Application Of Lexical Approach In College English Writing Teaching

With the fast development of corpus linguistics, many applied linguists observe the fact that language is composed of large quantities of prefabricated chunks. What people say is prestored in multiword units for quick retrieval, with no need to apply grammar rules. Lexical chunk, as a form/function composite, reflects the interaction of semantics, syntax and pragmatics. Lexical chunk supports the development of syntactic rules, helps learners to achieve idiomaticity and appropriacy of expressions, and also facilitates the language production. With lexical chunks as the core and based on the cognitive psychology, lexical approach is a kind of compromise between structural approach and communicative approach--- not only attaches importance to grammar, but puts emphasis on the appropriate usage of the context. The most important principle of the lexical approach is"language consists of grammaticalised lexis--not lexicalised grammar". It can be summarized in a few words: language consists not of traditional grammar and vocabulary but often of mufti-word prefabricated chunks. In this paper, lexical approach is introduced as a new way to improve EFL(English as a foreign language) writing.The present study was designed to investigate whether the learning of lexical chunks can improve EFL writing. Specifically, the study addresses the following questions: 1) Does lexical approach contribute more to writing ability compared with traditional approach ? 2)After applying lexical approach to teaching practice, does there exist significance in the number of lexical chunks in the students'compositions? 3) Can the students from EG accept this new approach?To answer the above questions, qualitative method and questionnaire are adopted. First of all, the author conducted an experiment in two classes, one was the experimental group(EG) under lexical approach teaching, the other was control group(CG) under traditional teaching. Two group students were asked to write 3 compositions respectively according to CET4 writing requirements in the beginning, mid, and end of the term. By compared the composition scores and the number of lexical chunks used in the students'writing in EG and CG, the conclusions have been made that lexical approach has a positive effect on college English writing and the number of lexical chunks in the students'composition has been increased significantly. Besides, a questionnaire was carried out among the students of EG after the students'final examination. Through the answers to the questionnaire, the author finds out that the overwhelming majority of students from EG accepted lexical approach and realized the roles that lexical chunks play in improving writing ability.