Differences Of Chinese And English Thinking Patterns And Their Influence On College Student's English Writing

Nowadays, people in the world communicate with each other more frequently. Whatever the oral or written form, the culture, especially the thinking pattern, has an obvious effect on the communication. The discourse just reflects this affection. The features of discourse have close relation with those of culture. Its form represents the social context of communication. On one hand, people with different cultural background use different discourse. On the other hand, different discourses also construe different experience and communication. When we learn a new language, our native language always influences us. Our thinking patterns are conventional. Thus it proposes a new problem to our language teaching—how to write a perfect English composition?Various new language theories have emerged now. More and more we begin to adopt them. Discourse Analysis is such a new branch of language study. Some theories in Discourse Analysis can interpret the thinking patterns and writing model very well, especially the Theme-Rheme theory and the thematic progression theory. Most studies have been carried out from a macro point of view in China. However, the study from the point of view of paragraph has not been carried out much and completely. Based on the theories of researchers both at home and abroad, this paper will compare and analyze the writings written by both Chinese and American students applying the thematic progression theory. It tries to find the differences on discourse model between the two and what model we Chinese students used to apply. Moreover, the study will interpret the relation between thinking patterns and writing.Some English compositions from the university written both by Chinese and American students are collected. The comparative analysis of these compositions is made about the types of Theme, the thematic progression pattern and the cohesion between the paragraphs. According to the study, the differences of the discourse organization between Chinese and American students are obvious. Chinese students are used to the constant theme pattern and the American students to the liner pattern. As for the choice of themes, Chinese students use the multiple themes more than the American students. In short, the compositions of American students are smooth and consistent while the ones of Chinese students are a little loose and dull.The reasons for these differences are the influence of Chinese thinking pattern in the writing. This paper will analyze and research the causes of the differences from the aspects of culture and thinking patterns. The western thinking patterns in their culture are a liner model and it stresses the logic analytic process. So a good pattern of cohesion and coherence is very important in the English discourse. The Chinese that is influenced by the feature of entirety in traditional culture stresses the parataxis in the discourse construction. It is a topic and comment model instead of the theme and rheme in English.This paper aims to reveal the relation between the culture and language and its influence. It tries to contribute to the English writing teaching. It is important to improve the ability of cross-cultural communication and the awareness. The students should know clearly that the negative-transfer of our mother tongue. Meanwhile, the discourse analytic approach is a good method applied in the English teaching. It can improve the ability of the students to analyze the discourse, arrange the sentences and understand the discourse from the entirety.