Rethinking ‘imitation’ as a writing pedagogy: Insights from L1 Chinese composition books

Abstract

In L1 writing education, imitation pedagogy is practiced in different parts of the world, yet there has been very little communication on this topic across geographical regions. As a valued tradition in Western rhetoric, imitation seems to have largely fallen out of favour in the current U.S.-based discussion of writing pedagogy, even though it continues to be found in writing teachers’ classrooms (Eisner & Vicinus, 2008). Evidence of using imitation in L1 writing instruction in the European context seems sporadic (Geist, 2005). Meanwhile, the English language scholarship reveals a rather limited understanding of what imitation is in Chinese-L1 writing instruction, for existing research has typically focused on the issue of plagiarism, as perceived by Chinese students (Chien, 2017) and as manifested in Chinese students’ L1 writing (Kam et al., 2018) or ESL writing (Li & Casanave, 2012). Informed by the theoretical stance of critical contrastive rhetoric (Kubota & Lehner 2004; Kubota, 2012) and transnationalism in writing education (Donahue, 2009; You, 2018), we argue that extant scholarship needs to go beyond concerns with cross-cultural differences and that non-Anglophone strategies need to be better understood. In our study we aim to find out how a sample of 41 books on Chinese-L1 composition primarily at primary and secondary school levels recommend imitation as a writing pedagogy. Relevant segments were picked out from the books to create a dataset. Data-driven qualitative content analysis in QSR International’s NVivo12 led to a coding structure of three dimensions: “the importance of imitation in learning to write”, “imitation pedagogies and practices” and “going beyond imitation to achieve innovation”. Our presentation will focus on the latter two dimensions which address more practical concerns. The study sheds light on how imitation is used as a writing pedagogy in China, helps to address the complex relationship between imitation and plagiarism, and can potentially inform exchanges between different traditions of L1 writing education. References Chien, S.-C. (2017). Taiwanese college students' perceptions of plagiarism: Cultural and educational considerations. Ethics & Behavior, 27(2), 118-139. Donahue, C. (2009). "Internationalization" and Composition Studies: Reorienting the Discourse. College Composition and Communication, 61(2), 212-243. Eisner, C., & Vicinus, M. (2008a). Originality, imitation, and plagiarism: Teaching writing in the digital age. The University of Michigan Press. Geist, U. (2005). Stylistic imitation as a tool in writing pedagogy. In G. Rijlaarsdam, H. Van den Bergh, & M. Couzijn (Eds.), Effective learning and teaching of writing: A handbook of writing in education (pp. 169-179). Springer. Kubota, R. (2012). Critical approaches to intercultural discourse and communication. In C. B. Paulston, S. F. Kiesling, & E. S. Rangel (Eds.), The handbook of intercultural discourse and communication (pp. 90-109). Wiley. Kubota, R., & Lehner, A. (2004). Toward critical contrastive rhetoric. Journal of Second Language Writing, 13, 7–27. Kam, C. C. S., Hue, M. T., & Cheung, H. Y. (2018). Plagiarism of Chinese secondary school students in Hong Kong. Ethics & Behavior, 28(4), 316-335. Li, Y., & Casanave, C. P. (2012). Two first-year students’ strategies for writing from sources: Patchwriting or plagiarism? Journal of Second Language Writing, 21(2), 165-180. You, X. (Ed.) (2018). Transnational writing education: Theory, history, and practice: Routledge.