This study examines cross-cultural contrastive rhetoric in argumentative writings.To achieve this purpose,50 Chinese students from Beijing Institute of Machinery and 30 English students from Exeter University in Great Britain are asked to write an English essay on an assigned topic.In addition, Chinese students are asked to write a Chinese essay on the same writing task.The data suggests that L1 Chinese writings are significantly different from L1 English writing in two of selected rhetorical features,e.g.type of the discussed problem and affective appeal.Both English and Chinese students demonstrate similar strategies in term of the orientation length and citation. Chinese students tend to display similar rhetorical strategies in both L1 and L2 writings.
