Intercultural rhetoric has been studied in the context of second language writing for many decades. This article looks at the topic from a new perspective and offers an experimental study of the effects of intercultural rhetoric on reading comprehension. The experiment was set in Hong Kong, China, and assessed the reading comprehension (using a rational cloze design and quantitative and qualitative recall protocols) of 490 school students who were presented with four rhetorically different texts. Results suggest that the rhetoric of the students' first language (Chinese) had clear effects on reading comprehension.
[Copyright of Reading Psychology is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02702710903054949]

This paper will consider the use of English medium textbooks in bilingual situations and will briefly present the results of a survey of 24 schools in Hong Kong. Language and textual constraints may both inhibit the efficient reading of content subject textbooks in school. It will be argued that textbooks are "inconsiderate" in not making rhetorical (top-down) structures clear and that this is a neglected cause of student difficulty. Practical examples for making books more "considerate" will be offered.
本論文探討在雙語環境中英文教科書的使用及簡述在二十四間香港中學進行意見調查的結果。結果顯示，語言及原文的約束可能妨礙學生有效地閱讀學科教科書。本文的論點是教科書沒有顯明「由上而下」的修辭結構，實為學生閱讀困難的被忽視的原因。本文將提出教科書應如何顧及讀者的實際方法。
[Copyright of New Horizons: The Journal of Education, Hong Kong Teachers' Associationl is the property of Hong Kong Teachers' Association at http://www.hkta1934.org.hk/]

Reading comprehension can be seen as a process dependent on the interaction of 'topdown' and 'bottom-up' processes. An important, but neglected, feature of this process concerns the effects of rhetorical organization. This article describes an experiment in which four rhetorically different texts, with identical subject matter, were read by 490 Hong Kong Chinese school children (mean age 14.1), studying in English (their L2). Comprehension was measured by a cloze procedure and by recall protocols. One way ANOVA was used to investigate the effects of different texts on the test scores. The results showed a clear difference in comprehension between the text types and suggest that pedagogical support to increase awareness of rhetorical patterns would be beneficial.
[Copyright of Reading in a Foreign Language is the property of Meena Singhal & John I. Liontas.
Access via Directory of Open Access Journals: http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/rfl/]