Abstract: As is advocated by Xu Tongqiang,’Zi’ is the basic structural unit of Chinese.Inspired by and in light of this theory,the present paper investigates the differences between ’Zi’ and ’word’ in English,as well as the respective characteristics of the thinking patterns of the two languages derived from these diffe——rences.This,as is shown in the paper,can serve as a new approach to the contrastive studies between English and Chinese.