| The concept that a lexical formulae is a prefabricated, fixed or semi-fixed multi-word lexical structure with both grammatical and lexical characteristics which can be acquired, memorized and used as a whole by learners is quite different from that of the traditional vocabulary. Lexical formulae can help learners improve their language fluency, idiomaticity and accuracy. Consequently, it is of great significance to probe into and research how learners acquire, deal with and use lexical formulae. Many scholars and researchers have agreed that lexical formulae are not only the basic components of authentic language but also the ideal units of language acquisition and language teaching. Up to now, the study of lexical formulae has already become a new developing trend of language acquisition and language teaching. However, in comparison with its theoretical research, the relative empirical researches are not enough,more specifically, empirical researches of lexical formulae in English writing are inadequate.This author randomly chose 30 expository essays separately from 30 third-year English majors from Spoken and Written English Corpus of Chinese Learners, 2.0 (SWECC2.0) (Wen, Liang & Yan), divided them up into high-scored and low-scored groups, and carried out a detailed and comprehensive comparative analysis of four types of lexical formulae used by both groups by means of quantitative and qualitative analyses. This research attempts to answer the following questions:(1) How is China's English majors'awareness of lexical formulae?(2) What is the relationship between China's English majors'competence of lexical formulae and their writing proficiency?(3) Is there any significant difference in the distribution of various lexical formulae in English writing between English learners with different language proficiency?(4) What characteristics are there in China's English majors'use of lexical formulae in English writing?The research results reveal that all of China's English majors have a certain degree of awareness of lexical formulae, but the high-leveled English learners'awareness is much stronger. China's English majors'competence in lexical formulae is closely related to their writing proficiency. The distribution of various lexical formulae in high-scored and low-scored writings is quite different. To be more exact, the higher the learners'English writing competence, the more lexical formulae they tend to use; in comparison with high-scored subjects, the low-scored subjects overuse some subjective lexical formulae, which indicates that the low-scored subjects'sense of style is not as strong as that of high-scored subjects. Meanwhile, the repetition rates of lexical formulae of both high-rated and low-rated groups are a little high and the colloquial lexical formulae are used quite frequently, which shows that both high-leveled and low-leveled China's English majors'lexical formulae competence remains to be improved and enhanced. In addition, the results of t-test show that only the differences between sentence builders as well as phrasal constraints in both groups are significant, which means that only the two types of lexical formulae are of great significance to improve learners'writing proficiency, while polywords and institutionalized expressions have no effect on improving learners'writings.Finally, the author has put forward some suggestions for teaching. In the meantime, the author earnestly advocates and supports the present practical lexical formula teaching.
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