The pedagogical value of intercultural rhetoric: A report from a Persian-as-a-foreign-language classroom

Understanding how individuals interact with texts in situated writing acts and what goes into the process of writing in various social, cultural, and educational contexts has recently been laid out as a broadened research agenda for cultural studies of writing within the framework of intercultural rhetoric. However, there is a paucity of classroom studies of writing that reflect this revised and expanded view of writing cultures. This article reports the results of a teacher-research conducted from the perspective of intercultural rhetoric exploring the perceptions of American learners of Persian with regard to the rhetorical structure of two texts as they attempt to summarize them. The article discusses students’ attitudes toward perceived difference and elaborates observed patterns in students’ summaries motivated by the organizational patterns of the source texts. This is followed by a discussion of the pedagogical affordances that the rhetorical structures of the source texts generated and the pedagogical actions taken in light of the results of the study.

► The value of intercultural rhetoric in uncovering students’ assumptions about rhetorical difference.
► Pedagogical possibilities brought about by rhetorical difference.
► The relevance of intercultural rhetoric to situated and dynamic understandings of writing cultures as well as to L2 writing pedagogy.