In my college, many of the professors are either educated in Australia or America or other English speaking countries. Thus, there is no doubt that I am somewhat influenced by “western” way of composition. Of course, I like to make my main ideas right across the audience, but at the same time, my writing style is also influenced by Cambodian culture of being poetic. We like to go around a topic a little bit before hitting the topic. If chance given, I prefer not to rush into thing, talking about thing in general but relevant to the topic also. Just like the Columbian student in the video Writing Across border, we like to establish a relationship with my reader through my introductory paragraph. I was surprised when Toby Fulwiler, in Provocative Revision, said “generalization is death to good writing. Limiting is the cure to generality” (157). Because that is what I usually do by starting to talk about thing in general before hitting the main idea.

Since we are writing to suit in American discourse, when noticing cultural preferences in my client’s writing, I would just tell them the expectation American people have on the written assignment. However, I have to admit that I am not really sure about western way of writing either. I have helped a girl from Mexico before. Her writing preference is just like other non-American way of composition—talking around the topic without any clear statement of purpose. She did not hit right at the topic, not until the end. So what I did was telling her about American style of academic writing, that here professors just like to see their students quickly tell what they think. She said she also realized that, but she was not just comfortable adapting going so direct. So we decided to make a compromise between “western” and her way of composition. I decided to help making her ideas as clear as possible without crossing out that introductory part but trying to connect it to her next ideas instead. Just today, she showed me the grade she got for that paper. It was not bad since it was just 5 points to full score, and she was happy with the result. I read the evaluation rubric; she still had problem stating the statement of purpose. I wonder if she would get better score if we crossed that introductory part out and just hit right at the topic at the beginning.