Introduction
It is worth noting that an increasing number of international students, especially Chinese students, have been flooding into English-speaking countries such as the United Kingdom, the United States or Australia in pursuit of advanced knowledge and better academic environments. As ESL students are enrolling in writing courses in colleges and universities, teachers are confronted with problems that non-native speakers bring to the class when it comes to their academic writing. The problems are more serious than they appear to be. For one thing, according to Reid (Reference Reid1993: 774), there is a dramatic difference between native students and ESL students in ‘the needs, backgrounds, learning styles, and writing strategies’. For another, the situation becomes worse due to ‘considerable diversity even among ESL students in terms of language and cultural backgrounds, prior education, gender, age, and ESL language proficiency’ (Reid, Reference Reid1993: 774). Although there is not a single solution which is effective in solving complex ESL issues, teachers would be in a better position to understand their ESL students' writing problems if they were to learn about the distinct nature of L2 writing shaped by linguistic and cultural differences. In this article, the author, who was once a Chinese ESL student in the USA and is now an EFL teacher in China, explores how English writing differs from Chinese writing and how these differences lead to Chinese ESL students' difficulty with English writing. This article is expected to increase ESL practitioners' awareness of the urgency for them to recognize and deal with these differences in order to teach L2 writers effectively, to treat them fairly and thus provide them with equal opportunities to achieve academic and professional success.
Contrast between English and Chinese writing
The ‘contrastive analysis of rhetoric’ proposed by Kaplan (Reference Kaplan, Matsuda and Silva2001: 21) is employed here to explore the disparity between English and Chinese writing. Discovering and solving Chinese students' difficulties requires a good idea of the distinctive features of Chinese writing. Silva's (Reference Silva, Matsuda and Silva2001: 201) statement corroborates the use of this method:
Therefore, L2 writing specialists need to look beyond L1 writing theories, to better describe the unique nature of L2 writing, to look into the potential sources (e.g., cognitive, developmental, social, cultural, educational, linguistic) of this uniqueness, to develop theories that adequately explain the phenomenon of L2 writing.
Accordingly, a close analysis of the differences between Chinese and English writing helps to shed light on the linguistic, rhetorical, stylistic, and cultural differences between these two languages.
In their respective works, both Matalene (Reference Matalene1985) (an American) and Li (Reference Li1996) (a Chinese) contrast their mother tongue with second language based on their L2 learning and teaching experiences. Matalene (Reference Matalene1985: 798) describes English rhetoric as:
an exploratory technique for approaching the truth, as an arena for combatants, as a means of acting upon an audience to inspire action and change, as an avenue for the individual to achieve control by saying something new in a new way.
It is clear that originality lies at the heart of English composition and this feature, according to Matalene (Reference Matalene1985: 789), results from the American value of ‘individuality’ and the encouragement of an ‘Authentic Voice’.
The Chinese writing system, in Matalene's eyes, necessitates a huge amount of memorization. Learning by rote has been playing an important role in China's history. Before the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, children began their schooling by memorizing an ancient moral book. During the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s, students memorized quotations from Chairman Mao (Mao, Reference Mao1966), so no wonder such slogans as ‘Long live Communist Party’, ‘Long live Chairman Mao’ and ‘Down with capitalism and imperialism’ appeared in their writing. Chinese people believe that to be good writers, they should have a broad knowledge of Chinese classics and memorize large numbers of proverbs, maxims and idioms composed of four Chinese characters (e.g. 千辛万苦 ‘untold hardship’, 千姿百态 ‘myriad appearances’, 覆水难收 ‘the water under the bridge’). Memorization, as Matalene (Reference Matalene1985: 792) notices, has a great impact on the practices of Chinese discourse:
Thus, for the Chinese writer, style means manipulating one's memory bank of phrases, arrangement means filling the forms, and invention means doing it the way it has been done. Each of these three arts of rhetoric depends profoundly on the fourth, memory.
It is true that Chinese students tend to use in their Chinese writing the same phrases, sayings and literary allusions they have memorized. This is one of the reasons why foreigners may consider Chinese writing to be formulaic and uniform.
Li (Reference Li1996) traces the lack of creativity in Chinese writing to certain principles of Chinese culture. The Chinese, she asserts, are a people who revere authority: that of their parents, teachers or any other senior persons. Although they do not always listen to authoritative voices, they seldom defy them or do not bother to do so (Li, Reference Li1996: 74). Li makes a strong point by discussing the Chinese people's worship of authority. Since Chinese students' childhood, they have been told to sacrifice individual interests for the greater good of all and not to contradict the experienced and knowledgeable. It comes as no surprise that Chinese writers are apt to imitate good models rather than to boldly express their real thoughts.
