Talking about English Writing from the Differences of Chinese and English

Abstract: Chinese and English belong to two languages of different families, which are very different in phonetics, vocabulary, grammar and so on. This paper analyzes the differences between Chinese and English writing from the aspects of thinking mode, expression mode, morphology and syntax, and expresses personal opinions on how to cultivate students' English writing ability.

Key words: difference between languages; English writing; language barriers; Language transfer

  Among the four skills in language learning, listening and reading belong to input skills, also known as receptive skills, while speaking and writing are output skills, also known as creative skills. If Language learners want to fully express their opinions, they must have sufficient input accumulation, and the closer the second language is to the mother tongue, the easier the output is. English and Chinese are two languages belonging to different families, which are very different in many aspects. Therefore, it is not easy for English learners to achieve correct language output. However, Students whose mother tongue is Chinese are often influenced by this in their English writing. In the process of writing, students usually first organize their writing structure in Chinese and then translate sentence by sentence into English while writing. Some students even copy Chinese sentence patterns and grammar rules mechanically. As a result, it is no wonder that the students couldn’t get a high score because of their written articles with simple sentences, sentence monotonous and many grammatical errors. Comparing the differences between Chinese and English in writing can help to eliminate the negative effects of Chinese, to seek advantages and avoid disadvantages, and to improve English writing ability.

  Theoretical basis: Second Language Acquisition Theory holds that transfer refers to the influence of mother tongue (Chinese) on the acquisition of a second language or a foreign language (English), which can be divided into positive transfer and negative transfer. Language transfer is mentioned by American linguist Robert Lado in his book Cross-cultural Linguistics. It refers to that in second language or foreign language learning, learners, influenced by social environment and individual differences, often transfer the language form and meaning of their mother tongue and the culture they want to associate with to second language acquisition.

  Many English learners in China begin to learn English on the basis of mastering their mother tongue. Therefore, due to their dependence on their mother tongue in the learning process, they will unconsciously use the thinking mode and expression methods of their mother tongue. At this time, the similarities between Chinese and English will promote English learning, that is, produce positive transfer. On the contrary, the differences between Chinese and English will interfere or hinder English learning, that is, produce negative transfer to English learning. English belongs to the Indo-European language family, while Chinese belongs to the Sino-Tibetan language family. Although there are some linguistic phenomena or rules that are helpful to English learning in Chinese, the differences between the two languages of different families are far greater than the similarities. As a result, the negative transfer of Chinese to English learning is greater than the positive transfer. Only by finding and paying attention to the differences between English and Chinese can we effectively promote the improvement of English expression.

1.Different thinking patterns between Chinese and English

  It is often said that a kind of writing is like a kind of thinking. The different cultural backgrounds and languages of English and Chinese have created different modes of thinking. To put it simply, the way of thinking of native English speakers is linear. When speaking and writing articles, they come straight to the point and put the topic in the first place in order to attract the attention of readers. Each sentence in a paragraph is tightly organized around the main topic. Different from the western traditional rational thinking, Chinese people attach great importance to understanding. When writing articles, they often emphasize insight and implicitly, and their language has a certain fuzziness. Different ways of thinking lead to different mode of composition. For example, Chinese people attach importance to express emotions through describing concrete objects, take advantage of a scene to express one's emotion, and rely on readers to figure out the behind meaning by themselves. Nevertheless, English writing tends to go straight to the point, and explain the point step by step. Bacon's "Of Studies" is a good example: the first chapter tells the reader the three functions of reading: for delight, for ornament, and for ability, and then discusses these three functions gradually.

2.Different means of expression between English and Chinese

(1)At lexical level

  There are great differences between English and Chinese in terms of lexical meaning, lexical classification, collocation ability and morphological changes. If we do not pay attention to them in writing, we will make many lexical mistakes, which are mainly shown as: not paying attention to lexical changes, misnomer, misuse of part of speech, collocation errors, etc.

For example: The private cars are becoming increasingly many.

  In this sentence, the subject ‘the private cars’ do not match the predicate ‘many’ properly, and the word ‘many’ cannot be used as a predicate. It is a purely Chinese expression. The correct sentence should be like: The number of the private cars is increasing greatly.

(2)At syntactic level

  English grammar system is very rigorous, a complete sentence must contain a subject and a verb, and there must be a certain logical relationship between the subject and the verb. In English, the clauses of compound and compound sentences must be joined by conjunctions. In addition, there are great differences in the positions of modifiers between English and Chinese. Influenced by the way of thinking in Chinese, learners often ignore sentence structure in writing, resulting in many mistakes such as incomplete sentence structure, chaotic sentence structure, no predicate verb or multi-predicate verb, wrong position or improper use of modifiers.

For example：More and more private cars lead to traffic accident is very frequently.

  The mistake in this sentence is that the sentence structure is confused. Firstly, ‘lead to’ and ‘is’ are two verbs. Secondly, there are no conjunctions between the main clause and the subordinate clause. At the same time, the subject-verb part also has the problem of improper collocation. The correct sentence should be like: The increase of private cars leads to frequent occurrence oftraffic accident.

(3)At consistency level

  There are many grammatical phenomena in English, such as subject-predicate consistency, personal-tense consistency and pronoun-reference consistency. Many English learners, influenced by Chinese, are tend to ignore the consistency problems, which will lead to many mistakes.

For example: 1. When one have a car, he can go anywhere he want to go.

  It is typical that this sentence has a mistake of subject-verb inconsistency, ‘one’ takes the third person singular form, therefor, the word ‘have’ should be changed into ‘has’, and the word ‘want’ should be changed into ‘wants’.

  Conclusion: The author holds the view that it is inevitable to express one’s opinion in English with the help of mother-tongue thinking. In order to eliminate the negative transfer of the mother tongue, some teaching methods advocate prohibiting the use of the native language when learning a foreign language. It is possible to do this to a certain extent in the classroom, but no one can block one wall or gate of the native language capacity that has been formed in the mind, while opening another gate and releasing English. The key is to let the students understand the differences between Chinese and English writing, and to know that the writing is likely to be influenced by the native language, and they will encounter many expression problems in this process. We can try our best to expand our accumulation of English language materials, and to use the language materials more and more proficient through various practices. Teachers should encourage students to read and recite good English articles to expand the amount of language input. At the same time, students can be encouraged to keep a diary, write an abstract, write a book report or other forms in English to improve their writing skills.

  In conclusion, it is a long-term training process to improve students’ writing ability training, the teacher should make full use of textbook material in teaching process, change teaching methods, excavate the potential of students, and stimulate students' interest in writing.