Corpus-based Study On Lexical Richness In Junior High School Students’ English Writing

The study of lexical richness is the study of vocabulary breadth.Lexical richness is one of the important predictors of learners’ language proficiency and it is an important measurement of the quality of learners’ writing and communication.Lexical richness has attracted more and more attention from domestic and foreign researchers.The researches on lexical richness in second language writing at home and abroad mainly focus on high-level learners such as college students.There are few studies took junior high school students who belong to the beginning level of middle school as research subjects.However,in junior high school students’ writing,there are some general problems such as excessive use of high-frequency words and lack of variety in vocabulary use.Therefore,it is of great value to take junior high school students as the research subjects to study lexical richness.Based on these research backgrounds,this research adopts a longitudinal research method to take 54 students from a junior high school in Hohhot as the research subjects and collect 216 time-limited compositions in total of four times from the first to the third grade as samples.And based on these compositions,four small corpora are built.Then lexical richness in students’ writing is analyzed by using corpus analysis software Ant Conc,Treetagger and Range and data analysis software SPSS,aiming to explore two research questions.（1）What are the developmental features of lexical richness（lexical variation,lexical sophistication,lexical density,and lexical errors）in junior high school students’ writing?（2）What is the relationship between lexical richness（lexical variation,lexical sophistication,lexical density and lexical errors）and writing quality in junior high school students’ writing ?The results of the study show that（1）with the development of students’ age and grade,lexical variation increases gradually in their writing,and there are significant differences of the increasing between each times’ composition.Lexical sophistication in students’ writing also increases continuously,but only the increasing from the second to third times’ compositions is significant.The developmental features of lexical density are decreasing first and then increasing.From the first times’ compositions to the second times’ compositions,the lexical density decreases,but from the second times’ compositions to the fourth times’ compositions lexical density increases significantly.Lexical errors in student writing decreases continuously.（2）In terms of the relationship between lexical richness and writing quality,lexical variation,lexical sophistication and lexical density are positively correlated to writing quality.The relationships between lexical variation,lexical density and writing quality are relatively weak,while the relationship between lexical sophistication and writing quality is relatively strong.Lexical errors are negatively and strongly correlated to writing quality.In conclusion,with the growth of students’ age and grade,the developmental features of the four dimensions of lexical richness are different.The characteristics of development are asynchronous and unbalanced.The relationships between writing quality and the four dimensions of lexical richness are various.The problems of overuse of high-frequency words and insufficient use of diverse vocabulary still exist in students’ writing.Based on the research results,researcher put forward some suggestions for the learning and teaching of vocabulary and writing for junior high school students and teachers.From the perspective of vocabulary and writing teaching,teachers are supposed to establish the awareness of lexical richness and realize the importance of lexical richness to teaching first.Then,according to the four dimensions of lexical richness,teachers are supposed to use various teaching resources to improve the diversity of vocabulary they taught,and encourage students to use various vocabulary in writing.Teachers need to pay attention to the teaching of low-frequency words and help to increase the use of low-frequency words in students’ compositions.Teachers also need to pay attention to the teaching of lexical words,so that students’ compositions can contain more information.Teachers are supposed to pay attention to students’ lexical errors and they ought to reflect and adjust the contents and methods of vocabulary and writing teaching according to lexical errors.In terms of vocabulary and writing learning,students are supposed to use rich learning resources to learn a variety of vocabulary,and actively use them in their compositions.Students can learn some low-frequency vocabulary appropriately,and use some advanced vocabulary in their compositions.The lexical words contain the key information of the sentences,and students should also pay more attention to the learning of the lexical words and the application of lexical words in writing.Finally,students should pay attention to lexical errors and reflect actively based on them,which can effectively improve the efficiency of their vocabulary and writing learning.