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eech act principle that are commonly recognized. And for these principles to be effective, they must also share some common beliefs and values, for example, a common language for communication, the same historical background, and shared socio-cultural beliefs, etc,. If the writer does not come from the same speech community as the reader’s, and takes his own cultural norms for granted, his writing may violate the pragmatic principles of the target language readers and cause pragmatic transfer. Pragmatic transfer can be defined as a process in which the pragmatic rules of learners’ NL interfere with their TL performance. Following is the general layout of the thesis.

Chapter One 第一章: Literary Review

1.1 Overseas Studies on ESL Writing
The research on ESL writing abroad started from the 1960s. It covers four major areas: research on the writing process, research on writing teaching, research on the writing product, and research on the writing context. The main research results are as follows:
In the first place, the research on the L2 writing process began from the research on the L1 writing process. It mainly includes the studies on the models of cognitive performance, learners’ individual differences and variations of the writing process at different stages.

Chapter Two 第二章: Theoretical Discussion

In the preceding chapter, ESL writing studies in the last 3 decades both from home and abroad have been reviewed, which suggest that second language writing is a complex process, involving a whole range of factors to do with culture, thought, cognition, L1 intervention, frequency of practice, etc. In order to investigate how learners’ native language (NL), or first language (L1) affects their second language writing act at the pragmatic level, we need to recognize that writing is not simply an isolated and de-contextualized act which treats the text as a set of abstract rules that student writers have to follow. Rather, from the socio-cultural perspective, writing is a highly situated and contextualized pragmatic act (Mey, 1993) governed by the social and cultural norms of a particular speech community. In this chapter, some fundamental theories essential for the discussion of pragmatic transfer in Chinese students’ ESL writing are presented. They are pragmatics, language transfer, error analysis and the related theories.

Chapter Three 第三章: Empirical Research

As was discussed in previous chapters, this thesis investigates Chinese students’ ESL compositions in light of pragmatic theories. In the present chapter, the Error Analysis (EA) method will be used to identify the problem of pragmatic transfer in students’ English writing. As pragmatic transfer is a complex issue to do with various linguistic, contextual and socio-cultural factors, the present chapter will first of all identify different types of error in students’ compositions, and then classify and analyze them from linguistic, pragmatic and socio-cultural perspectives.

3.1 Research Questions

Three questions have been identified in this research:
(1) What Types of Error Exist in Students’ English Writing?
(2) What are the Manifestations of Pragmatic Transfer in the Errors Identified?
(3) What are the Causes of Pragmatic Transfer in English Writing?