The Cross-linguistic Influence On The Discourse Level Of ESL Students' Writing: Evidence From Chinese College English Learners

This paper aims at exploring the cross-linguistic influence on discourse level in Chinese college students ESL writings. Referring to the language transfer theory and contrastive rhetoric approach, the present study tries to integrate the ESL writing study in such a way to reflect that L1 cultural habits or writing convention exerts influence on SLA. Or put it in more cognitive terms that the procedure transfer takes place when the characteristics of L1 writing convention or rhetoric affect L2 writing production. Having compared the Chinese and English languages on discourse level focusing on three dimensions (thesis statement, discourse pattern and argumentation modes), the author puts forward six specific research questions with the extent of cross-linguistic influence into consideration (variance between students of different English proficiency). The present study is based on the textual analysis of 51 sample essays written by English majors (freshmen to juniors) from WECCL (Written English Corpus of Chinese Learners) with distinct sampling criteria to reflect the complex nature of L2 writing. Both quantitative and qualitative approaches are adopted in this study, and reliable results are obtained. By examining the non-English-like features caused by cross-linguistic differences on discourse level in students'ESL writings, the author argues that cross-linguistic influence is an nonnegligible factor in the teaching and learning of L2 writing. The pedagogical implication of the study is that English teachers should try to arouse students awareness of social cultural aspects of English language and pay special attention to instill a thorough understanding of western writing convention into language learners so as to improve their writing competence .