An Investigation of Japanese and English L1 Essay Organization: Differences and Similarities

Previous studies in contrastive rhetoric have discerned a tendency for Japanese texts to be inductive and for English texts to be deductive, although text quality was not usually assessed. The present study compared Japanese and English L1 essays written by university students in Japan and in Canada; 22 expository and 24 persuasive essays written in each language were analyzed. Each essay was evaluated in terms of organization and analyzed for macro-level discourse features. Results show that inductive patterns were identified in Japanese more often than in English and were used more often in the persuasive mode than in the expository mode across both languages. However, across languages and modes, the quality of inductive essays usually ranged between average and low, while deductive essays were usually ranked as being of average to high quality. Results indicate that although Japanese and English may exhibit rhetorical differences in overall frequency, they may also share characteristics of good writing.