A Contrastive Analysis Of Chinese Usage And English Usage And English Teaching In High Schools

Language is a mirror of culture. The Chinese language and the English language belong to two totally different language families. The Chinese people are in the East while the English people are in the West, so there must exist a lot of cultural differences between them. These differences must be well reflected in these two languages, so Chinese Usage and English Usage inevitably have many differences. The theory of transfer has proved that when the first and second language habits are quite different, there may be interference, or negative transfer.According to the theory of Contrastive Analysis(CA), by contrasting two languages, people can predict learning difficulties, avoid negative transfer or interference and help learners to reduce errors in language study, thus to promote the language learning. English Usage is the cream of the English language, which is very important but very difficult for Chinese students to learn and use. So the author argues that it is of very important practical value to contrast Chinese Usage with English Usage, and it can help Chinese students to learn and master English better and more efficiently.The introduction states the purpose and significance to make contrastive analysis of Chinese Usage and English Usage.Chapter One briefly reviews the research work of the Contrastive Analysis at home and abroad to provide a theoretical background and framework for a contrastive analysis of Chinese Usage and English Usage.Chapter Two is the main part of this thesis. It makes a contrastive analysis of Chinese Usage and English Usage in the respect of language, starting from the mistakes which often appear in high school students' exercises. It mainly contrasts the Usage of verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, prepositions and conjunctions between Chinese and English.Chapter Three discusses the ways to do contrastive analysis of Chinese Usage and English Usage in high school English teaching.Finally we come to the conclusion that the contrastive analysis still has strong vitality although it faces a lot of serious challenges. A great number of linguists admit that it plays an important part in the foreign language teaching and cannot be neglected. English Usage is one of the key points in any examination, but it is very difficult for students to grasp it. Therefore, the author argues that the contrastive analysis of it can help to promote the learning efficiency and to use English properly.