A Review on the Book of On the Symbiosis of Discourse Types

This paper gives a critical review on the book of On the Symbiosis of Discourse Types. In this book, the author, Xinfang Liu clarifies the symbiosis of the three discourse types from the perspective of rhetorical reciprocity, and proposes a comprehensive model of discourse types in the writing practice. He finds that the current problems of English writing teaching in China are the gaps between writing teaching research, textbook research and the publication of foreign language writing textbooks, and the rigidity and abstraction in the textbook edition and the writing teaching processes, thus applying the model of discourse types to the English writing teaching. Therefore, the strengths of this book lie in both theoretical and practical aspects. Besides the advantages, this book can be refined by illustrating the theory based on a corpus about everyday conversations for the studies of discourse types are closely related to people’s daily life. In addition, this work can also be improved by paying more attention to the differences between first language writing and the foreign language one because the thinking patterns and cultures lying in these two are not similar.