An Application Of English-Chinese Syntactic Contrast In College English Writing Instruction

There is plenty of literature about the English-Chinese syntactic contrast. In recent years, some researchers have studied the implications of comparing English-Chinese syntaxes on writing teaching. However, most of the studies are theoretical.The current study is attempted to investigate the effectiveness of applying English-Chinese syntactic contrast in college writing instruction through a fifteen-week experiment.42 participants take part in this research; and 126 written samples are involved, which are written by the participants at Stage 1, Stage 2 and Stage 3 of the experiment. All of the written samples are analyzed, and the data collected are processed in line with Wilcoxon Paired-test by using SPSS 22.0. In addition, Interview 1 occurs at the beginning of Stage 1 to gather information concerning the participants; Interview 2 takes place at the end of Stage 3 to further explore the effectiveness of the experiment.The research findings show that 1) college English learners' compositions are interfered by their L1. The level of interference varies from aspect to aspect; in some aspects, say, Active, the L1 transfer is pervasive, while in some aspects it is less common; 2) the learners' awareness concerning the English-Chinese syntactic differences and similarities is weak. A majority of the students are ignorant of this sort of knowledge; 3) applying English-Chinese syntactic contrast in college English writing instruction is an effective way to improve the correctness and authenticity of the students' compositions.This thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter 1 is the overall introduction of this thesis, where the research background, the purpose of this study and the structure of this thesis are presented.In Chapter 2, the author presents the literature review in which Contrastive Linguistics, the seven aspects of syntactic contrast involved in this study, and the related studies concerning syntactic contrast in writing instruction are introduced. After a critical review of previous literature, the research questions are put forward.Chapter 3 demonstrates the methodology employed in this study, which includes participants, written samples, procedures and a teaching case.Chapter 4 presents the results of the experiment, accompanied with discussion.In Chapter 5, the author provides the conclusion, research limitations, and implications for college writing instruction as well as suggestions for further studies.