An Empirical Study On The Application Of Lexical Approach To English Writing Teaching In Senior High Schools

There are a lot of lexical chunks in written language.Many scholars in China claim that lexical chunks can help achieve language learners‘ fluency and idiomaticity.Many empirical studies at home and abroad show that an English as a Second Language Learners‘ ability to use lexical chunks can be served as a predicator of their writing ability.However,lexical chunks are underused in Chinese learners‘ English writing.As a result,it is necessary to teach lexical chunks in English writing classes so as to improve students‘ writing ability.An early advocate of teaching lexical chunks is Michael Lewis(1993,1997),whose lexical approach encourages teachers to focus on polywords,collocations,institutionalized expressions and sentence frames and heads in their teaching.Thus,lexical chunks are regarded as a central element of language teaching.In this case,lexical chunks have been a focus in language teaching and research at home and abroad and much of the research has been done on both spoken and written discourse.This thesis aimed at studying the effects of lexical approach on the English writing ability and proficiency of senior high school students,taking Student‘s Book Module One and Module Two of Advance with English(Jiangsu Edition)as the main teaching material and lexical chunks as teaching and learning units.A 12-week teaching experiment was adopted in this study.So,the following questions are addressed:(1)What are the effects of lexical approach on the lexical chunk frequency in senior high school students‘ English writing?(2)What are the effects of lexical approach on the English writing ability of senior high school students?(3)What are the effects of lexical approach on the English writing proficiency of senior high school students? Students of two parallel classes from a senior high school participated in this study.The two classes were randomly divided into an experimental class and a control class.The control class(CC)was taught with the conventional writing teaching method.The experimental class(EC)received a treatment of lexical approach in the writing class.The data collection was based on three parts respectively--the calculation of lexical chunk frequency,the writing ability,and the calculation of writing proficiency.To quantify writing ability,writing scores were used.To quantify the improvement of writing proficiency,three indexes of writing proficiency —complexity,accuracy and fluency,were used in the present study.T-units were used to quantify the improvement of writing proficiency—fluency,accuracy and complexity.After that,SPSS 20.0 was used to make a statistical analysis of the changes of the lexical chunk frequency,writing ability and writing proficiency in the English writing between CC and EC.The results suggest that: Firstly,lexical approach could facilitate the lexical chunk frequency in senior high school students‘ English writings.Secondly,lexical approach could improve the students‘ English writing ability in senior high schools.Thirdly,lexical approach was effective in enhancing the English writing proficiency of senior high school students but the degree of enhancement was different in the three indicators of writing proficiency.Conclusion is that lexical approach should be integrated in English writing teaching.Although applying lexical approach was beneficial to students' writing proficiency in senior high schools in this study,further studies in applying lexical approach to English writing classes based on the different characteristics of students in senior high schools are required.