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Contrastive Rhetoric-based College English Writing

Posted on:2006-10-27Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:J HanFull Text:PDF
GTID:2155360152495352Subject:Subject teaching
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To better the students' abilities to use English is a crucial task in college English teaching innovations and writing is playing an important part in fostering the students' comprehensive English qualities. English writing focuses not only on the learning and application of such basic linguistic knowledge as vocabulary, grammar but also on the development of both linguistic and non-linguistic competence in thinking, imagining, structuring, organizing and expressing ideas, which helps enhance the students' overall qualities and linguistic competence. In the past few years researchers on teaching have presented some methods to English writing in different perspectives. However, it seems as if these methods within the confines of words, phrases, sentences and grammar are not systematic. To solve the learners' problems and to overcome their difficulties in college English writing, the research on contrastive rhetoric-based college English writing is carried out to blaze a new teaching path in writing, by applying the theories and ideas of the contrastive rhetoric (CR) and by contrasting English compositions with Chinese ones from the macro-structuring to micro wording and phrasing.The status quo of college English writing is analyzed and the problems involved are discussed in the first part of this dissertation. Compared with grammar and vocabulary, little attention has been devoted to the arrangement of information, sentence structure, development and cohesion of paragraphs and the theme. One possible reason is that the English culture is quite different from that of the Chinese The Chinese students have been placed in the dilemma as a result of the conflicts between the Chinese traditional rhetoric and the English rhetorical styles while writing. The other reason is that the first language makes an impact on the acquisition of the second language. In other words, the native language has an effectof both positive transfer and negative transfer on the target language and errors and mistakes result from the negative transfer. That the difference between Chinese language and English language creates an error area is the key factor that hinders students from improving their writing abilities.In the second part of the dissertation is a summary of writing problems in the light of the CR both in China and abroad. Next a definition of the CR, its outset, new direction and extension are written. Also are outlined the development of English-Chinese CR, its significant research findings and the theoretical basis of English-Chinese contrasts benefiting writing. The most important theories are contrast analysis, error analysis, cohesion and coherence. According to the literature review the contrastive research on styles of writing, different thinking patterns, syntax and discourse contributes to English writing. The author of this essay referred to CR findings and used them in the classroom teaching trying to help the students deal with the troublesome problems in writing.In the third part the author elaborates how some of the CR findings are applied to writing teaching in the classroom. First, the English-Chinese sentence structures are contrasted, including topic handling, use of the active voice and passive voice, hypotactic relations and paratactic relations.Second, English-Chinese paragraphing is contrasted to draw the students' attention to the fact that Chinese students express the same ideas in too many different paragraphs. Third, the contrasts are conducted on themes. Because Chinese students place their main points or crucial arguments around the middle of the article inductively rather than deductively give their main points in the beginning and then follow with supporting arguments, a strong emphasis is laid on using topic sentences and not beating about the bush while writing an essay or an expository prose. Finally, comparison is made between English and Chinese discourse. The discourse structure of English writing tends to be linear, while the Chinese structure seems spiral. During the experiment,...
Keywords/Search Tags:contrastive rhetoric, English-Chinese contrasts, college English writing
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