The major aim of this article is to review studies of second language writing. The first part deals
mainly with the process of writing in the second and first languages. The second part concerns
contrastive rhetoric. In this second part, the findings of research studies on the relationship of first
and second language rhetoric will be presented. Included in the discussion are research studies on
contrastive rhetoric in the Indonesian context. The last section of this article concludes the discussion
and proposes the implementation of more research on the relationship between Indonesian rhetoric
and English rhetoric in essays written by Indonesian learners of English.