Korean Students' Opinions on and Strategies for American English Writing in the US

This research examines Korean graduate students' writing experiences in an academic setting in the US in relations to contrastive rhetoric and critical pedagogy by focusing on the following questions: (1) What was your first experience writing in English?; (2) How, if ever, did you learn about the American English writing style for essays of research articles?; (3) Have you ever tried to accommodate your writing to fit the American writing style?; (4) What strategies have you used to accommodate the American English writing style?; (5) Do you think it is necessary to adopt the American writing style? Or do you feel forced to adopt?; and (6) If you see the necessity, what are the reasons? If not, what are the reasons? The analysis of the questionnaire data shows that nearly all participants felt it is necessary to adopt, instead of challenge, the American English writing style while studying in America. Therefore, they have had tried to accommodate the American English writing style although they still see the difficulty of adapting their writing to the conventional English writing. The discussion centers on underlying power struggles between L2 students and discipline faculty and on reasons why the Korean graduate students choose to accommodate their own writing to American English writing.