A Comparative Analysis Of Formality In Argumentative Writings Written By Chinese And American College Students

The argumentative writings in English are typical texts requiring formal style. In order to research the current situation of the formality of English argumentative writings written by Chinese college students,the author conducted a comparative study.The author selected eight variables(Nominal phrase,Long sentence,Short sentence,Passive voice,Sentence pattern:"lt is...that...",Subordinate clauses, Independent participial phrase,Abbreviations of auxiliary verb)from Cheng Yumin's linguostylistic markers through the pilot study and then add another two variables: average sentence length and the ratio between the simple and complex sentences as the variables of this research.The author aims to answer the following research questions through the comparative study:Question 1:Is there a difference in the degree of formality between the writings of native speakers and the non-native speakers?Question 2:Do Chinese learners make progress in learning formal style as their learning time increases?Question 3:What are the developing patterns of Chinese learners in learning linguostylistic markers?This research is based on Cheng's theory of linguostylistic markers,Contrast Analysis Hypothesis,the theory of markedness and the research findings of the relative studies.The instruments used in this research include the sample writings, questionnaire and the SPSS 13.0.The author first selected sample writings of both Chinese college students and American college students.The author selected 30 samples of each grade from the Written English Corpus of the Chinese Learners as non-native,speakers group and 30 samples from two books:American College Compositions and Candid Voices—Essays by American College Students as the native speakers group to conduct a contrastive study.These samples are divided into five groups:the native speaker,non-native speakers in Grades one,two,three and four.Each group contains thirty sample writings.The author then calculated the frequencies of each variable according to Cheng's measurement and then conducted One-way Analysis of Variances by SPSS 13.0.Later,the author checked the results by the data from the questionnaire fulfilled by the English majors in Southwest Jiaotong University.Through the comparative analysis,the study has the following research findings:Finding1:There exist differences in the degree of formality between the writings of native speakers and the non-native speakers.The difference between the native speakers and the non-native speakers displays in two respects:over-use and avoidance.Chinese learners overuse some negative linguostylistics markers while avoid using some positive linguostylistic markers.Finding 2:Chinese learners make obvious progress in the degree of formality of writing as their learning time increases.The percentages of positive linguostylistic markers display an up-trend while those of the negative linguostylistic markers display a down-trend from Grade one to Grade four.Although there is a little fluctuation,the developing trend of formality in general is upward.Finding 3:The developing patterns of the linguostylistic markers of Chinese learners can be summarized as:[Avoidance]—Proper frequencies(learned)—Overuse—Proper frequencies(acquired).Avoidance is not suitable for every linguostylistic markers,and different linguostylistic markers are at the different stages of this developing pattern.For instance,Chinese learners can properly use the short sentence at the beginning of study but the study of independent participial phrase is still at the stage of avoidance.The first reason to explain the differences between the writings of native speakers and the non-native speakers is the native language transfer influences upon the writings of non-native speakers.There are two kinds of influences of language transfer:positive transfer which facilitates the study of the linguostylistic markers and negative transfer which put an obstacle in the study of linguostylistic markers. The theory of markedness also contributes to explain the differences.Linguostylistic markers of high markedness are more difficult for Chinese learners to acquire and those unmarked will be easy to acquire.According to the findings above,the author presented some suggestions for the College English Teaching in writing:Firstly,we should pay more attention to the influences of mother tongue upon the writings of Chinese college students.We should help the student to know the similarities and differences between Chinese and English in terms of the textual organization and the grammatical structures,in order to accelerate the positive transfer and reduce the negative transfer of the first language.Secondly,we should emphasize the sense of style in the teaching of writing in college English.The writings of students are not only required of correctness in grammar but also the proper style.Thirdly,teachers should encourage students to write compositions with diversity in linguistic structures and help them to overcome the difficulty in avoidance so as to improve their writings of English.