The paper studies the negative transfer of native language on second language learners’ command of anaphora, a special type of passive rhetoric. With Chinese and English representing respectively the topic-prominent language and the subject-prominent one, the paper carries out an empirical study on English-speaking learners’ use of three kinds of Chinese anaphora–zero, nominal and pronominal anaphora. It is found that CSL learners tend to overuse nominal and pronominal anaphora and rarely use zero anaphora, which significantly deviates from the habit of native Chinese speakers. Therefore, negative transfer at the discourse level exerts a great influence on the learners’ passive rhetorical competence. Suggestions are offered for second language teaching from the aspect of discourse coherence.