This Kibbitzer is based on an extract from a dissertation by Chinese-speaking student of education:

Writers such as Charles Li ¹ have pointed to a general difference between 'subject-prominent' languages such as English, and 'topic-prominent' languages such as Chinese. With a subject-prominent language the primary responsibility of the speaker or writer is to name the subject of the verb. With a 'topic-prominent' language the primary responsibility is to name the Topic of the sentence (i.e. what it is about), with the possibility that the subject may be be named separately:

i.e. in (subject-prominent) English 'This tree has very large leaves' or ' The leaves of this tree are very large.'

This general typological difference between the two languages often underlies the problems that Chinese-speakers have in writing English. In the present example the writer has attempted to name both a Topic ('More contemporary psychological approaches') and a Subject ('they'). The proposed revision focuses on the Subject-verb relationship, and in recasting the sentence replaces the abstract 'approaches' by the human 'psychologists' as a more appropriate subject of 'argue'. A subsequent concordance shows a limited range of abstract nouns being used as the subject of 'argue', 'approach' not being one of them.

   1 : that strategic planning, efficiency, and economies of scale argued for big authorities, whil
   2  on Easter Island. The evidence of physical anthropology also argues against a westward migrat
   3 ad to evolve. Others believe the evidence from homeobox genes argues otherwise: so similar are
   4 nvention is brought into force, say the authors. The strategy argues that advances in biotechn
   5 oirs of infection still survive in Eastern Europe. One theory argues that the Black Death in E
   6 ce for the infection theory of childhood leukaema. The theory argues that when populations are
   7 l can experience pain and distress. Evolutionary theory, too, argues the kinship of the specie

¹Li , Charles N. and Sandra A. Thompson 'Subject and Topic: A New Typology of Language' in C.N. Li (ed.) Subject and Topic (New York: Academic Press, 1976).