A Study On The Application Of Lexical Approach To Senior Three Students’ English Writing

Since the1970s, the topic about lexical chunks has been researched hotly both at home and abroad and the research results have emerged enormously, which has opened up a new perspective for the teaching research of English writing. Many Chinese linguists have done plenty of research on the relation between lexical chunks and writing. However, the empirical research on the application of lexical approach to Senior Three students’English writing is still less.This thesis, based on the lexical chunks theory of Lewis, makes a contrastive analysis of lexical chunks in the60samples out of Senior Three students’compositions from Jiangsu Luhe Senior High School, which are divided into experimented group and ordinary group. During the experiment, the experimented group students were taught English writing based on lexical approach, while the ordinary group students still adopt conventional teaching method without emphasis on lexical chunks. Exploring the differences in the frequency and category as well as accuracy between the samples of two groups via two exams, the thesis is aimed at putting forward some suggestions for the teaching of Senior Three English writing. As is shown in the experiment, the average mark of samples by experimented group has increased by20%, which is distinctively higher than that of samples by ordinary group. After analyzing the samples of two groups, the number of lexical chunks in the samples by experimented group is40%higher than that of the samples by ordinary group. The frequency of lexical chunks in the samples by experimented group is twice that of the samples by the ordinary group as well. In terms of the usage of different categories of lexical chunks, the proportions of polywords and collocations are the largest in two groups, while the accuracy of collocations and sentence frames in the samples by experimented group is much higher than that of the samples by the ordinary group. Compared with lexical chunks in the samples by ordinary group, those in the samples by experimented group are characterized by diversity and less repeatability. The conclusions above verify that both experimented group students and ordinary group students have a good command of lexical chunks such as polywords and collocations. However, ordinary group students are more dependent on those two kinds of lexical chunks than experimented group students.As the study verifies, Senior Three students’capability of absorbing and employing English can be enhanced, their confidence can be boosted and their writing skills can be improved as well. Furthermore, English teachers’ old teaching concept can be transformed to strengthen their awareness of applying lexical chunks. In a gesture to improve senior students’ writing ability, English teachers are supposed to attach importance to lexical approach at the beginning of senior high school, offer more strategies of how to learn lexical chunks and design more exercises of applying lexical chunks. More importantly, English teachers ought to focus on cultivating students’ capacity of dealing with lexical chunks independently and generating new lexical chunks.