Table 5 The occurrence of marked themes

That the Chinese used more marked themes is partly due to the influence of their mother tongue. For instance,the position of the temporal adverb yesterday in the second example below shows a prominent thematic effect in English：

1.After I had played basketball for an hour yesterday,I didn't put on my coat.

（Which tells the hearer what happened after he had played basketball）

2.Yesterday after I had played basketball for an hour I didn't put on my coat.

（Which tells the hearer what happened yesterday）

The first example shows that predication is concerned with the speaker's activity while the second shows that predication is concerned with the temporal context. But the first example would not be accepted in the corresponding Chinese：

la. Wo dale yixiaoshi lanqiu hou zuotian,wo meichuan yifu.

2a. Zuotian wo dale yixiaoshi lanqiu hou,wo meichuan yifu.

That accounts for the fairly large number of occurrences of thematical adverbials in Chinese,since temporal adverbs are often structurally bound to occupy the first position.

The Australians used infinitive phrases as marked themes,as in“That to ever succeed you have to work hard，”and“Nothing to explain,I've caught cold.”

Although the average length of answers in this study is only about 31 words,or 2 sentences,each answer can still be regarded as a semantically self-contained text because“it functions as a unity with respect to its environment”（Halliday and Hasan 1976）. Being a text,each answer has its own texture,which is realized by the cohesive relation that exists among the sentences.Under Halliday and Hasan's classification there are five types of cohesive ties,namely：reference,substitution,ellipsis,conjunction,and lexical cohesion.Table 6 shows an analysis in those terms.

Table 6 Frequencies and percentages of cohesive ties（Following Halliday and Hasan 1975）

Generally speaking,differences in the composition of types of cohesive ties in the two groups are not significant. Yet,it is striking that the Australians produced some elliptical structures which do not appear in the Chinese texts.For example,they sometimes omitted the subject and the finite or modal verb of a sentence,so that at first glance it looks like an imperative（in five cases），as in“（I would）Use myself as an example……”The main clause was totally elided in two cases,as with“（He had caught cold）Because he didn't take enough vitamin pills.”Only a constituent of a sentence was reserved in four cases,as in“（His friends might account for it by）Lack of motivation to study.”Such a large number of elliptical forms could partly account for the conciseness of the Australian texts.

In contrast the Chinese preferred to use conjunctions as Table 6 shows. There are five instances of so and three of what is more in the texts,as in“I didn't put on my coat……So I caught cold.”and“What is more,he is a careless fellow.”

The frequent use of lexical cohesion by the Australian students is related to their competence in the choice they make within the lexis network.

4.The Logical Component

In Halliday's system,the logical component is expressed in terms ofα，β，andγ，and the more Greek letters,the more complex the sentence.For convenience we have,however,used Taylor’s（1979）measures of sentence depth and interruption,which reflect in part the complexity of a sentence.The analysis of the texts in Table 7 shows that the native speakers put more clauses into their sentences,which produces more complex sentences,although a sentence with more clauses is not necessarily more complex than one with fewer clauses（Taylor 1979）.

Comparing the following examples,one sees that the second sentence has a greater sentence depth：

1.Anyhow father and mother can't take care of you all your life,and your brothers and sisters have themselves to look after（Chinese）.

Table 7 Distributions of multi-clause sentences,mean sentence depths and mean interruption rates

2.I caught a cold because I didn't wear enough clothing to keep me warm（Australian）.

There are three clauses in both sentences,but in the first example,the first two clauses are at the same level,and the sentence depth can only be counted as two. The second sentence consists of a main clause,an adverbial clause,and an embedded non-finite clause,so that the sentence depth is three.The mean sentence depths for all the sentences in the two groups are 2.14 for the Australians and 1.83 for the Chinese.

When interruption is taken into account,the diversity in the complexity of sentence structure is further elaborated. Interruption measures the“depth-level movement”in a sentence（Taylor 1979）.The greater the depth-level movement,the higher the interruption score,and the more structurally complex or difficult the sentence.

For example,there are four clauses in each of the following sentences：

1.It's not because he did not work hard but because he was very intense and had no experience.（Chinese）

It's not

because he……hard but……intense and……experience

2.If you got this over with,then you will have time to think about your life later on,and will also have easier access to more and different ways of life.（Australian）

then……time

and will……life

If……with

to think……on

Sentence 1 has one interruption and sentence 2 has three interruptions. The mean interruption rates for the Australians and the Chinese are 1.40 and 1.03 respectively,which shows that the Australians produce more complex sentences than do the Chinese.The Australians undoubtedly have a good command of logical structure.More data are needed,however,to establish whether sex plays a role in those linguistic features,although the three longest multi-clause sentences were all produced by females.They are：“He wouldn't answer in medical jargon,but would probably give a blurb about change of weather,being caught out in the rain one night,sleeping in a draught,or caught it from another person,i.e.，the usual reasons people think they catch cold”（Australian），“Firstly,describe what a cold is and then say that it had been‘caught'as a result of being out in cold weather,or being in close contact with someone who already had one”（Australian），and“If you want to be independent when you grow up,you get to have knowledge to back you to find your feet in the society,and you can be more successful with knowledge than if you do without it”（Chinese）.

In addition to the analysis of the four semantic components of the functional approach,the errors in the texts were also noted. They showed several differences.The 28 errors made by the Australians were all due either to punctuation or spelling.For the Chinese,only 11 errors of the 35 related to spelling and punctuation.Most of the rest come from collocations,for example，“……it didn't seem like a day in Autumn season，”and“……when you grow up,you get（have）to have knowledge to back you to find your feet in the society……，”or from the misuse of tense,such as“You would（will）not pass your examinations by the end of the term.”Other errors made by the Chinese include“If you don't study hard now,you'll regret（it）when you get a job later on，”“This morning I found myself（I）had a cold，”“Then you'll certainly regret for having not worked hard at school，”“It's not because that he did not work hard……”and“I went up to the top of the mountain last night without a sweater on me.”

Although the Chinese students made fewer mistakes in spelling than did the Australians,further study may show that the Australian students would knowhow to pronounce the words they can't spell,which would probably not be true for the Chinese,as the following errors show.

Australians：prehaps（perhaps），exame（exam），percivier（persevere），feild（field），competant（competent），relevent（relevant）.

Chinese：changable（changeable），unexpectly（unexpectedly），intellegent（intelligent），expience（experience）.

5.Conclusions

No attempt has been made to exhaust all linguistic features in this analysis. The results of our comparisons have already shown several differences in the use of English between native speakers in Australia and foreign language learners in China.The Chinese students have shown a reasonable command of English,and can use that language to mean things,to express their thoughts and to communicate with native English speakers.The initial aim of teaching English as a foreign language is to allow communication in that language.This has already been achieved by these Chinese students,although they had only been learning English for three or four years.Differences in linguistic features and in errors have been shown,although in analyzing these texts the insights of a native speaker from each language are necessary to identify each culture's taken-for-granted knowledge.

When language teachers emphasize native speaker insights in the teaching of English in China they should not overlook the different sociocultural context there. Malinowski's observation that“language is essentially rooted in the reality of the culture,the tribal life and customs of a people,and it cannot be explained without constant reference to these broader contexts of verbal utterance”（1923）obviously extends to the way English is used.This calls for an especially close cooperation between native-speaking and Chinese teachers of English in working out an approach which allows students in China to express their own experiences and knowledge in acceptable English and enables them to appreciate the English culture.