An Experimental Study On Promoting Higher Vocational College Students’ English Writing Based On Lexical Chunk Approach

Generally, it is thought that the primary thing in learning a language is the acquisition ofvocabulary and the practice in using vocabulary. Lexis has been regarded as isolated wordsand is subsidiary to grammar, only acting as fillers of grammatical rules. However, with thedevelopment of the cognitive, psycholinguistic theories and corpus linguistics, people findthat there are many pre-fabricated phrases (lexical phrases) in language performance. Theirforms are fixed or half-fixed, and they combine grammar, meaning and context. Theacquisition of vocabulary is not viewed as isolated.With the development of economic globalization and the entering to WTO, English isregarded as the most popular and widely used language which is taught in many countries inthe world. The ability to use and master English in practice is one of Essential skills. Thehigher vocational education bears vital duties and tasks of raising high-qualified technicalpersons for China. With Their rapid development, they have become an important part ofeducation, so it is practical significance for higher vocational college students’ Englishwriting. As a new educational group, higher vocational students are different from theordinary university students, they have own characteristic instead. However, in the currentEnglish Teaching of higher vocational colleges is facing difficulties. And this has affected thedevelopment of English teaching quality and students’ comprehensive quality seriously.Higher vocational college stage is vital stage for English majors to develop their Englishcompetence. Much time and energy was used by the students on exhaustive study ofindividual words and grammar. Yet, unfortunately the situation of learning effect at presentthe result is not as good as expect. Under the most popular teaching approach—structuralapproach, grammar can be learned with a good effect by Chinese English learners, butcomposition writing also may be failed. Because they usually just concentrate on grammarand single words. The significant problem can be solved by the theory of lexical chunks.This paper discusses the application strategy of Lexical Chunk Approach in HigherVocational College English teaching, and its effect on students’ English writing ability. In this paper, by combining qualitative and quantitative research methods, empirical experiment iscarried out in experimental class and control class of a higher vocational college.Experiment’s effectiveness is tested in the way of comparison between pre-test and post-test.The author hope to provide teachers a more effective teaching approach and help students toenhance their English writing competence in the awareness of lexical chunks.On the basis of the good consciousness of both the notion and essentiality of lexicalchunks in the language production, Lexical Chunk Approach provides a practical way toimprove students’ writing competence, such as their accuracy, fluency, adequacy andidiomaticity. The study on lexical chunk approach provides a possible way to bring a newform English teaching methods.