A Contrastive Genre Analysis Of English Argumentative Essays By Senior School Students In China And U.S

As one of the language output skills,English writing requires students to use the target language to think and generate output effectively.However,among the four basic English skills of listening,speaking,reading and writing,writing is the most challenging and difficult one.According to the High School English New Curriculum Standards,senior high school students are required to write in English with "substantial contents,fluent language,appropriate words and expressions".Every year in the national college entrance English test,writing takes a very high proportion.Therefore,the teaching of written is particularly important.Among all kinds of discourse genres,argumentative discourse is a very important discourse type that requires students to master in senior high school,which requires students to write independently and smoothly.Argumentation is essentially a persuasive discourse,in which students can persuade readers to accept their views on a certain topic through persuasive argumentation.At the same time,argumentative essays are not only frequent topics for high school students,but also in international tests such as TOEFL,IELTS,or the national test of Tem-4,Tem-8.Therefore,it seems important to meet the requirements to master and create the genre.English argumentation has long been regarded as a basic textual model in written discourse.It is not only a comprehensive examination of students’ English knowledge,but also a concentrated reflection of their English level.Of course,it is also a difficult problem for the examinee.Data of this paper comes from the high school students of China and the United States,with 30 argumentative essay writing texts from each part a high school.Using Hyland(1990)English language argumentative essay analysis framework to analyze the move structure and discourse patterns in the 60 essays,comparison of the student’s argumentative structure and language forms,the analysis of similarities and differences and the reasons is made,so as to provide Chinese students in English writing advice to develop argumentative essays.The results show that the argumentative writing of most high-school students conforms to the three steps of Hyland argumentative analysis framework,and the results also show that the Chinese students use a step which can be found in their counterparts in the U.S.