Another remarkable difference between English and Chinese writing lies in discourse organizational patterns, for which Kaplan's research makes a strong case. Whereas the structure of English composition is linear and direct, that of Chinese composition is roundabout (Kaplan, Reference Kaplan, Matsuda and Silva2001: 17). His explanation shows that English writing begins with a persuasive thesis statement and that each following paragraph has a clear idea that specifically backs up the central idea. No paragraph wanders off the topic and nothing is redundant. Unity and coherence are qualities ascribed to good writing. There is a smooth and direct flow of ideas from start to finish. Chinese writing, in Kaplan's view, is like ‘turning and turning in a widening gyre’ (Kaplan, Reference Kaplan1972: 46). He wonders why paragraphs ‘are developed in terms of what they are not, rather than in terms of what they are’ (Kaplan, Reference Kaplan1972: 46). Unlike English writers, who employ logical reasoning of deduction and induction in communication, Chinese writers think in a circular way. Matalene's study (1985) strengthens Kaplan's (Reference Kaplan1972) notion of Chinese writing style. As Matalene demonstrates, Chinese writers develop paragraphs around the topic but never deal directly with the topic. They usually touch on the subject repeatedly and in variable ways. When they support their thesis, they always assert its truth instead of providing specific examples or illustrations for the thesis. She attributes this trait to the dependence of Chinese discourse on memorizing and imitating classics which have the same indirect pattern (Matalene, Reference Matalene1985: 796–7).
The indirectness of discourse, which both Kaplan (Reference Kaplan1972) and Matalene have noticed, results in semantic obliqueness which is best illustrated by Li's (Reference Li1996) arguments. Chinese classics, as she depicts, are marked by Qing and Jing. Qing means ‘emotional appeal of a piece of writing’ as opposed to ‘intellect’,'‘rationality’, and ‘reason’ (Li, Reference Li1996: 54). Qing has a great power of persuasion. Li's (Reference Li1996) words point to the reason why, from the traditional Chinese outlook, only by writing with passion can a writer produce powerful and convincing literary works. Li's (Reference Li1996) view accounts for Matalene's (Reference Matalene1985) contention that Chinese students like to make affecting assertions in their writing. Jing, Li (Reference Li1996: 87) continues, refers to ‘natural surroundings’ or ‘nature’. The most artistic feature of Chinese classics is that one externalizes one's emotion indirectly through a depiction of nature, instead of directly expressing the emotion. Since the Chinese are introverted, they prefer to ‘couch qing in jing’ (Li, Reference Li1996: 87), that is, to imply one's feelings by portraying nature.
To support Li's informative thesis, the author cites a classic poem translated into English (Xu, Reference Xu2000: 44), written by Jiuling Zhang (678–740), a Chinese poet in the Tang Dynasty:
This poem is more than a description of the moonlight. In fact, the speaker expresses his love for his lover. He hopes that the moon will send his message to his lover and inform her of his love. Native speakers of English may have difficulty understanding that the moon functions as a medium, like telephones or emails used today, through which lovers can communicate their mutual love. They, therefore, are likely to miss the real theme of this poem because, according to their thinking, one should disclose one's feelings frankly. For example, American parents show love by saying ‘I love you’ to their children, hugging them or kissing them on the cheeks. Traditional Chinese parents, however, would do none of the above after their children begin schooling. Being candid about one's feelings is not part of the Chinese culture, at least not of the traditional Chinese culture. Chinese readers take it as their responsibility to infer what writers have intended, so Chinese writers would rather give hints than clarify their meanings. This kind of writing inevitably strikes English readers as elusive and undesirably indirect.
Chinese ESL learners' problems and reasons
Chinese narrative writing, rooted in Chinese culture and language, greatly differs when contrasted with English narrative writing. Could these differences be the cause of Chinese ESL students' essay writing problems? In my analysis below I demonstrate that the interference of Chinese writing, combined with poor proficiency in English, leads to Chinese ESL students' difficulties with English writing.
Interference of Chinese
Chinese students' long-term training in Chinese writing skills is the cause of their negative transfer from Chinese to English (Liu, Reference Liu2011). As Carson (Reference Carson, Matsuda and Silva2001: 137) remarks, ‘what learners have learned about LEARNING to read and write in their L1’ might ‘affect how they approach literary acquisition in ESL writing classrooms’. When communicating in their target language, Chinese learners often resort to their former experience of Chinese learning of word meaning and grammatical, syntactic or discourse structure as a means of expressing themselves. Negative transfer happens in different areas of language.
In terms of grammar, there are some typical errors made by Chinese students in their English writing which have been discussed by numerous relevant studies (e.g., Liu, Reference Liu2011; Liu & Deng, Reference Liu and Deng2005). The following are some examples from the English writing of my college students in China, who are on average medium-level English learners aged 20. Example 1 illustrates the negative influence of Chinese sentence structure on English sentence structure.
In Chinese grammar, many sentences consist of two clauses, each of which contains a linking element. For example, 1(a) has 虽然 ‘although’ and 但是 ‘but’ for an adversative relation; 2(a) contains 因为 ‘because’ and 所以 ‘so’ for causality. When they express the same relations in English, Chinese students tend to use both although and but as in 1(b) or both because and so as in 2(b).
1(a) 虽然 我是英语专业的学生， 但是 我不敢说我的英语很好。
1(b) Although I am an English major, but I cannot claim to be proficient in English.
