Some Thoughts on Ramanathan-Atkinson's Article

The views of voice expressed in the literature seem to be based extensively on the examination of individualism versus collectivism. Admitting to the existance of these cultural differences, they (p. 51) believe that teaching writing to L2 speakers may end up looking like trying to install incompatible software to certain hardware. However, in so doing, they may have been so quick to draw a conclusion from these cultural phenomena as if individualism does not exist in its entirity in Asian cultures. Individualism may still be held alongside collectivism depending on the type of situations at hand. Overgenralization derived from studies on only how students from those cultures write or perform may lead to oversimplication of the whole issue. Any idea folks?

Ramanathan and Atkinson's problematization of voice may be a case in point, however, his methods of arriving at certain conclusions about certain cultures may also be seen as aligning itself so much with the "deficit theory"-like views (as we've seen in Kaplan's doodle (check your spelling fikri!) article) that certain cultures express themselves this way or that way. Again, what do you folks think?

I find it very reductive that the term process (as in Scollon's view used to support their argument) strictly translates to words such as individualism, rationalism. and autonomicity, as if that is the only direction toward which the movement from the product approach was headed. Can't other cultures too think rationally?

While I do believe that there is a lot to be done with regard to voice in L2 writing, basing the studies of voice on very limited research findings or on issues featuring the 'others' cultures' as being at lower, higher, better, worse thinking order as the terms individualism and collectivism suggest or imply may make us miss the forest. Individualim might not be the only culprit that accounts for all differences in expression across various cultures.