The Effect Of Thinking Differences Between Chinese And English On Syntax Of English Writing In Middle School

Thinking differences between Chinese and English lead to the main mistakes in syntax in Chinese students' English writing. One of the objectives in the teaching of English writing in senior middle school is to help students to avoid thinking differences and to improve writing by reducing syntactic mistakes.By giving definition to thinking, this thesis explains the relationship between thinking and language. Then it discuses Oriental and Occidental thinking patterns and their differences: Chinese thinking is spiral shape;Occidental thinking is linear shape. Because of the differences in thinking patterns between Chinese people and the western people, there exist differences in syntax in their languages. That is, hypo taxis and parataxis, tree and pole structure, triangle and invert-triangle, inanimate and animate subject, substitution and repetition.After well explaining related theory, the author carried out an investigation on the effect of thinking differences on syntax in English writing in four schools in Huanggang Hubei in September 2005. The subjects of study are teachers and student in the schools and the goal is to study the effect of thinking differences in syntax in English writing. The result shows that most teachers pay much attention to teaching words and phrases, grammars, but ignore the effect of thinking differences on language learning;and the students are lack of conscious of thinking differences in English writing between Chinese and Occidental, and it leads to the mistakes in syntax.By explaining the differences and effects, the author put forward some concrete strategies on avoiding syntactic errors caused by thinking difference in English writing: First, the teacher should dissolve culture teaching in writing to ensure the students know more about differences between Oriental and Occidental culture and thinking. Second, the teacher can avoid the errors by using comparison. Third, the teacher can help students avoid the errors by explain the relationship between thinking and syntactical structure, morphology, time order sequence etc.