Discourse organizational strategies in Malaysian argumentative essays

Abstract

It has been a long known and accepted fact that language is an index to culture. This means that language reflects the culture of its speakers - the way of life they lead as well as their physical and social environment. It also influences the way people think and how they express that thought in written or spoken manner. The objective of this paper is to analyze the organizational strategies of the argumentative compositions written by 20 ESL learners in a secondary school in Malaysia. The learners represent two ethnic groups - Malay (10 students) and Chinese (10 students). This study will describe the writers' discourse organizational strategies - how different ethnic groups use different organizational structure in argumentative essays. By analyzing these essays, hopefully then, the influence of the cultural background on the organizational structures will be revealed. This study will also discuss some of the colloquial habits of both Malay and Chinese students found in their essays. The findings of the study will be relevant to the nation building of the various ethnic groups in Malaysia.