A Contrastive Analysis Of The Chinese And English Patterns Of Thought And It's Application To English Writing Teaching In Senior Middle School

Language and thinking are closely related. Language is a reflection of thinking and thinking is constraining and remodeling language all the time. There exist different thought patterns in different cultural backgrounds. The dissimilarities of thought patterns determine the different rules of language. So as a language learner, it is necessary to know the thought patterns.To enhance the students' abilities to use English is a crucial task in English teaching innovations and writing is playing an important part in fostering the students' comprehensive English qualities. English writing teaching focuses not only on the learning and application of such basic linguistic knowledge as vocabulary, grammar but also on the development of both linguistic and non-linguistic competence in thinking, imagining, structuring, organizing and expressing ideas, which helps enhance the students' overall qualities and linguistic competence. Therefore, those methods within the confines of words, phrases, sentences and grammar are not systematic. In everyday English teaching we can often find some errors and mistakes in students' compositions resulting from the negative transfer of the oriental modes of thinking, which troubles us most. Therefore, English teachers should impart to students knowledge about the differences between the Chinese and English patterns of thinking so that they can guide the students' writing theoretically. In this way, the students are better helped to organize their compositions on the English discourse patterns and compose idiomatic English writings. From this viewpoint, a new teaching approach is put forward to help the students solve their problems in English writing, by contrasting English compositions with Chinese ones from the micro wording and phrasing to macro-structuring.This thesis consists five sections:The first part is the introduction. In this part, the main point of this thesis is proposed and some important researches on it from home and abroad are introduced. In the second part, based on her teaching practise and the discrepancies of the oriental and occidental patterns of thought, the author of this paper analyzes the various drawbacks in the English writing caused by the negative transfer of the oriental modes of thinking. The third part is a summary of both oriental and occidental patterns of thought, including the definition of thinking and thinking pattern, the relationships between them and language, the contrastive analysis of the oriental and occidental patterns of thought.The forth part is the main body of the whole thesis, and it's about a teaching experiment. The author elaborates how the contrast analysis of the oriental and occidentalpatterns of thought is applied to English writing teaching in the classroom. Based on the contrastive analysis of the oriental and occidental patterns of thought, Chinese-English contrasts are carried out, including Chinese-English wording contrast, Chinese-English syntax contrast and Chinese-English discourse contrast. It is hoped that the analysis will make students aware of the discrepancies so as to model themselves on the occidental thinking and compose idiomatic English writings. And the experiment result tells us that the students' writing level is improved. That's to say, the students' abilities of English writing are improved. To prove the result further, the author analyzes two compositions from the experimental class and contrastive class in aspects of wording, syntax, discourse and other ones. It's clear that the author's analysis can also testify to the experiment result. Thus it is feasible and effective to apply the contrast analysis of patterns of thought to English writing teaching of senior middle school.The last part is a conclusion. The author reviews the whole thesis briefly and draws a conclusion compendious. Some unsolved problems are raised as well.