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This article presents the results of our investigation into the giving of advice by native and non-native speakers of American English. Specifically, we examine how advice giving is enacted in a series of advice letters, which were modeled on letters to popular advice columns found around the world in newspapers and magazines, and on the Internet.Our data indicate that there are important pragmatic di¤erences between how native speakers and non-native speakers in the United States o¤ered advice, regardless of the non-native speakers' English proficiency. The non-native speakers produced comparatively brief and formulaic responses, requiring coding and analysis based upon form categories. The native speakers produced narrative responses that required coding and analysis based upon content categories. Research such as this underscores the need to provide language learners with an awareness that pragmatic behaviors di¤er across cultures.

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Considerable attention has focused on the challenges of English language learners without age-appropriate formal education and first language literacy. They are viewed here as students with high-context learning experiences and expectations (Hall in Beyond culture, Anchor, New York, 1976), and a collectivistic orientation, with a pragmatic, rather than academic way of looking at the world, who are marginalized and disoriented in US classrooms. Building on Ibarra's Beyond affirmative action: Reframing the context of higher education, The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison (2001) ''cultural dissonance'' construct, the two learning paradigms are contrasted, and a third, the mutually adaptive learning paradigm, is posited as a pathway to academic success for this population.

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