A Study On The Effectiveness Of Chunk-based Teaching In Improving The English Writing Performance Of Senior One Students

Writing is a complex thinking process and language generative activity that transmits information and expresses ideas through the organization of discourse.English Curriculum Standards for Ordinary Senior High Schools(2017 Edition)explicitly pointed out that the writing teaching in senior high school should attach great importance to training learners’ awareness of lexical chunks in the real context and cultivate their ability to express ideas accurately with lexical chunks.However,there are many problems in students’ English writing,such as negative writing attitude,inaccurate and unauthentic use of language and weak consciousness of lexical chunks.Students often learn words separately from grammar,which makes it impossible for them to integrate the words they have learnt into correct sentences.As a result,they always translate word by word while writing,let alone good English writing skills.Therefore,how to effectively improve students’ writing level has become an urgent problem to be solved in writing class.Appearing in fixed and semi-fixed forms,lexical chunks have both grammatical and semantic features which are easy for students to grasp and use accurately.This study applies chunk-based teaching to English writing teaching of senior one students,specifically discussing the following three questions:(1)What is the current situation of the English writing of senior one students?(2)What are the effects of chunk-based teaching on senior one students’ attitude,strategy and confidence in English writing?(3)What are the effects of chunk-based teaching on the English writing level of senior one students? What are the characteristics of students at different levels?This study adopts a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods,and takes two parallel classes of senior one students in Fuyang No.4 High School of Anhui Province as the research object.In the experimental class,51 students were taught writing by the method of chunk-based teaching,and in the controlled class,46 students were taught writing by regular teaching of writing.The experiment lasted for one semester,before and after which questionnaires,interviews and writing tests were conducted and the collected data has been collated and analyzed.The results are that:(1)The current situation of English writing of the Grade 1students in senior high school is not satisfactory.Students lack interest in writing,and some of them are even afraid of it.More than 60% of the students translate word by word while writing.Moreover,students do not focus on the accumulation of lexical chunks in their daily English learning and do not take the initiative to identify and record lexical chunks,so it is difficult for them to use lexical chunks appropriately.(2)Chunk-based teaching is helpful to improve students’ English writing attitude,chunk strategies,and their confidence in English writing.After the experiment,only 9.8% of the students are not interested in English writing,more than 80% of the students have improved their chunk strategies,and all students believe that they can write English compositions well.(3)Chunk-based teaching can improve students’ English writing level significantly.After the experiment,the overall writing performance of the students in the experimental class is significantly better than those in the controlled class.In addition,chunk-based teaching has different effects on the students with different levels of writing ability.It is found that chunk-based teaching helps the writing ability of students of low level group more than those of high level group.The following implications are drawn from the experiment:(1)Protect and promote students’ writing interest by using chunk-based teaching.Applying chunk-based teaching to the writing class from the beginning of high school can well protect and enhance learners’ interest in English writing.(2)Attach importance to improving students’ autonomous chunk learning strategies.Teachers should consciously train and cultivate the chunk strategies of students,and improve their ability to learn lexical chunks independently.(3)Chunk-based teaching should consider the difference of students’ levels and teach students according to their aptitudes.A variety of lexical chunk activities should be designed to meet the learning needs of high-level students.Protect the learning interest of low-level students and ensure them sufficient lexical chunk exercises.Based on the memory chunking theory and input hypothesis theory,this study explores the important role of chunk-based teaching in English writing teaching of the Grade 1 students in senior high school.It is expected that the research results can help improve the teaching methods of English writing in senior high school.