| In recent years, the low quality of college students' English writing has frequently disturbed large numbers of teachers and students. Much effort as both teachers and students make, students' English writing is still at a low level. The major problems of students' writing are the empty content, Chinglish sentences, monotonous sentence patterns, and lack of cohesive devices and logic. One of the reasons for these problems is that students think in Chinese while they are writing. The Chinese way of thinking influences the organizational patterns, the cohesion & coherence, and the writing styles of their English writing. It is the transfer of Chinese writing conventions that results in the low quality of students' writing. In addition, students' lack of discourse competence is another major reason.Language transfer has been a controversial issue and an issue of interest in the study of second language acquisition for a long time. Its development has undergone three stages. It was originally associated with behavourist acquisition theory and structural linguistics. Yet. now. linguistic researchers have a better and more comprehensive understanding about it from the perspectives of applied linguistics, psycholinguistics. and sociolinguistics. The study of transfer has shifted from the study of whether there exists positive or negative transfer to the study of under what conditions, transfer occurs, of how it interacts with other factors and of why-there is language transfer and so on. However, it is a pity that transfer studyis chiefly focused on phonological, morphological and syntactic level. Transfer study at discourse level is few and far between and is not systematic. This dissertation will explore the discourse transfer in the expository essay of non-English majors.The author first makes a contrastive study of the differences of discourse patterns, cohesion & coherence, and writing styles between English and Chinese. In terms of English discourse patterns, the dissertation introduces Kaplan's linear pattern and Hoey's view concerning discourse patterns while in terms of Chinese discourse patterns, Chinese eight-legged essay and other organizational patterns are dealt with. In terms of cohesion & coherence, differences exist between English and Chinese language. English is hypotactic language which requires explicit language forms andstructures to achieve coherence, while Chinese language is paratactic which rely on few connectives to achieve coherence. In writing styles, Chinese students favor the use of famous sayings, proverb, and allusions while English students are encouraged to use the language in their own way.In order to study the extent of the influence of Chinese discourse patterns, cohesion & coherence, and writing styles on Chinese students' English writing and whether the transfer of Chinese writing conventions are related to students' English proficiency and writing process, the author conducts an investigation on the 40 sample compositions by the students of two grades in Chongqing Institute of Communications. After analyzing these compositions, the author finds that discourse patterns, cohesion & coherence, and writing styles of students' English compositions are all interfered more or less by Chinese writing conventions. The findings also show that students' English proficiency and writing process are closely related to the amount of language transfer. The students who write through translation transfer more of Chinese writing conventions into their English writing.The dissertation consists of six chapters.Chapter One makes a brief introduction about the current situations of college English writing teaching and the reasons for the low quality of students' English compositions. This chapter also elaborate the reasons to study discourse transfer in the expository essay of non-English majors.Chapter Two looks back on the three stages that transfer theory has experienced, the different interpretations of language transfer, as well as the manifestations of language transfer.
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