| Lexical chunk study has long been the concern of many linguists and foreign language teachers in recent years. Lexical chunk is a synthesis,which combines 'form' and 'function'. Lexical chunk is studied in the domain of the communicative approach in nature,because lexical chunk,emphasizes the communicative function of language and not regards lexicon as a kind of language phenomenon like grammar. The teaching approach whose center is grammar (syntax) implies that language is a dichotomy of grammar / lexicon,that is,the basic frame is grammar,and the lexicon is the filler. The disadvantage of this approach is lack of "appropriateness",because after learners have accumulated a lot of knowledge on grammar,words and phrases,they still may not use proper utterances in certain situation appropriately. The communicative approach emphasizes the communicative function and it is lack of the knowledge of grammar related to making sentences. In this situation,we recognize that we need a "middle" way to overcome the disadvantages of the above two approaches. Lexical chunk study opens our eyes and provides us an ideal approach for foreign language teaching. In recent years,with the wide using of computers,in the research of lexicon,many researchers,through analysis of the data in computers,have found that the communication in English is not completed only through words,phrases or sentences. Most natural utterances are completed by the semifixed 'chunks' existing between words and fixed phrases (1999). Lewis (1993) thinks that there isn't difference in category between lexicon and syntax;on the contrary,there is some relationship between them. Between lexicon and the structures of a language there is a continuum of lexical combination which is from completely free to completely fixed. That is to say,between lexicon and syntax,there exist some semi-fixed phrases which combine the features of lexicon and syntax. Thus,we think that the stress on teaching and learning lexicon in recent years is to research and application of these lexical chunks. Based on J. Nattinger& J. DeCarrico's lexical phrase,this paper analyzes the frequency of some lexical chunks in Chinese college students' CET4 and CET6 compositions,and studies the relationship between lexical chunks and the high-grade and low-grade English compositions and the role of lexical chunks in English as the foreign language (EFL) writing,by means of a top-down (theoretical presentation) and bottom-up (specific genre analysis) analysis.This dissertation falls into six chapters. The first chapter is about the research of lexical phrase. The second chapter develops the notion of 'lexical chunk',and examines its nature and role in an overall description of language,in computer analyzed texts and in language acquisition. The third and forth chapter examine the structural differences of lexical chunks and their essential function in discourse. Chapter five deals with the possibility of application of the lexical chunk in teaching foreign language writing. And in this chapter,we analyze the lexical chunks in CET-4 and CET6 compositions. First we calculate the frequency of each kind of lexical chunks in high- or low-grade compositions. Then we compare the same type of lexical chunks in two different composition groups. At last,using Pearson correlation coefficient,we find out the relationship between the use of lexical chunks and high and low-grade compositions. And all these analyses show that lexical chunks do help for Chinese college students' English writing. Among the four kinds of lexical chunks,sentence builders can help more than the other three kinds. And the help of phrasal constraints and institutionalized expressions to high and low-grade compositions is not the same. And we also find that although lexical chunks can help English writing,the reasons that result in the low-grade compositions are various. The sixth chapter gets the conclusion and examines areas that seem important ones for further research.
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