A Study On The Features Of Thesis Statement In Chinese College Students’ English Argumentative Writing

As a pivotal issue in college’s English learning and teaching, ESL writing has been receiving more and more attention from teachers and learners. The teaching methods of ESL writing gradually grow various with the development of English writing research. In the actual status of Chinese ESL writing in college, the argumentative writing has long been the focus. Under the guidance of the exam-orientation aims and the accumulation of long years’experiences, the teaching method has conventionalized a routine which is widely accepted by teachers and students.The thesis statement is the central idea and the living soul of an argumentative writing. How the thesis statements are expressed, to some extents, show the writer’s ability of constructing a composition and the competence of English language. As a consequence, to study the features of the thesis statements in college students’ argumentative writing can help know the features and the English competence of college students and can also improve some bad situations in current teaching and learning.This thesis has explored some features of the thesis statements in Chinese college students’argumentative writing and tried to find some mutual features they share as well as the different features. Some explanations are also provided. In this thesis, Biber’s classification of language features is adopted as the theoretical basis. Over all200pieces of English majors’compositions and200pieces of non-English majors’composition are compared to reach some conclusions:1. Thesis statements in English majors’ writings and those in non-English majors’ writings share almost all the features in discourse, while only a few features differ. The majority of Chinese students prefer to begin their writing with a thesis statement. Compared with the thesis statements by the non-English majors, the thesis statements by English majors are clearer in expression, firmer in stance and more comprehensive in compression. But the statistics also show that there are less thesis statements in English majors’ writings.2. Thesis statements in English majors’ writings and those in non-English majors’ writings share almost all the features in linguistics, and only a few features differ. All the thesis statements are overusing the1st person pronouns, the stative form and the existential there forms. The sentence structures are very monotonous and the stance is not stated in a strong and powerful tone. But English majors do better than non-English majors.Some advices are suggested after the research. We should pay attention to the connection between the writing products and the writing features. Teachers should also prepare some particular writing tasks, so that students can learn how to enhance some good habits in English expression and to avoid making some Chinglish mistakes. Some practices which aim at reducing some bad influencing factors like the cultural differences, the negative transfer of mother tongue and the different competence in English language could be offered too.