Why do students have trouble with narrative and expository writing?
All students need to learn the rhetorical structures associated with story telling and the various kinds of expository writing in English. However, many students bring to this task culturally based text structures that contrast with those expected at school. The emphasis in mainstream English stories is on getting the sequence of events correct and clear. This can seem so obviously correct to the monolingual speaker of English that the narrative of the Latino child, who emphasizes personal relationships more than plot, or that of the Japanese child, who may provide very terse stories, can be dismissed as incomprehensible (McCabe, 1995). Similarly with expository writing, argument structure varies across cultures. The topic sentences, paragraphs, and essays that are staples of English prose may be more difficult for students whose language experience includes other ways of expression. 9. How should the quality and correctness of a piece of writing be judged? Teachers must have a solid k
