A Study Of Lexical Chunk In Chinese College English Writing

Lexical chunk study has been a major concern of many linguists and foreign language instructors in recent years. Lexical chunk, 'as a form/function composite', reflects the interaction of semantics, syntax and pragmatics. Lexical chunk supports the development of syntactic rules, helps learners to achieve nativeness and appropriacy of expressions, and also facilitates the language production.In the light of these important roles, it is essential to conduct researches on lexical chunks. However, most of the present studies on lexical chunks still rest on the theoretical discussion. There are far from empirical studies to show the development of lexical chunks in Chinese-speakers learners of English. As for the study of lexical chunks in writing, it still remains a relative novelty. Thus, this thesis, mainly based on the theory of Nattinger & Decarrico(2000), makes a contrastive analysis of lexical chunks in the high-rated and the low-rated Chinese college English essays through quantitative and qualitative methods , aiming to explore the respective roles of four structural categories of lexical chunks in improving writing proficiency and reveal a clear picture of the actual use of lexical chunks in Chinese college English writing.Three research questions are formulated in this thesis. Firstly, what are the proportion distributions of four structural categories of lexical chunks in the high-rated and the low-rated essays? Secondly, are there significant differences of the same structural category of lexical chunks between the high-rated and the low-rated essays? Thirdly, what are the respective characteristics of lexical chunks expressing the same function in the high-rated and the low-rated essays? The first two questions are answered in quantitative analysis, and the third one in qualitative analysis.The author collected 30 non-English majors' essays from one class in Chang'an University and divided them into the high-rated and the low-rated essays by 8-point. In quantitative analysis, according to the structural classification of lexical chunks, within-group and between-group comparisons are made on the respective proportions of four structural categories of lexical chunks in the high-rated and the low-rated essays, and significant differences of the same category of lexical chunks in the high-rated and...