Article review Hirose (2003)

    Hirose (2003) compared L1 and L2 organization patterns in the argumentative writing of Japanese EFL students. She found that Japanese ESL students used deductive organization patterns when writing in English; they also used deductive organization patterns when writing in Japanese, but to a lesser degree; she also found that there was no significant correlation between L1 and L2 organization scores. 

    The findings further contradict the claims of Hinds (1983) that Japanese rhetoric is dominantly inductively organized since only 3 out of 15 Japanese speaking students investigated in this study used inductive organization method. Besides, the interview with the students revealed that a specific rhetoric style can be taught and learned. All of the students used deductive organization patterns when writing in English, and they said that they were using the specific method consciously because they were taught so. 

     The homogeneity of subjects in the study provided us a clearer sight into the relationship between the organization patterns of L1 and L2. The subjects involved had similar English learning and writing background; also, their proficiency level was similar. The result of the study showed no significant correlation between L1 and L2 organization scores, which contradicted some studies (Kubota, 1998b; Kamimura, 1996) in the past. In these studies, the language proficiency levels and writing experience of the subjects were quite different, the correlation between L1 and L2 organization scores might be caused by the larger individual differences among the subjects. With the homogeneity of the subjects, the correlation result might be more accurate and convincing.

     The weakness of the study I think is that the researcher showed the subjects the Kubota (1998b) article before they evaluated their own writings. I think the evaluation results might have been influenced by the views delivered in the article.