A Study On The Correlation Between Lexical Richness And The Quality Of Non-english Major Postgraduates’ English Writings

As one of the basic language skills that require intensive attention in the mastery of language,writing has always been regarded as a tough part of English teaching.Vocabulary is the basis of composition,so it is of great importance in language acquisition.Relevant research shows that the better the mastery of vocabulary in writing,the more ideas the language learners can express in the writing and the higher the writing quality is.The present study selects 100 non-English major postgraduates in Xinjiang University and collects 100 English timed writings.Based on Read’s research model,the thesis analyzes differences of lexical richness in the writing between low achievers and high achievers and investigates the correlation between lexical richness and the writing quality from lexical variation,lexical density,lexical error and lexical sophistication.In addition,the current study explores which parameters of lexical richness can better predict the students’writing quality.The results indicate that there are significant differences between high achievers and low achievers in lexical error and lexical sophistication.The writing quality has positive correlation with lexical variation and lexical density but the correlation between the writing quality and lexical variation is not significant.The writing quality has negative correlation with lexical error and 1^st1000 high frequency words and has positive correlation with 2^nd1000 high frequency words and the words in University Word List.Lexical error and lexical sophistication can better predict students’writing quality than other lexical richness parameters.Finally,the study discusses postgraduates’problems of vocabulary in their writings and provides some practical suggestions for vocabulary teaching and writing teaching based on Input Hypothesis and Output Hypothesis.The current study also points out the limitations of the study and assumes the orientation for the future study.