On Application Of Chunk Theory To The Teaching Of College English Writing

Writing is one of the basic skills for a language learner; however, it has not been given due attention in college English teaching. Students'writings are characterized by many problems. It is highly urgent to improve students'writing but it remains a challenging task. The newly-emerged and flourishing lexical approach has shed some lights on the issue. According to this approach, lexis is of primary importance while grammar is secondary. Lexical chunks are memorized, learned, stored and retrieved as a whole. It will not only ease the nervousness and anxiety in the language processing, but also promote vocabulary learning and facilitate the fluency and accuracy in language output, thus improving learners'self-confidence and enhancing their sense of achievement.The paper begins with the definition, characteristics and functions of lexical chunks, explores with a teaching experiment how to apply the lexical approach to improving students'writing proficiency and offers some suggestions concerning the implementation of the approach. The teaching experiment that lasts one semester has been conducted among 128 undergraduate science students. Before the experiment, a questionnaire and a pretest in writing have been carried out in order to learn their study habits and difficulties. During the experiment a series of activities have been organized for the purpose of improving their awareness of lexical chunks. Efforts have been made to teach students how to identify lexical chunks and help them with the memorization, accumulation, practice and use of these chunks. Writing lectures are given to enhance students'understanding of lexical chunks and promote the use of frequently used lexical chunks in college English writing. After the experiment, a second questionnaire and a posttest have been conducted for comparison. SPSS (11.5) software is employed for analyzing the composition scores and numbers of chunks that are used before and after the experiment.The experiment testifies that the lexical approach contributes to the improvement of students'writing proficiency and that the approach is effective and applicable. The analysis of the data proves that there is a correlation between number of chunks and writing proficiency. The findings of the research suggest that teachers implementing the approach should appropriately tackle some difficulties and dilemmas, wisely handling the relations between teachers'guidance and learners'independence and autonomy, frequency of lexical chunks and learners'need, identification and recycling of lexical chunks, accumulation of lexical chunks and fear of overloading students, implicit and explicit teaching of lexical chunks and so on. Teachers should change their mindset, making full use of the advantages of the approach, encouraging students to use the discovering and noticing strategy in teaching, raising students'awareness of lexical chunks, and promoting their sensitivity to language. Teachers should also develop students'knowledge of lexical chunks, enrich their stock and variety of lexical chunks, make them aware that chunks are more important than words and improve their collocation and lexical competence.The thesis not only provides experimental evidence for the chunk theories but also offers suggestions for college English teachers and gives insights into the application of lexical approach in the teaching of college English.