Differences between English Writing and Chinese Writing

Differences between English Writing and

Chinese Writing

AS one of essential factors among all the linguistic elements, writing is always the best way to evaluate whether one man’s language competence is good or bad. Nevertheless, because of the differences of culture, the composition written by Chinese students and native English speakers is quite different. Thus, about the question what is good writing, I dare say that Chinese people and English people would have their own answers.

After having consulted lots of data, I find the differences between English writing and Chinese writing can be considered from two major aspects. In my personal viewpoints, among all the differences reflect in English writing and Chinese writing, the way to organize essays and the means of linguistic expression are the biggest different points. Nevertheless, in a word, all the differences existing in the two languages are all originated or influenced deeply by each other’s native culture.

First, let me talk about the differences between English and Chinese writings caused by the way of organizing essays. On the one hand, compared with English writings, Chinese writings are written more euphemistic. Influenced by the traditional Confucianism, euphemistic expressions are regarded as a symbol of politeness and unobtrusiveness. Only this kind of essays can be evaluated as good essays. Thus, a huge number of Chinese people would like to write some things closely related to essays’ themes in a side way before they write the essays’ themes. Metaphors and literary quotations are two of these ways Chinese people tend to use in their essays’ beginning. However, on the contrary, English people prefer writing their essays in a direct way. They usually express their opinions or essays’ theme at the beginning of the writing. On the other hand, Chinese writings often like citing the classics to prove their opinions’ rationality. However, English culture likes competition and conflict. Thus, they tend to use their own special ways to state their viewpoints, which is different from previous people.

Second, the means of linguistic expression also play an essential part in the differences between English writing and Chinese writing. About the means of linguistic expression, I just want to talk about two main ways. For one thing, in the Chinese writings, only human beings can be considered as the subject to carry out actions, so sometimes there may be no subjects in a sentence or the subject is ambiguous. Nevertheless, on this point, English writing and Chinese writing have nothing in common. For English writings, almost every English sentence needs a specific subject. For another thing, in English writing, it is often seen the use of the passive voice, especially in translation and the technical English. Yet, the use of the passive voice are not as common as English. Moreover, the passive in English tends to be active in Chinese essay translation. In addition to these, the order of the English phrases is quite different from Chinese phrases, where these phrases often have the same meanings. Take the phrase”rich or poor” for instance, in the China, people usually writes the Chinese character poor first, which is opposite to English people.

From all these I have said in the passage, we can easily come to the conclusion that the English writing is quite different from China writing. Thus, as English majors, we should tend to imitate the English people’s thoughts to write essays. Only in this kind of way can we learn English as well as native English learners.