A Contrastive Analysis Of The Linguistic Features Of English Writers In Chinese And American Middle School Students

Based on the multi-feature/multi-dimensional analysis created by Biber, the comparative analysis on the linguistic feature of English composition between Chinese students and American students had been made. It turns out that they have 12 different linguistic features, they are type/token ratio, number of words, discourse articles, ambigious adverbs, emphatical adverbs, modal adverbs, wh-subordinate clause, conjunctions, nominalized verbs, conjunctive adverbs, predicate adjectives and all adjectives. In a word, Chinese middle school students use more conjunctions, adjectives, some emphatical adverbs, modal verbs, object relative clauses and subject relative clauses in their English compositions. In the seven dimensions of Biber’s multi-feature/multi-dimensional analysis, emphatical adverbs and modal verbs are communicative, which belong to the dimension of communication and information and also embody the feature of spoken English; at the same time, Chinese middle school students use more conjunctions, conjunctive adverbs and nominalized verbs in their English compositions than those of American middle school students, which is not only embody the feature of spoken English, but also has the connection with EFL teaching. What’s more, as far as the usage of wh-subordinate clauses, Chinese middle school students tend to use more objective and subjective subordinate clauses, which are easier to learn and use for them, but avoid prepositional subordinate clauses, which are more difficult for them to learn and use. American middle school students have higher type/token ratio in their English compositions, their compositions are longer, more textual function words, fambigious adverbs and prepositional subordinate clauses. All these embody the feature of English compositions of American middle school students, which is more colloquial, more informational and more communicative.