A Comparative Study of Topicality and Writing Styles in Iranian and British Education Systems: The Cases of Deduction, Induction, and Quasi-induction

Abstract

This study was an attempt to check if the Persian and English essays follow a linear pattern. Further, it investigated the essays in terms of the paragraph organization of deduction, induction, and quasi-induction. For the purpose of the study, 200 essays (100 for each language) were selected through convenient sampling and then given to four specialist raters to determine the topic sentence in each essay and enumerate it as deductive, inductive, or quasi-inductive. This research is descriptive and a two-way chi-square was run for the whole data and a set of one-way chi-squares for the comparison of the individual subcategories in the study. The results showed a difference in the number of the topic sentence(s) in each essays in the two languages. Some of the Persian essays contained more than one topic sentence, hence evidence of multitopicality, while English paragraphs were unanimously organized monotopically. The results also revealed that Persian writing is different from that of English regarding the inductive and quasi-inductive writing styles. However, the two languages are similar in the use of the deductive writing style. Furthermore, Persian writers prefer to develop their essays quasi-inductively, whereas English writers prefer to use the inductive style and rarely develop their essays quasi-inductively. These writing preferences imply the existence of cross-cultural differences between the two languages and of different education systems.