2(a) 因为 生命有限， 所以 我们不得不努力工作。
2(b) Because life is limited, so we have to work hard.
In Chinese the verb form in the present tense remains the same, no matter what the subject form is: singular or plural; first, second, or third person. In their English writing, Chinese students tend not to use the third person singular verb form for either a third person singular pronoun (see example 3) or a singular subject (see example 4).
3 She usually teach ESL students to think in English.
4 Only one student work on this project.
When asking interrogative questions in Chinese, Chinese speakers do not change the order of words and simply put why or how at the beginning of a question. As in examples 5 and 6, Chinese students tend not to use the inverted word order in their English writing.
5 Why you did that kind of thing?
6 How you will finish this job?
In Chinese, run-on sentences are grammatically correct and, unlike English, no relative pronoun is needed to connect the main and attributive clauses. As in examples 7 and 8, the error of a missing relative pronoun is often seen in Chinese students' English writing.
7 There are so many things should be resolved.
8 She is a student deserve rewards.
In terms of lexis, Chinese students transfer Chinese lexis composition strategies to English lexis without awareness of the differences between the two types of discourse. For example, they are used to transferring four-character idioms from Chinese to English, under the assumption that those idioms have English equivalents and can make sense to English readers. It is often counterproductive for them to do so. Can an English speaker understand phrases like day day up (天天向上), good good study (好好学习) or bright come dark go (明来暗往)? They are literal translations of Chinese idioms to English, which mean, respectively, ‘make improvement’, ‘study hard’ and ‘have overt and covert contacts with somebody’.
Negative transfer in discourse manifests itself through Chinese students' use of circular organization or emotional appeals in English writing, which has been discussed in the foregoing analysis. Chinese ESL students write in English as if they were writing in Chinese while English speakers judge their writing from the perspective of English writing discourse characteristics. Thus, misunderstanding occurs between Chinese L2 writers and English L1 readers.
Proficiency in English
Another important reason for Chinese ESL students' poor writing skills is that they have limited previous knowledge of the target language to draw on. They lack familiarity with the correct phonology, grammar, vocabulary and syntactic structure. They lack the necessary knowledge about the nature of English discourse. As Silva (Reference Silva, Matsuda and Silva2001) remarks, for example, they do not know how to express and organize their ideas in English due to their insufficient lexical knowledge. What they tend to do is to translate words and filter meanings from Chinese to English. They have to continually look up a dictionary and figure out which word to use (Silva, Reference Silva, Matsuda and Silva2001: 200). Not surprisingly, their writing is labeled as ‘less fluent’, ‘less effective’ and ‘less productive’ (Silva, Reference Silva, Matsuda and Silva2001: 195–6). This is exactly what my Chinese students, mentioned above, usually do when writing in English. They write slowly and their chain of thought is constantly interrupted because they repeatedly refer to the dictionary to weigh their words before writing them down on paper. Despite this, their writing still features lack of lexical and syntactic variety, grammatical errors and awkward sentences.
As far as Chinese ESL students are concerned, the complexity of mastering English writing skills is compounded both by the difficulty that is inherent in learning a L2 and by the way in which first language literacy skills may transfer to detract from the acquisition of second language skills. There comes into being the following question: How can ESL teachers foster the writing expertise of those students? Silva (Reference Silva, Matsuda and Silva2001) provides us with the answer. His approach is based on ESL teachers' consciousness of the differences between L1 and L2. According to him, it is indispensable for those teachers either to enhance L2 students' familiarity with ‘L1 audience expectations’, ‘textual patterns’ and ‘task types’ or to address their students' needs to build ‘grammatical and lexical resources’ (Silva, Reference Silva, Matsuda and Silva2001: 203).
Conclusion
Based on the contrastive study between English and Chinese writing, this article attempts to stress the importance of cross-linguistic and cross-cultural awareness in dealing with L2 writers. Facing the formidable task of teaching Chinese ESL students, L2 teachers may familiarize themselves with the varied differences between Chinese and English writing; they may also make those differences apparent to Chinese L2 students. With this perception by both teachers and students, the teaching of writing would be less stressful and more effective. In one sense, western ESL teachers would appreciate the merits of Chinese discourse and thus avoid judging Chinese students' writing via their own standards. After all, the styles of English composition in all English-speaking countries might not be one and the same thing. In another sense, students may profit by forming a correct impression of the nature of English writing. As a result, they will become increasingly independent and self-centered in their learning, which is likely to help them evolve into effective lifelong learners.
MIN HU graduated from Auburn University, USA, receiving her doctorate in English in 2009. She worked as an English teacher at East China Normal University, Shanghai, China, from Autumn 2009 to Autumn 2013. She is now an Assistant Professor of English at the Southwest University of Political Science & Law, Chongqing, China. Her research concentration is on second language acquisition and teaching English as a foreign language. She has published several papers in prominent linguistic journals in China and received two research grants from the Ministry of Education of China. Email: dfg1018@163.com
