produced by individuals (n=11). Among the participants, nine students, involving the collaborative writing, participated in the follow-up interview. The study found that collaborative writing had an overall significant effect on students’ L2 writing. In particular, pairs produced better texts in terms of content, organization, and vocabulary, but not grammar and mechanics. The results of the student interviews showed that collaborative writing helped them pool ideas and provide each other with useful feedback. Most students were positive about the experience while a few of them demonstrated some reservation about collaborative writing.
This paper addresses pedagogical implications of contrastive rhetoric by focusing on recent trends in the field of contrastive rhetoric. The paper first addresses traditional contrastive rhetoric and highlights major issues along the way. It then focuses on recent diversification of and challenges to traditional contrastive rhetoric. For this purpose, the paper takes a close look at a) contrastive rhetoric's recent focus on rhetorical similarities rather than differences, b) its examination of ESL/EFL learners' perspectives, c) the introduction of critical contrastive rhetoric, and d) the most recent challenges based on the English-as-an-international-lingua-franca perspective. The paper concludes with a discussion of pedagogical implications of such diversification efforts and challenges. The discussion covers contrastive rhetoric's contribution to the increased awareness of ethnocentrism underlying traditional contrastive rhetoric, the need to study about actual impact of teaching rhetorical differences and/or similarities, and the necessity of investigating ESL/EFL learners’ beliefs about writing in English, which is believed to have a filtering effect on ESL/EFL learners' acceptance of contrastive rhetorical information.