In the journal article, The English and Indonesian Argument Structure: A Cross-Cultural Rhetoric of Argumentative Texts, the author, Arsyad, examined and compared a study of how three different groups of university students have different types of the rhetorical structure of argumentative texts. The three different groups were: 1) 20 Indonesian texts written by Indonesian native speakers (I.I.), 2) 10 English texts written by Indonesian native speakers(I.E.), and 3) 10 English texts written by English native speakers (A.E.). Arsyad states that “The results indicated that the text organizational structure of argumentative texts in English and in Indonesian was different in respect of the frequency of occurrence of sections-introductions, evaluation and conclusion and of the sub-sections of refutation, sub-claim, and induction within the problem section” (2000). By this, Arsyad means that cultural differences between English and Indonesian students may have played a crucial role in the text rhetorical differences. He also concluded that the I.E. texts had more similarities to the A.E. texts, in comparison to the I.I. texts. In conclusion, the study indicates that Indonesian students need to study the conventions of rhetorical structures of English argumentative texts in order to write good English argumentative texts.

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