Hirose reflection

I would like to discuss the role of instruction in shaping the way in which L2 student-writers organize their essay. The author reports the finding that “most students make a position statement at the outset of the introductory paragraphs in L1/L2”. And he points at past writing instruction as a possible reason for similar organizational patterns across the two languages, Japanese and English. He adds credibility to this claim by citing one participant who mentioned that she tried consciously to incorporate her past learning that the main idea ought to be positioned towards the beginning of the introductory paragraph. Even though he could not pinpoint whether it was L1 or L2 instruction or both that affected the location of the main sentence, I find this significant in that it could constitute counterevidence to the strong version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. In other words, the learning of L2 writing is not severely restricted by the conceptual categories formed by the acquisition of L1 writing.

Recognizing the importance of instruction, I was led to think about what constitutes a good L2 writing instruction. My perspective is that while teaching learners textual characteristics specific to a particular language might lead somewhere, we should not be bucked down by them. This is because, as pointed out by Hirose, one feature of written products of a language, however prominent, does not suffice to represent the language or culture itself. What is more important to me is that learners understand what features take priority in L2, which might not be as important in their L1, or vice versa, and know how to organize the text using proper cohesive devices.