| Halliday (1976) assumes that linguistic system includes three subsystems: semantic,lexico-grammatical and phonological, with semantic system as its core, which goesupwards to connect context and goes downwards to connect lexico-grammar. Included inthis semantic system are three functional components: ideational function, interpersonalfunction and textual function. According to Halliday (1976), the textual function isachieved through three forms: thematic structure, information structure and cohesion. Thepresent research with textual metafunction as a tool makes an attempt to study Englishtexts and Chinese texts, particularly in terms of Brief Introductions to Attractions. Thepurpose of the analysis is to find out the similarities and differences between Chinese andEnglish textual properties of travel brochures especially in regard to the distribution ofthematic structure, information structure and cohesion respectively. It is hoped that theresults can provide some help for foreign language writing and at the same time give someinspirations especially to translation.Through a study of 30 paragraphs of English texts and 30 paragraphs of Chinese textsof travel brochures, we find that Constant Thematic Progression Pattern predominates inboth English and Chinese texts. However the contrast of information structure shows thatthe frequency of Given plus New structure in English is higher than that in Chinese. Giveninformation is often reiterated through reference and lexical cohesion in English, but oftenomitted in Chinese. Thus New information is often given the theme position in Chinese,which is rare if considered from the perspective of normal English text construction. Interms of cohesion both English and Chinese travel brochures use lexical cohesions as themain cohesive device. What makes a difference in grammatical cohesion is that Englishdepends more on references and conjunctions, while Chinese more on ellipses to constructtext.
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