Application Of Contrastive Analysis On English-Chinese Syntax To English Sentence Writing In Vocational Schools

Writing influences our life. Teaching and learning writing is a valuable and indispensable part of any language course. Nowadays, we find four approaches to writing instruction are evident: product approach; process approach; content-based approach; and genre-based approach. At the same time more Chinese linguists, considering the specific and distinctive learning context in China, do some research on English composition teaching to Chinese students. In this thesis, the author will introduce three of them: model-imitation method; Write-to-Learn method English-Chinese syntax contrast composition teaching method.This thesis focuses on English composition teaching in the vocational school. Therefore, taking the motivation, performance, and learning style of the targeted students into consideration, for example: we find that what most of the students in vocational school lack, when they write English composition, is not writing theories or methods but the basic writing ability-writing good and effective sentences. So the author adopts an English-Chinese syntax contrastive way of English composition teaching.It has been proved that to English learners whose native language is Chinese, 51% of their errors or failures are caused by Chinese transfer and the degree of syntax negative transfer is higher than that of morphology.We will try to apply the linguists' theories to the present writing approaches of teachers' teaching and students' learning. To deal with errors and failures, the author employs the latest theories in transfer and contrastive linguistics, collects and analyzes errors in school students' compositions. With the theoretical foundation and the evidence of errors in students' composition, the author has tried to develop, recommend and testify the appropriate teaching material in composition teaching. The author designs and sets up the experimental and control classes to see if the solutions are effective. This study introduces the research in detail, including the conditions of the subjects, the results of questionnaire, research methods, data resources and analysis. The study is classroom based. The quantitative analysis methodology is adopted in the analysis of data. According to the investigation mentioned above, it can be concluded as follows:First, according to the analysis of questionnaire and composition from the students in experimental class and control class, we can prove English-Chinese syntax contrast composition teaching, compared with other composition teaching methods, is more helpful to writing of English majors in vocational school.Second, the result shows students in the experimental class make greater progress than the students in the control class. Specifically, the learners trained with this teaching material develop a better English sentence structure conception and cause a decrease in producing errors. This composition teaching material is workable and practical.Third, the analysis of the data of their two drafts of composition identifies that the average students are more conducive to writing development than the other two to supply accountable teaching material of English-Chinese syntax contrast for composition teaching.In all, this thesis focuses on English composition teaching to English majors in vocational school, and aims to find a suitable method to improve the students' ability to write good and effective sentences. At last, it is proved by the educational experiment that the English-Chinese syntax contrastive way of English composition teaching is helpful.The significance of this thesis lies in: The author chose a suitable composition writing method to the English major in vocational school. The thesis combined the theory of contrastive analysis on syntax between Chinese and English with the study of the English major in vocational school. At last it proved by an empirical research that this method, compared with the traditional ones, is better, to improve the students' ability to write good and effective sentences.