An Empirical Study On Lexical Chunks In CET-4 Argumentative Writing

This thesis is an empirical study on lexical chunks in CET-4 argumentative writing. In traditional classroom teaching, vocabulary and grammar are deemed as the cores of teaching, while phrasal, sentential and textual constructions are somewhat neglected, so that language fails to be used and selected as a whole. To tackle this problem, chunks theory for its concern on this aspect has increasingly drawn attention among scholars, for its systematic integrity of both form and function. Theoretically, chunks present the multi-level relationship between semantics, syntax and pragmatics, and thus can promote the acquisition of grammar and improve the idiomaticity, coherence and fluency of utterances. However, the teaching methodology in the field of argumentative writing of Chinese students still needs a profound empirical study.The main objective of the study is a theoretical construction of a revised chunk methodology and its application on the basis of chunks theory. Combined Lewis' pedagogical approach with noticing theory, a revised chunks approach is presented, which is: "Noticing Hypothesis—Chunks Input—Chunks Exposure—Fluency Activities". With the implementation of chunks noticing, chunks input, chunks exposure and fluency activities, students would make significant progress in the acquisition and application of four types of chunks (polywords, phrasal constraints, sentence builders and institutional expressions). The subjects of this study are 32 non-English-major freshmen of one natural class in one Professional College in Zhejiang from China. The teaching experiment lasted four months, totally 16 weeks, from March, 2008 to June, 2008. To testify the effectiveness of the revised teaching methodology, the thesis makes a comparison between pretest and posttest writings with help of data processing software SPSS in the aspect of the application of four categories of chunks: polywords, phrasal constraints, sentence builders and institutional expressions.The second objective of this thesis is the chunks use in Chinese students' argumentative writing, concerning: (1) the distribution of lexical chunks in students' writing; (2) the syntactical characteristics of these chunks; (3) changes concerning chunks differences between Chinese students and native speakers.After the training, idiomaticity, coherence and fluency have been improved, changes have taken place: (1) Phrasal constraints have increased greatly; polywords and sentence builders have also increased to some extent. But no significant changes have taken place in the number of institutional expressions, an indicator of the spoken nature of utterance. All the above changes manifest that students start to employ the chunks strategies native speakers tend to use, which shows the improvement of the idiomaticity in their writing. (2) Syntactically, in the use of phrasal constraints, both preposition chunks and verb chunks have been increased. In the use of sentence builders, students came to employ clause chunks and formal subject chunks. Meanwhile, types of polywords are diversified. All the changes display that students have increased their awareness in the perception of the discourse from a higher level. They began to use some logical chunks to present facts and opinions. Therefore, the coherence of passages has been improved. (3) The overuse of pronoun plus modal chunks and active voice chunks has been declining. Chunks showing the identity are obviously decreasing. Students adopt more commentionalized chunks peculiar to argumentative writing to present opinions, which has made their writings sound more fluent.According to the results of the experiment, several teaching suggestions are made: students should be exposed to a large quantity of authentic English, and helped to enhance their chunks awareness through cross-language comparison. Besides, traditional teaching strategy, such as memorization, should still be attached due attention.