A Study On The Application Of Lexical Chunks To English Writing Teaching In Senor High Schools

Traditionally,vocabulary and grammar are taught respectively in domestic senior high school English classes,which helps students grasp the pronunciations,spellings,and meanings of words,and a few phrases and collocations.However,most students’ pragmatic competence hasn’t got improved despite having learned English for at least 6 years.Instead,many kinds of errors can be found in students’ writing such as the misuse of vocabularies,Chinglish in expression,and the missing of conjunctive words or some sentence elements.Teachers’ neglecting the guidance of English writing and repeated mechanical training don’t contribute to the stimulation of students’ interests in English writing.Therefore,it’s necessary to find an effective way to improve students’ English writing proficiency and stimulate their learning interests.Many scholars have studied the role of lexical chunks in teaching English and advocated teaching lexical chunks in English classes.Lexical chunks are word groups with certain sequence and meaning which can be used directly and frequently to generate sentences.So it is significant to integrate lexical chunks with English writing teaching.Whereas,studies concerning the application of lexical chunks to the teaching of domestic senior high school English writing are inadequate.The author carried out an experiment which lasted for four months in two parallel classes in Grade 2 from Meijiang Senior High School in Meitan,Zunyi.Class 21 was the experimental group taught by the author,while Class 6 was the control group taught by another English teacher in Grade 2.The experiment aimed to solve two questions: first,what are the changes in students’ attitudes toward English writing before and after the experiment?Second,what are the effects of lexical chunks on students’ English writing? A sample of 80 students from the two parallel classes served as participants.Before the experiment,the author carried out a questionnaire in each class and randomly interviewed 6 students from the experimental group to find out students’ attitudes toward English writing and their problems in English writing.Both classes were tested at the same level in a pre-test.During the experiment,the author applied the chunk-based teaching approach to the experimental group,while the control group was taught traditionally.After the experiment,another questionnaire and another interview were conducted in the experimental group to know whether students’ attitudes toward English writing changed and whether they have made improvements in English writing.A post-test was also made in each class.The author recorded and analyzed students’ scores of compositions and the total amounts of their lexical chunks by SPSS.The results indicate students have a more positive attitude towards English writing after the experiment.Besides,students can get higher scores and use more lexical chunks in English writing by the chunk-based teaching approach.