Cultural Components In Chinese Students' English Writings——Research Into Influences Of Thought Patterns On The Writing Process

From the perspectives of philosophy and linguistic structures, this paper probes into Chinese and English thought patterns and their embodiments in the linguistic structures of English and Chinese languages. A thought pattern is based on its nation's traditional philosophical thoughts and cultural background, and the language is the carrier of its thought pattern. Western thought pattern is influenced by traditional western philosophy that stated that he God is separated from the Human beings.?It also advocated to separate the physical world from the spirit world, society from its surroundings, nature from phenomenon, so many natural scientists suggested to divide a whole into several parts, or to separate the individual from the total when human beings observe the world and deal with complex problems. Under these thoughts, westerners formed an analytical thought pattern. Western philosophy not only emphasized individualism but also focused on forms. To sum up, Western thought pattern focuses on reasoning, analyzing, and unifying the form. These characters are embodied in English language; that is, English is a language of hypotaxis, and diction, syntax and discourse are required to be cohesive. The way of organizing ideas in this thought pattern is vertical. Differing from this, Chinese thought pattern is influenced by three philosophiesonfucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. u xing?(the power of readily taking a hint) is highlighted in these three philosophies. This philosophical thought greatly influenced Chinese thought pattern; that is, Chinese people prefer implication both in their speaking and writing. This kind of thought is also embodied in Chinese language, especially, in the old-fashioned Chinese writing in its vague parts of speech, vague word meanings, and vague language units. In addition, Chinese philosophers advocated that the Heaven and the Human beings were combined together, so Chinese people would take a comprehensive viewpoint when they deal with a specific problem, and take everything related to this problem into account. It is similar to doctors of traditional Chinese medicine examing their patients. In a word, Chinese thought pattern is comprehensive. Under this thought pattern, Chinese is a language of parataxis. Chinese language focuses on the logical connection among sentences and paragraphs and a whole composition, and connective words are usually omitted, the unity of sentences and paragraphs and a whole paragraph is achieved by coherence. And the way of organizing ideas in a paragraph and in a composition is spiral. Based on this discussion, the paper analyzes the influences caused by different thought patterns on producing an piece of idiomatic English writing from the level of diction, sentence structure, and ways of organizing ideas in a paragraph and in a whole composition. That is, how to produce a piece of good writing from the cultural perspective. As the cultural product, the thought pattern characterizes its language from the level of diction to the level of discourse in terms of writing. Chinese ad English embody two different kinds of thought patterns, and the differences existing in these two languages would surely influence Chinese students to produce idiomatic English compositions. The differences embodied in the level of diction include the words with the same denotation but different connotations, different associations used to express the similar phenomenon, and the synonymous repetition misused in English. The differences embodied in the level of syntax include...