The Effects Of Lexical-Chunk-Oriented Teaching Technique On The Senior High School Students’ Composition Writing

The present study is carried out to investigate the use of lexical-chunk-oriented teaching technique in senior high school.The theories on which this study is based are psycho-linguistic foundation,input hypothesis and output hypothesis.The significance of the study is that it can provide some new insights into lexical chunk theory,help enrich existing theories on writing,especially for senior high schools,and offer valuable pedagogical suggestions to English teachers.We intend to figure out the following questions in our study:1.What effects does the lexical-chunk-oriented teaching technique have on the writing scores of senior high school students?2.What effects does this teaching technique have on the quantity and quality of lexical chunks in students’ composition writing?3.What effects does this teaching technique have on senior high school students’ interest.lexical chunk use awareness and confidence in the composition writing?Participants in this study consisted of 92 students from two parallel classes of Senior Two at Pingchao Senior High School in Tongzhou District,Nantong City,who were taught by the researcher and had similar English background and English level.Conventional teaching method was adopted in Class 4,the control class,while lexical-chunk-oriented teaching technique was employed in Class 3,the experimental class.The instruments applied in this study include two writing tests,a questionnaire and an interview.After the 12-week study,the researcher gathered all the data.Independent samples t-test and paired samples t-test were adopted to calculate and compare the students’ writing performance.The major findings of this research are as follows:1.The lexical-chunk-oriented teaching technique worked better in improving the writing scores of the students compared with the conventional teaching methods.In the post-test,the mean of scores of the CC was 12.11 and the mean of the EC was 14.36.The independent samples t-test showed the significant difference on the writing scores between two classes(Sig.value=.000),which revealed that students instructed by the lexical-chunk-oriented teaching technique performed much better in English composition writing than those guided by the conventional teaching method.2.The lexical-chunk-oriented teaching technique can effectively increase the quantity as well as the quality of lexical chunks in senior high school students’ writing production than the conventional teaching method.On the one hand,in the post-test,the number of lexical chunks used by students per composition in CC was about four fewer than that of the students in EC on the average and the Independent Samples t-test showed that there was a significant difference in quantity of lexical chunks per composition in post-test between EC and CC(Sig.value=.000).On the other hand,by comparing the compositions in the post-test of both EC and CC,the researchers found out students in ECI had a better command of lexical chunks of great diversity while students in CC had very limited ways to express themselves.And to some extent,lexical chunks used by the student in EC were of higher accuracy and more in line with the native speaker’s expression habits.3.With the help of lexical-chunk-oriented teaching technique,senior high students show greater interest,higher lexical chunk awareness and more confidence in English composition writing.Before the experiment,most of the students in EC were anxious about English composition writing,but they turned out to be more confident and showed more willingness to write after the experiment.In fact,it is students" interest and confidence that drive themselves to build up their lexical chunk awareness and motivate them to learn more lexical chunks,and the sense of achievement in learning more lexical chunks will further enhance their interest and confidence in English composition writing in return,which is a virtuous cycle.This study has some pedagogical implications.First,teachers should apply the concept of lexical chunks to English teaching,especially the theme-related lexical chunks,which will enable students to memorize lexical chunks systematically and more efficiently.Second,teachers should encourage students to take advantage of the extracurricular reading materials,such as English Weekly,to accumulate the lexical chunks and obtain more language resources for their writing.Last but not least,teachers can communicate with students to observe their awareness and attitudes towards the application of lexical chunks and give proper instruction.