An Analysis Of The Negative Influence Of Different Chinese And English Thinking Upon Senior High School Students' English Writing

English writing belongs to language output ability.English Curriculum Standard for Senior High School(2017)set specific standards for senior high school English writing.However,the students,with many problems in their writing,still have a long way to go to reach these standards.One of the common problems is their mistakes and unidiomatic English expressions under the influence of the mother tongue thinking.So this thesis,by means of an empirical research,tries to find out whether and how the difference between English and Chinese thinking affects the senior high school students' English writing.A school-based research is done by taking Xi'an Foreign Language School as an example.121 participants were selected from Grade Three in the senior high school.The research adopts three methods: questionnaire,textual analysis,and student interview.The questionnaire was designed based upon Wen Qiufang's in her book English Writing Research(2003),and with a little adjustment to suit the research subjects.40 questionnaires were tested for reliability and validity by SPSS20.0.80 mid-term exam essays were collected for further study.Four interview questions were designed,and six students were selected for an interview.After all the data were collected,they were analyzed and discussed based on the theory of the difference between Chinese and English thinking.Through the analyses and discussions above,the thesis finally draws a conclusion that the senior high school students are often subject to the influence of native language thinking lexically,syntactically and textually.Lexically,there are some problems such as improper collocation,the less frequent use of pronouns andnominalization.Syntactically,students tend to use active voice in most circumstances,and write many run-on sentences.Textually,the topic sentence is not presented at the beginning,and the logical connection is not reflected in form.As the result,some relevant suggestions are made.It is hoped that this research will offer effective guidance to overcome the problems caused by the difference between Chinese and English thinking in the senior high school students' English writing so as to raise their English writing proficiency.