Student Success Guide Writing Skills

Learning to compose in a foreign language is not an isolated classroom activity, but a social and cultural experience. For example, the rules of English composition encapsulate values that are absent in, or sometimes contradictory to, the values of other societies. Likewise, the rules of Chinese writing reflect beliefs and values that may not be found in other societies. Therefore, learning the rules of composition in a foreign language is, to a certain extent, learning the values of the corresponding foreign society (Shen, 1989). The process of learning to write in the target language is a process of creating and...