In this book the authors make a contrastive study of directives in L1 and L2 writing with special attention given to Chinese and English postgraduates. This book consists of five chapters. Chapter One discusses the research background, proposes research questions and elucidates research methodology. In Chapter Two, the previous studies on directives at home and abroad are reviewed. Chapter Three elaborates the notion and classifications of directives and the interpersonal function theory applied in this study. Chapter Four is devoted to discussing the forms and functions of directives in L1 and L2 corpora, with its focus upon the comparison of the similarities and differences of directives between L1 and L2 postgraduate writing. Chapter Five serves as the concluding part.